Ashes to Ashes

Our first animal of the year was born on Ash Wednesday, a beautiful doe-eyed bull calf, and has been aptly named Ashley. He is the firstborn of his mother, Cuckoo, who has been transformed from an unruly temperamental teenager into a model of maternal calm. She now emits these soft short “moos” from time to time as if comforting her calf, or perhaps just expressing sheer contentment.

Ashley was born about 3pm while most people were out on the shopping trip to town. He was on his feet by 3:30pm and suckling by 3:45pm, although he was given a helping hand getting to the teats.  Now that Cuckoo is producing milk we have started to milk her which is something she is just going to have to get used to. At present we’re not milking her dry of course, as Ashley needs to feed. We just take some out twice a day to relieve the pressure on her udders.  At these early stages her milk is full of colostrum, full of goodness for her calf but not pleasant for us to drink, so the milk is discarded. In a week or so it’ll be OK for us to drink and we will start milking her fully. She will be separated from the calf at that point so we’ll begin to bottle feed Ashley - still with his mother’s milk of course.

Wood fungus near Pilsdon's defunct reed bed system

Life begins. Life ends. On that same Ash Wednesday afternoon my good friend Lou passed away. She was just two days shy of her 90th birthday. I had got to know her whilst living in the same block of flats in central London close to Waterloo station from 2004 till 2009. At that time she, her husband and her uncle all lived in one small flat. Lou had lived in Waterloo her entire life, having been born in 1926 just a few blocks north (an area subsequently flattened to make way for the South Bank.) She had met Len after WW2, married and moved into the block of flats in which she was still residing nearly seventy years later. 

Despite seeing huge changes to her neighbourhood over the decades Lou always remained open and friendly to new people regardless of race or religion. She had a quick wit, a knack for telling stories and a keen interest in other people. She told me and my flatmates of schoolfriends lost to a German bomb which hit a shelter where the Young Vic theatre stands today. She told us of her wheelchair-bound mother who lived with them for most of her life; of her tireless work running the Waterloo Action Centre (which still exists today) helping local people in need, and successfully campaigning against cuts to local hospital services. We heard about how she was sent to south Wales as a teenager to escape the German bombing raids but quickly returned to be with her mother.  

Her uncle died first and more recently so did her husband. They had had no children. She was housebound with deteriorating health. She was very short of breath, she had had a heart operation, she was losing her sight and her hearing, and she could barely walk. She was in and out of hospital regularly. She refused to move from her home although her niece had arranged a place for her near to where she lived. Lou had been waiting for death for some time and it has finally arrived, with her niece and a friend at her side. I had spoken to her just a few days before. She was an inspiration, a piece of living history, and a good friend. Rest in peace Lou.

Ashley stands for the first time