Search Results for: Tim elkington

Lane 1   Lane 2

After leaving Tangmere, we wondered whether we could track down Moses Farm House, of which I have long had fond memories, the family having stayed there on our way to Cyprus in the 1950s.  I had called my parents this morning to see whether it was near Haslemere, as I remembered, but they couldn’t remember.  So Elaine had Googled it before we left, finding a Moses Hill near Marley Heights.  Then as we passed Lurgashall on our way south to Goodwood, I noted that it rang a strong bell. 

In any event, once we had been to Goodwood and Tangmere, we prowled around the astonishingly beautiful lanes of this part of West Sussex, which represent one of my strongest memories of that era.  Convinced that the house was just around the corner, we pulled up alongside an elderly – but sprightly – couple to ask for directions.  Weirdly, they turned out to live in nearby Moses Hill Farm, where they have lived for some 50 years.  They knew the name of the people who lived there previously and it wasn’t Tobin, as it would have been if it had been Tor and Marjorie, Pat’s mother and her second husband. 

(Later in the day, Pat told us that Tor often over-stretched in terms of property, leaving with the bailiffs almost literally snapping at his heels, though that didn’t happen here.  Still, he was good painter, if temperamental.  At least once Marjorie spent hours stitching up a canvas of a stormy seascape that he had slashed with his palette knife in the midst of a drunken nocturnal rage.) 

Then the woman told us about the other house in the area with a Moses tag, Moses Farm House.  Turned out that it was a few miles away, very close to Lurgashall. So off we went, little expecting to find it.  As we drove down the lanes, squeezing past oncoming Lamborghinis, Ferraris and the like, I told Elaine that I remembered that the drive hooked back to the right.  My main memories of the house were of discovering and adopting a nest of pheasant’s eggs in the hedgerow that ran alongside the drive and, secondly, of Tor firing an air rifle out of the windows overlooking one of the lawns – showing me how the pellets ricocheted off the plumage of the guinea fowl that robotically pecked their way around the grounds.  Pat remembers there being three, dubbed ‘The Three Musketeers’ by Tor – but in this case the musketry came from a different direction.

Then we found the house, with the drive hooking around exactly as I remembered it.  We drove in, hoping to find the current owners, but the house was empty.  Strange sense of homecoming to a house that was never home, more of a way-station between Northern Ireland, Dulverton (where Tim’s mother Isabel lived with her second husband, Carey Coaker) and Cyprus.  But pretty much the perfect end to an extraordinary day out from London.

Sign   Gate

Childhood haunt – and where the guinea fowl used to roost

Hedgerow

 

House – with sniper’s posts on first floor

Oxford Street eastward 1

One of the great joys of cycling in London is the sky views overhead. Stopped several times today to take photos of the aerial extravaganzas overhead.

Oxford Street eastward 2  Holborn

One of Britain’s finest contributions to the art of well-informed conversation is The Chatham House Rule. Frustrating, too. Had dinner this evening at the Chef’s Dining Room, Mews of Mayfair. Others around the table included the CEOs of well-known companies.  The conversation revolved around climate change in general – and, in particular, the conclusions of Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund in his new book, Earth: The Sequel.

 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had this to say about the book: “Krupp and [Miriam] Horn have turned the doom and gloom of global warming on its head.  Earth: The Sequel makes it crystal clear that we can build a low-carbon economy while unleashing American entrepreneurs to save the planet, putting optimism back into the environmental story.”  These – at the for-profit end of the entrepreneurial spectrum – are some of the people we aim to find new ways to help through our fledgling new company, Volans Ventures.

Elaine and I drove across to Tetbury this morning, albeit with difficulty – there was a long tailback before we got on to the M4, because truck had hit a car, or vice versa, the ensemble blocking two lanes out of three.  We ended up having to drive significantly faster than I would have liked to get to the Calcot Manor Hotel in time for me to begin my speech at 11.00 at an event organised by executive coaching firm Praesta.  After an excellent lunch at the hotel, we were all coached across to Highgrove to see what Prince Charles and his gardeners have achieved there.  

It’s a long time since I was there – and progress has been very considerable.  A high wind was blowing as we walked around, with the trees sounding as if they were gravel beaches, with great storm surges coming in and receding.  My favourite corner, by far, was in the old ‘Stumpery,’ where one of two classical mini-temples now contains a stunning black plaque in memory of Ted Hughes, showing him with a Longfellowish head of hair together with a crow and what my eye variously made out to be a salmon or a pike.

After a champagne tea, we were bussed back to the hotel, via Kemble station, and Elaine and I decided to drive up through Cirencester and thence to Little Rissington, to drop in on Hill House.  Turned out very well – with a lovely light slanting across the gardens as we collected vegetables to bring back to London.  I spent some happy moments watching bees making free with the foxgloves.  But all of this buccolia comes at a price: filling up the Volvo’s fuel tank in Tetbury cost £73.  Thanks heavens we rarely have to go anywhere by car.

Bee in foxglove Foxgloves Tim and Elaine netting  Caroline

A dozen of us (Charmian Love, Sam Gray, Martin Hartigan, Pamela Hartigan, Sam Lakha, Mark Lee, Geoff Lye, Astrid Sandoval, Kevin Teo, Sophia Tickell, Elaine and I) spent the day at 2 Bloomsbury Place, our new Volans office, the first of two Away Days. Part way through, Elaine spoke to someone from the Prospect office on the floor below – and discovered that, in addition to the building’s own garden, we have access to a quite extraordinary magic garden at the back, which – among many other delights – contains two elephant sculptures, presumably left by the people who were in our space before us, The Elephant Family.

Among many other memorable aspects of the day, and part from the Magic Garden, three stand out for me: the beautiful ‘stained glass’ version of our flying fish that Kim (Russell) had made for me; the one-candle birthday cake that emerged out of a cupboard late in the day, celebrating my imminent 59th and (in my mind) the birth of Volans Ventures; and the small granddaughter of the people upstairs coming down dressed as Ginger Rogers, one of my all-time favourite screen goddesses. (Flying Down to Rio being one of my Top 16 ‘Desert Island Discs’.)

Oh and then, as Elaine and I walked back home by Barnes Pond, in a setting sun that turned the trees and grass into a a form of sensuround stained glass, a heron (my totemic bird) flew in and and landed in the reed-beds. Apart from one piece of bad family news for one of our number during the day, this was virtual perfection.

Still life Sam, Astrid, Martin Flying fish 2 Flying fish 3 Elaine Garden Further in Elephants – with Sophia, Charmian and Sam Trunk fondling Sam in the belly of the beast Lock Wildflowers Martin emerges Kevin demonstrates Martin, me, Pamela Blowing out the candle Unused to cameras as I am …