The Man with the Padlocked Mouth - and other Hampshire Idylls

[steepholm]

This is an unusually travellish week for me. Yesterday I went to my mother’s for the day, and later I’ll be off to lady_schrapnell's for the weekend (yay!). Then there’s Barnstaple on Wednesday (external examiner stuff) and Bolton on Thursday (also external examiner stuff, plus giving a paper). Teaching will be fitted around these somehow.

Anyway, just before lunch yesterday my mother surprised me by saying “Why don’t we go for a run this afternoon?” My jaw dropped, but it turned out that she meant in the car, so we tootled in the direction of the New Forest and Minstead.



Minstead’s only eight miles or so from my mother’s house, but for some reason it’s not on our usual tootling route, even though the church has a two-lane lychgate:



a three-tier pulpit:



An interesting gallery:



And is round the corner from an inn called The Trusty Servant, with a very curious sign:



As we were looking round, and wondering why we didn’t come more often, my mother remarked, “You know, I haven’t been here for thirty years.”

“Surely that’s wrong,” I replied. “I remember coming here with you as a teenager!” A swift mental calculation followed. “Oh, shit.”

Our trips always seem to take us to the graves of writers. Last year it was Taliesin, the year before that Charlotte Yonge. Yesterday it was Conan Doyle’s turn. His grave is a modest affair, but there were some spring daffs growing at its foot, and the bowl of a Holmesian pipe left by some fan:





My mother was funny on the subject of death. Apparently her hairdresser was telling her of her plans for the future, which included cutting down on the number of her customers once the kids had left home. “I won’t drop any of my current clients,” she said, fixing my mother with an appraising eye as she added: “But I expect I’ll lose some to... ahem... natural wastage.”

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

'wastage' heh

lovely photos!