Chain(saw) of Fools

As both of my legs had just been severed with an accidental slip of the chainsaw I found it necessary to sit down quite swiftly on the ground before starting to call for help. Unfortunately I was a couple of miles from the nearest main road, having driven along a long winding track into the Forestry Commission plantation to find a spot to fell a nice Christmas tree. To add to my misfortune my mobile had run out of battery (I’d tried to charge the phone up the night before but it had developed an annoying habit of wriggling free of the lead), and I hadn’t had time this morning to let anyone know where I was going.  With consciousness slipping away I reflected that I should have paid more attention to the safety aspects of my CS30 training course.

I Bought A Bog

Seventy-two years ago a book was published called I Bought A Mountain. Its Canadian author, Thomas Firbank, had spent the previous decade managing a 2400-acre sheep farm in the mountains of north Wales, having bought it for £5000 in 1931 (£257,000 in today’s money). In the book he describes in brisk prose the joys, tribulations, triumphs and disasters of this experience, an outsider struggling, and eventually succeeding, to gain the acceptance of the close-knit hill farming community of Snowdonia. This book has been loaned to me as required reading because two days ago I bought a Welsh bog.

Fly Me To The Moon

Every once in a while the serenity that enfolds Pilsdon like an all-in-one pyjama suit is outrageously ruptured by the thunderous by-pass of a flying machine, its wings nearly clipping the roof of our manor, its roar jingling the cutlery and making it impossible to speak. Sometimes two will pass in quick succession to double the insult. There is a sweet arrogance about the way they roar so slowly past, ponderous in their perilously low flight above the hedgerows and spires of Dorset. They know they are interrupting whatever is going on below and they know there’s not a thing anyone can do about it. 

Be Still

Most of us will only sit still when our attention is arrested by something in front of us, be it a TV screen, a computer monitor, a smartphone, a tablet or, for the old-fashioned amongst us, a book. Without external visual or auditory feed we quickly become restless. We have become very accustomed to a near-constant input of information, entertainment, or their unlovely spawn, infotainment. Our smartphones alert us when someone we barely know has tweeted about something we care even less about. Taxis and buses are installed with in-vehicle TV screens to give passengers adverts to gawp at. iPads provide digital distraction on trains so people need not look out of the windows any more, and no doubt the windows themselves will soon be replaced with OLED panels promoting the latest 3D blockbusters.  We are losing the space to allow ourselves just to be.

Get Up Stand Up

A few weeks ago I mentioned an interest that I shared with a few others at Pilsdon in getting involved with the local Greenpeace group, partly to quell the sense of embarrassment that despite having been in existence for some months, our Activist Club had done nothing more active than to watch a few films and chin-wag before turning in with our hot chocolates.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Being at Pilsdon for any length of time one tends to accumulate job titles. For instance some of mine are Head Gardener, Senior Vice Cow Milker, Reservoir Filter Maintenance Engineer, Wind Band Director and Arranger, Film Night Organiser, Activist Club Initiator, Official Pianist for Worship Services, Chef, Chauffeur and Minibus Driver.

Love Is All Around Us

Four weeks ago I mentioned in this blog that a resident of Pilsdon had fallen foul of the golden rule of Pilsdon and was asked to leave. In the last week, three more residents have left, leaving us a slightly quieter and smaller community. Of these three, one of them (a recently arrived guest) broke the same rule. The other two, however, committed a different but equally serious offence, which is known variously as “forming a relationship”, “becoming an item” or simply “going out with each other”.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

Each November on the fifth of the month many of us in Britain gather together, as families or in larger groups, to celebrate the failure of a terrorist attack on our parliament attempted four hundred years ago. The celebration tends to include two main activities. Firstly, simulating the explosion that would have ripped through the House of Commons had the bombs actually been triggered by setting off a display of fireworks. And secondly, creating a huge bonfire upon which, should Catholic sensitivities be taken fairly lightly, an effigy of the lead insurrectionist is placed. The word ‘bonfire’ comes from the Mediaeval English word ‘bane-fire’, ‘bane’ meaning ‘bones’, as originally they were fires used to burn bones so the flames must get pretty darn hot. 

Bringing Home The Bacon

Can you remember the last time you came face to snout with a pig?  If not then you may simply have the children’s picture book image lodged in that area of the brain reserved for all things porcine. Pink, round, with a curly tail and a snub nose, it likes to say ‘oink’ and romp around in mud. A single neuron-trip away in your mind is bacon, and then we’re off on rhapsodies about the smell of full English breakfasts.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough

This past week I have been becoming rather too well acquainted with the various stages of decomposition of animal poo. It’s a world that many of us never venture too far into, possibly for fear of becoming so enthralled by the complexities of dung ecology that we become a bore at parties, banging on about the pros and cons of cold versus hot composting, lecturing others on the chemical virtues of cow manure, haranguing close friends on the necessity of mixing animal waste with kitchen scraps, dead vegetation and straw to the correct proportions. Let’s hope I don’t find myself slipping down that path (metaphorically or literally).

A Very Big House In The Country

We have been steadily growing in numbers over the last few months and we are now nearly at capacity with just one spare room for male guests (which is soon to be occupied by someone applying to live here) and two for women. There are currently six members (i.e. paid staff), sixteen guests, four volunteers and one baby. With occasional wayfarers, day volunteers and visitors, our meal times can get quite cosy if not outright squashed.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The last of the tomatoes

You’re never at a loss for something to do of an evening at Pilsdon. Wednesday night is Games Night, which usually entails nothing more energetic than a round of canasta or a frame of snooker. Thursday night is Swimming Night where those who haven’t crammed too much dessert down them head off to Bridport’s swimming baths (this has yet to entice me). Friday night is Comedy Night, entertainment provided by professional comedians who have kindly allowed their shows to be recorded and provided to us on a DVD. Saturday night is Film Night in which we gather in the library-cinema and fall asleep in front of the latest Ewan McGregor yawnathon. Sunday night is Church and Soup Night whereby we do church (along with some from the surrounding villages) then eat soup. Monday night is Craft Night for those of a crafty disposition.

Public Enemy Number One

I found some secateurs within the potting shed and returned to the table outside. In front of me lay the creature, still within the pot I had placed it in and still very much alive. I knew what I must do. Although every instinct within me was screaming at me to do otherwise, I reached down and snipped it in half. Instantly its intestines burst from both ends, its slimy entrails hanging loose from its front half which I watched in horror squirming for the next ten minutes as it sought without success to escape from the pot. I decided I had to stay with it during its death throes rather than callously leaving to get a cup of tea. It was an ordeal but I knew which end of the secateurs I preferred to be on.

England's Green and Pleasant Land

There was a time when the estate of Pilsdon Manor stretched right across Marshwood Vale, one thousand verdant acres of it. Many labourers and their families must have been dependent on their work upon this land, farming, keeping livestock, managing woodland. Their lives would have been intimately linked with the seasons and the weather. When Percy and Gaynor Smith bought Pilsdon Manor in 1958 for five thousand pounds and formed the Pilsdon community, its land extended to no more than ten acres, its former possessions now a patchwork of sprawling farms and tiny hamlets.

To Everything There Is A Season

Six whole months ago I joined the Pilsdon community. The Earth has spun halfway round the Sun in the meantime. Spring has sprung, Summer has been summoned and Autumn is beginning to Fall.  An entirely new person has since been ushered into life in the form of baby River. Thirteen entirely new piglets have also been welcomed to planet Earth although sadly their mother had to be taken to the abattoir yesterday as she had developed a malignant tumour on her udder. Twelve lambs have been born, lived their lives, been dispatched and are now in the freezers. One bullock was slaughtered in May and has since been consumed, four remain out in the fields looking over their shoulders nervously.  The vegetable garden has blossomed, bloomed, fruited and in large part been harvested and filled our collective stomach.

I Had a Little Drink About Six Months Ago

Me in my pre-Pilsdon days

When I describe what life is like here to my friends back in the city they generally seem quite envious, up to the point that I mention that it’s an alcohol-free zone. They then tend to react with a mix of shock, pity and admiration, asking me how I’ve managed to survive for more than a few days and shaking their heads at the absurdity of them even imagining placing themselves in my wellies.

 

Our House, In the Middle of the Countryside

In the past week there have been no less than two momentous occasions in which people gathered to commemorate and celebrate certain Pilsdon residents moving into their new homes. 

Snooker Loopy, Nuts Are We

Before I joined Pilsdon I spent a trial week here in mid-February, much of which I spent working with a nun. She had decided to turn one of the manor’s rooms into The Craft Room, populating it with various looms, spinning wheels, sewing machines and knitting machines that dotted the place, but discovered that several of them were buried amongst an incredible jumble of furniture that had been stacked into the sports hall, completely filling the back half of it. So the task mutated into emptying the sports hall of the entire assortment of heavy items of furniture, and in so doing making it ready for renovation.

Lamb To The Slaughter

On Tuesday six of our twelve lambs were rounded up, herded into a trailer and driven forty minutes to an abattoir near Chard. They have had five months of life. When I arrived at Pilsdon in March they weren’t yet born. I’ve seen them take their first stumbling steps towards their mothers, I’ve watched them play, racing each other around the field, rolling around on their backs. One of them, Immi, had to be bottle-fed by hand four times a day for the first couple of months because he had been rejected by his mother as a runt, and was so small and frail he could have died at any point. Now it’s virtually impossible to distinguish him from the other lambs, all of whom are as big as their mothers. In fact the only easy way to tell a ewe from a lamb is that the ewes have been sheared so they actually look smaller than their offspring.

Camp Fire's Burning

Around and above us the light seeps away, the wide sky deepening to black.  A red moon hangs silently above the horizon. Stars begin to appear, first one or two, then tens, then suddenly hundreds. The ghostly blur of the Milky Way bisects the heavens. As the temperature drops we huddle a little closer to the camp fire and put on more layers. The younger children have been put to bed, and the teenagers who had been off somewhere else in the field now deign to join the adults, if only to be closer to the warmth.  Conversations murmur around the crackle of the fire. John decides it’s time for some music; he retrieves his guitar and my saxophone from the camper van and he begins to sing some soulful tunes while I improvise an accompaniment as best I can. 

A Day In The Life

I wake in time for the morning service at 7:30am. There are three of us, we share bread and non-alcoholic wine. After breakfast I head to the kitchen to make my first attempt at soft cheese which involves gently heating eight pints of milk until simmering, then taking off the heat and stirring whilst adding Jif lemon juice. Curds form on top which I place inside a muslin bag and hang from a hook over a bowl in the “egg room” next to the kitchen.  Tomorrow I will add chives, salt and pepper, then try to convince people to eat it.

We Are The Champions

The lights went up. The hum of the crowded arena built to a deafening roar as the contestants marched out under the Olympic rings. Their names were announced one by one. As they warmed up the excitement was palpable. These were the best of the best. The honour of many countries – Nigeria, Ukraine, USA, Columbia, Congo and Canada to name but a few – was at stake and would be decided over the next three hours. A hush descended as the four simultaneous matches were about to start. The balls skittered over the surface in flashes of white. The preliminary round of the women’s singles London 2012 Olympic Table Tennis had begun!

The Best Things in Life Are Free

Money. What is it exactly? It comes in pieces of paper with the Queen’s head on it. You can give it to someone in a money shop on the high street who promises they’ll look after it for you, but if they do happen to lose it the government will give it back to you instead (as long as you don’t lose too much). The government seem to be relying on one particular money shop called the Bank of England which can’t go out of business and is the only one able to print more of it whenever they feel like it, which they have been doing an awful lot recently. 

By the River of Pilsdon

Shortly after posting my last blog the heavens opened and stayed open for a good twenty four hours. It was serious this time. The clouds had been practising for weeks in anticipation of a good old-fashioned Deluge and they were going to enjoy it. 

Destiny's Children

Last weekend we had a sudden influx of thirteen additional residents to our community. Destiny our pig had given birth! Each piglet has a black head and hind quarters with a pink midriff and are at their very cutest when sleeping in a jumble on top of each other. Their bedroom is just a couple of yards from their mother so breakfast is quite easily obtained by them all rushing over and nudging her until she wakes up and rolls on her side.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Potato

28 March

Releasing the inner Da Vinci

Inside all of us there is a demiurge, a primal creative instinct to make something that wasn’t there before. Admittedly this inner Da Vinci is hidden deeper in some than others, but nevertheless given time, materials and an ounce of self-belief, it is bound to emerge.

How about some Jethro Cull?

Amongst the many scraps of knowledge that I’ve picked up since I arrived at Pilsdon in March, one of the most obscure has to be how many people it takes to carry a cow.  And so I can now divulge this to you too, dear reader : seventeen.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Economic Crisis

I have become used to the expression of mild astonishment that flits across people’s faces when I explain to them that until recently I had been working for years in the mobile phone software industry in London.  Maybe it’s something to do with my ever-lengthening beard and hair that make me look more like a Viking marauder (albeit a bespectacled one) than an urban professional. Or perhaps it’s just that the world I now inhabit is such a long way from that of inner-city London, on most measures you can think of.

Keeping up with the Joneses

I first heard of Pilsdon from a book I read last November called Utopian Dreams. It’s written by Tobias Jones, who documented his visits to various communities in UK and Italy, searching for somewhere he and his family could feel at peace in. He was dissatisfied with the standard model of our contemporary Western lifestyle of consumerism, studio flats and TV dinners. He also wanted to discover whether a community with religion at its core would prove to be more cohesive than one without. It’s a very thought-provoking and intelligent read.

Nice warm ice warm, fresh milk!

It’s 5:40am. I get up and open the window on the verdant panorama which the early sun is warming, and listen for a minute to the dawn chorus. A quick wash then it’s on with my blue overalls and steel-toe-capped Doc Martin’s and outside to the dairy where I collect the two metal pails, the two plastic milking buckets, the dual-teated bucket for the calves Boris and Daffodil, the single-teated bottle for the youngest calf Bluebell, and another bucket of warm water with cloths for udder cleaning. My milking partner will normally meet me here.

Stumped for words

The sharp thud of leather on willow. The desultory applause. The cries of fielders certain that a batsman is now out. The shake of the head of an umpire equally certain that he is not. The baa’ing of the sheep on the hillside above. Yes this was an actual cricket match that I was actually participating in, and oddly quite enjoying it.

Food, glorious food

There are quite a few communities dotted around the British Isles, according to the WWOOF UK website (www.wwoof.org.uk).  My own experience of living in a community is limited to Pilsdon, where I am now; Monkton Wyld, just a few miles from here, where I spent a great few weeks last November and in January this year, and a week at Othona community, also quite close by, perched on a cliff above Chesil Beach.

Keeping the home fires burning

Right now there are no children or young people at Pilsdon which is something of a shame. Having kids around tends to cause more noise, more mess, more questions, more tantrums, and generally more fun. There have been children at Pilsdon in the past, and in fact any day now we are going to have a brand new child burst onto the scene. Laura and James* are having their first baby and today is Laura’s due date, which of course means everybody is bubbling over with excitement and anticipation. Laura herself has been calm enough to teach me the basics of Mahjong this evening. 

Walkin' round the room singing Stormy Weather

One of the major differences between what I am doing now and my old life in the mobile phone software industry is that I am now much more aware of the weather. Before, the weather just used to make me grumpy whatever it was doing. If it was a nice hot sunny day, I’d think to myself, great, I get to enjoy this for about fifteen minutes as I walk to the train station and the rest of the day I’ll be stuck inside at the office.  If it was raining, I’d grumble that I’d get wet feet. If it was just a bland grey day I’d moan to myself how boring it was. But once I’d vanished within the office, all thought of the weather was gone for the day. 

By The Light Of The Silvery Moon

London has a lot going for it. Really. It’s got all kinds of exciting things to do. You can ice skate outside a building full of prehistoric skeletons, or potter round the City of London wondering at the juxtaposition of ancient churches and soaring new structures. You can eat almost any cuisine known to man, catch the best new plays, listen to several of the world’s finest orchestras (one at a time is best), or sunbathe in one of the beautiful parks that span the centre of the city. It’s packed full of history, culture, entertainment, job opportunities and Boris bikes.  However there is one thing that London is most definitely not great for, and that is star-gazing. 

We all like sheep have gone astray

The hut was dimly but warmly lit and covered in straw. It was getting cooler, the evening light was disappearing. The ewe lay facing away from me, panting, with its hind legs streaked with blood. Its first lamb lay by its head, asleep. Behind the ewe crouched one of the community members, arm deep within it, struggling to gain a grip on the as-yet-unborn lamb which had its legs twisted round, making its safe entry into the wider world unlikely without external assistance. I was witnessing my first lambing.

A blog is for life, not just for Easter

I found myself awake and outdoors at 5:30 this morning standing in the pitch darkness by a bonfire at the entrance to Pilsdon’s church. No, I hadn’t discovered my inner arsonist; I was participating with others in an Easter Sunday sunrise service which also included setting a firework rocket off, playing with sparklers, and then lighting our candles and moving inside the beautiful Norman church for a more conventional sort of worship.

We plough the fields and scatter

For the first time in my life I was actually glad it rained today. This is what being partially responsible for some fledgling vegetables and fruit in Pilsdon’s garden has done to me, having spent hours laboriously hoeing trenches, digging holes, and planting potato sets, onions, cabbages, strawberries, and pea saplings which were born in half a drainpipe in the warmth of the church (it has underfloor heating!).

Settling into life in the country

Just over two weeks ago I left London to join a community called Pilsdon, situated in the heart of rural Dorset.  I am volunteering here at least for the next six months, plenty of time to get the dirt properly ingrained under my fingernails.