Step Exercise.

After last night's thunderstorms I woke this morning to a typical British summer's day- grey, wet and chilly. A good enough reason to have a bit of a lie-in watching both pairs of birds that have taken up residence above the bedroom windows as they flew back and forth with food for their hungry broods. Eventually I made it out to the garden, via the PC and my jigsaw, and found that it had stopped raining and warmed up.

Today's task was to sort out the steps and path leading to the chickens' run. I am not so happy with my handiwork as it is a bit of a bodge job and I'm thinking about losing the bottom step and leaving it as grass. In spite of last night's storm the ground is very dry which made it easier to dig. As I was muttering to myself about the presence of that solid clay which needed attacking with a mattock I suddenly remembered the first serious gardening I did in London many years ago. As part of a local wildlife/environmental group we were involved in creating a community garden out of some derelict land just off Cable Street in East London. We used no mechanised tools at all but relied on pickaxes, mattocks and crowbars to dig our way through the foundations of houses that had been bombed back in the war. We would have given our eye teeth for soil such as I have got now. The local mounted police donated us a mountain of stable manure to compost and I remember one memorable occasion when the heap combusted and the fire -engines were called out, possibly by the nuns who lived in the convent across the street. The community garden became a successful venture and some years ago I saw a TV programme which showed local families growing vegetables there and enjoying the outdoor space. In that area just outside the City nobody has any sort of garden, only balconies or window boxes. This was where Peter grew up and now we live in the least populated county in England in a beautiful rural valley. We are so fortunate.
I've just checked and the gardens are still going strong, hooray for local projects. More info at http://www.opensquares.org/detail.php?square=CableSt

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My Memories Of Sodyba.

It was another early start for me today. I got up at 4.30 and was on the road by 5.30. After some initial fog as I made my way eastwards across Devon to the motorway the weather conditions were perfect. Peter's car is new with all mod cons and is very comfortable to drive. As the roads were almost empty I have to admit to breaking the speed limit at times. Also I carefully counted the exits on every roundabout sign and and didn't go down any wrong roads. So I managed to shave an hour off last week's journey time.

On Sunday mornings there is a very large car boot sale (twice the size of the biggest one down here), about a mile from scout camp so before I call in at camp I have a leisurely stroll around. Today it took me 2 1/2 hrs to go round the sale. I didn't buy that much, a bag of toy cars for my next years' class, a bag, some beads, a hand mirror and some penguin Christmas tree decorations for Vytas' Kate (she likes penguins).
Once I got to Sodyba I found Vytas and Romas helping with the final clear up. It was lovely to see Vytas as I don't see him often. It's not unusual to find others called Vytas at camp but this year the other Vytas was also tall, had a beard and long brown hair in a ponytail , freaky. Romas had actually been camp Commandant and was very tired after doing that job and a lot of the programme organiser's job and fitting in a lot of socialising (partying) as well. I'll wait until I can pull some pictures from facebook to show the things they got up to.


As this might be the last time I visit Sodyba I decided to go for a walk and relive a few memories.


The track from the road is very rutted. I had no problems when I used to drive my landrovers up here but I don't take the chance with Peter's car and leave it in the car park by the house.

I only started coming to camp once the boys were little but I still got to camp in the woods in the Ateitis Camp (family camp). Usually in a tent but for 2 glorious years we had a caravan which was wonderful despite the hard bed. A whole week of only having to make sure the boys had dry and reasonably clean clothes to wear. When they graduated to sleeping in the boys' camp I would get them to give me their dirty clothes each day by including a small packet of sweets (something they didn't get at home) with their clean clothing.

Each evening as darkness fell we would walk down this track to the lauzas (evening camp fire)....

.... set in a natural amphitheatre. As well as songs and jokes the youngsters would also do skits. One year when Romas was 4 , he and his pal Leo did a Jurassic Park based act with lots of roaring and shaking of the bracken. That was the year he decided to be a stand up comic and tell long indecipherable jokes with his dog puppet. And the year he and Leo decided to tell jokes together and came to blows over who was going to say the first line.

This rabbit was feeding on the path today as I walked around. When the boys were doing scouting activities I would go for walks along the many bridleways and over areas of heathland and there would always be many rabbits around even during the daytime.

I have many memories of sitting on the stone steps on hot days nursing a hangover (pre-kids) or watching the youngsters play sports on the grass. The grassy banks make fantastic water slides with polythene sheeting and a hose pipe.

Although Sodyba is now a country club open to anyone it was originally bought by the Lithuanian immigrants and is still run by Lithuanians. A bit of a problem as most Lithuanians believe that they know the best way to do anything. That is probably the reason why the swimming pool in the woods, now totally rebuilt, didn't have a deep end and a shallow end but 2 deep corners diagonally opposite to each other.

My earliest memory of Sodyba is going up on a coach from London from the day with my mother and catching tadpoles at the side of the fishing lake. That was about 45 years ago.

The lake has great rafts of water lilies. I can remember camp closing ceremonies where a sea god was installed on a home made raft and paddled around the lake usually with rather watery consequences.

While I was walking around the lake a Brown Hawker was whizzing about. At nearly 10 cms long it is the biggest of our dragonflies. While I was trying to work out it's patrol route it buzzed up behind me and hovered about 3ft from my face looking at me. It was rather disconcerting.

When I was a youngster I really hated living in London away from any wild spaces and whenever I came to Sodyba I would go for long walks through the woods around the lake.






Not much has changed in the woods apart from the swimming pool now being surrounded by a high wooden fence. (No more midnight swimming.) Also the 'haunted' mill down by the trout river seems to have completely disappeared.

I can imagine that after the war this must have been a haven for the emigres, many of whom would have come from rural backgrounds and were then having to live and work in dismal conditions in the East End of London. They would come for the day or to camp for a weekend or longer and those with more money stayed in the house. Whitsun weekends used to be one long party with marquees set up for people to sleep in. There would be drinking and singing and dancing and more drinking. I went to one of those weekends with some friends from the dance group when I was 15. Say no more.

And now I'm off to bed because I am so tired.

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Summer Memories.

It's Friday, school is frenetic as usual though all the staff are walking round with smiles on their faces as Claire had a baby boy, Henry James, at 3.00 this morning after only 4 hours labour. They don't keep you in hospital for long these days, they wanted to send her home after only 6 hours but she chose to stay for 12 hours. We'd all love to see the baby but obviously we'll wait until she's had a chance to rest.

As it is just another cold wet windy day I thought I'd post these photos, (not taken by me) of the Lithuanian scout camp in Hampshire that the boys have been going to every year since they were 3 years old. The camp has a family section as well as a girls' camp and a boys' camp. When they were little I spent the 10 days there with them helping in the camp kitchen which is an open fronted shed with very basic facilities. Some years there would be only 40 scouts, others -120. Camp is in a sandy pine forest attached to a country club, (with lake and pool) which was originally bought by the Lithuanian emigres as a place where they could escape their fairly grim lives making a living in London and other big cities.

They always build elaborate gateways and other structures. At the start of camp week the forest echoes with the sound of Vladas' chainsaw and there are groups of small boys wielding axes or large knives, (I don't think there is a word for health and safety in Lithuanian!). Looking at the length, or lack of length, of Vytas,( far left), and Romas' ,( middle -green t-shirt), hair, I'd say this camp was 3 or 4 years ago. Linas opted out of camp once he had the choice but the other 2 go as leaders every year.

It's amazing what you can do with some string and an unlimited supply of trees.

Even the youngsters' camp gets involved.

Looking down towards the fishing lake in front of the house.

Just about everything goes on in the open though there is a shower block at the house and a converted outbuilding to use if the weather is really bad, which almost never happens.
The 'house' has 2 bars as well as a hall etc but it is now a country club for the local area but Peter and I have many memories of 'cultural' weekends there which were mostly about drinking and socialising. The above picture is probably a visiting dance group from Lithuania though Peter and I were part of a London based dance group when we were much younger.

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Memories of Dr Who.

For some reason this morning I woke up at 4.00. After an hour I gave in and turned on the radio, (I'm trying to break myself of the habit of only falling asleep if the radio is on). First was the shipping forecast with gale force 8 & 9 and storm force 10 being predicted for all the areas from the Thames, around Southern England and back up to the Hebrides. This was confirmed by the wind I could hear rushing through the trees in our valley. The general forecast was for snow in Scotland and eastern England with warmer temperatures for the South West. Then a spot called 'On This Day' where they mentioned that Dr Who was first shown on tv 45 years ago.

This brought back a whole string of memories. My mother didn't have a tv , and didn't get one until 1976, but I happened to be staying the night at some friends of hers in Queensway, (my mother was probably at work), and I watched the pilot episode with their children. I don't remember very much except that it was very exciting and I can vividly remember thinking how strange it would be if I stood on one of the knots in the stripped pine floor and things started to change. I wonder if that was the start of my fascination with alternative realities. Later I can remember being scared of the cybermen mainly when it was revealed that they were originally humans who had gone overboard with replacement surgery. Anyway back to that weekend 45 years ago. The next morning I was supposed to go to the cinema with the rest of the children but for some reason I decided to take myself home early. I was 6 years old and travelled 7 stops on the underground from Bayswater to Parson's Green and walked home. My mother was always a worrier and this must have completely freaked her out and was probably the reason why she sent me to boarding school. It was a little convent boarding school, minimal teaching standards but the fees were £23 a term. We went home every 3rd weekend but on the Saturdays we were there we watched Dr Who. It was on at the same time as those who wanted to could go to Confession at the Church across the road so I didn't go to Confession that often. When I was at secondary school there was no tv unless I went next door where we watched 'The Monkees', (Mickey Dolenz was my favourite), but I read all the science fiction/fantasy I could get my hands on and we still have 100s of SF books. My mother didn't approve of reading fiction but there was only so much studying and piano practice I was prepared to do. And then I discovered boys and started going out with Peter when I was 15. Looking back at Dr Who the programmes were very basic but it was the concepts that were so exciting. Needless to say when I did have access to a tv we watched all the SF dramas, remember Blake's 7? Incidently I saw Clockwork Orange (with a different boyfriend) when it was first released. It was withdrawn because of death-threats made to the director and not released again in the UK until 2000, it didn't seem that extreme at the time.

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