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.
Out to the garden, now sweltering under an apologetic sun trying to make up for poor recent performance. I’m going to check how the “second earlies” are doing, the potatoes I planted in March, but am distracted by the weeds in the bed of comfrey next-door and spend half an hour removing them. After elevenses I get back to the spuds and pull one plant up but they are not large enough yet. When they are we will chop all of the stalks off (known as “topping”) which causes the skins of the potatoes beneath to thicken, necessary for storage.
There’s time to take eight young broccoli plants from the greenhouse and plant them out in the brassica bed before the midday prayers at 12:45pm which I lead. Lunch today is spaghetti bolognese followed by apple and cinnamon pie, both delicious. Normally lunch is a light meal but we have a cricket match this evening so supper will be a simple soup and earlier than usual.
I play the piano in the Common Room which has become my routine after lunch, and then decide to go and clean the reservoir filter, a task that needs doing every two weeks. It’s quite a way up the hill and I am sweating by the time I reach it. It usually takes about an hour and a half all told but this time it’s more like two hours because a leak has developed between two chambers meaning that the furthest chamber empties fast before I can use the water in it to clean the others out, so I have to fill the bucket directly from the inlet pipe. I get pretty muddy and wet but the sun dries me out on the way down.
I check on the cabbages, removing the protective netting first. Some of the Derby Day variety are ready, the larger Kilaton not yet. I weed around them, and then it’s evening prayer at the earlier than usual time of 4:45pm. I’m tired out and overheated and it’s difficult to stay awake in the contemplative atmosphere of the church. After sweet potato and red pepper soup, eleven of us pile into the minibus and drive over to Symmondsbury cricket pitch, five miles away, where we face the Flymos, renowned and feared for their orange Flymo-sponsored tops. They bat first and reach an impressive 150 in 16 overs, we only get four of them out. We start strongly but then our wickets begin to fall like flies and although I am 9th batsman I still have to go out there and face them. It’s the last over and thankfully they seem to have run out of fast bowlers. The ball drifts towards me and I thwack it past the fielders to get a boundary four, my first ever. (Mind you, it’s only my fourth cricket match ever). It’s not enough to win though, the final score 150 - 76.
Given the warmth of the evening and the fact that it’s my day off tomorrow I make a snap decision to sleep up on the Pen, the hill next to Pilsdon which claims to be the highest point in Dorset. It’s getting dark so I hurriedly gather torches, water, books, sleeping bag and bivvy bag and set off upwards. I’ve not done this before. It’s almost totally quiet up there, bar the odd owl in the distance. The lights of Bridport, Lyme Regis and Chard can be seen in the distance. I lie there, quite cosy in the bag, surrounded by dried sheep droppings, looking up at the stars in the gaps in the clouds. Days like this couldn’t be much better. And this was just yesterday.
No comments:
Post a Comment