Range Rovers when not in aspirational residential developments look like suspicious vehicles to me.
I recently strolled across my country park with my dog and was surprised to see a clean very comfortable 4×4 driving across a wide open area and stop. About 5 people got out and opened the boot and left the car doors open. They huddled around the boot talking, as I walked from one clump of trees to another sheltering from the rain. At one point they all got back in the car as it was rainning quite hard.
A scene from a spy thriller was unfolding. One guy walked off 150 yards and then returned. Only the odd tree and grass where did he go and what for?
The other odd thing was I thought I could here music wafting intermitently in the wind! Was this coming from said 4×4 or was it from traffic with an open windows driving along the dual carridgeway just over the perimater fence. Your mind invents story’s to explain what what is probably an on site planning meeting.
This is not what a fellow dog walker thought, as a couple of days ago she had seen two Black Range Rovers outside the club house where the tatooed man lives. Then she saw a police car drive up and policeman get out. Its all so secret the dealings around this piece of land! Blah Blah Blah.
Its amazing how these sort of rumours get started.
Well….. other news is Hector is still alive, three smaller trees have been choped down…..using a chain saw (badly as the back of the tree has been left sticking up from the stump). Does not look a proffesional job to me?
And some of the putting greens are finalaly turning into wildernesses.
A Tradegdy on the Golf Course!
Don’t get excited a tree fell down.
Other news is the driving range and small pitch and putt which has just newly been constructed has just closed down. I have conversations with walkers on the golf course and my neighbours about the golf course and it is always in hushed tones: whispers. The topic is always…..local scandals involving….prison sentences…..backhanders….local politics….weird undervalued selling prices all relating to the development of this piece of land.
The real news is a tree has fallen down. I was inspecting this scene and the trees involved I had contemplated calling them Gog and Magog, but they did not quite make it. looking over what happened it seems the top limb must have snapped, which in turn fell onto a lower limbwhich snapped, then the two together fell on another lower limb which snapped destroying the tree. I looked at how this tree was growing at quite an angle; prehaps trying to get more light, as its neighbour was blocking all the light. A life time dual had been going on. I noticed sudden changes in direction of the branches all away from the neighbouring tree. This broken tree had very lop sided growth with all the weight on one side. Eventually all that weight was too much and it snapped off bringing the whole side of the tree down.
A kind of unavoidable tradegy where one tree was destined to triumph over the other, both huge magnificent trees but one had to inevitably die. It brought Achilles and Hector to my mind. When I first read the Illiad I liked Achilles flouting the king and being a rebel. In later life I prefere Hector who had responcibility and duty which forced him into this combat. He faced it as best he could but the inevitability of the the outcome is extremly sad.
Hector with Honours lies on the golf course. I wonder if he will survive the combat with Achilles this time.
I actually feel guilty, writing on this blog. I have other stuff pressing and need to make the most of things while the weather is so bad.
As Mr Spock would say. ‘Contributing to this blog is illogical under the circumstances Capt’.
I went Over the Golf Course yesterday and it is not a golf course anymore. But the majority of it has the grass cut by a tractor, which I find amazing as it uses resources for no understandable benifit, except I dont get wet trousers walking through grass up to my waist. The tractor does not cut around bunkers and obsticles such as hummocks and trees etc. As a result this wierd landscape is developing with 3 feet high wild grass growing over these kind of earthwork features with sand in some of them.
The greens still have remarkably short grass, but daiseys and plantains are growing out of them now and you have to look very hard to find the holes on some of them.
I have not done any of the drawings I planned to do for this blog and must spend time in the cooler instead.
No Wild Flowers!
The wild flower seeds that I planted over the golf course have come to nothing; didley squat, zilch, sod all, jack, zero.
Everything else is really growing and someone has cut the grass with a tractor. I was slightly dissapointed about that as I wanted it become a meadow.
When I find lost golf balls I stash them in places all around, sometimes in trees, sometimes in the hole on the green. They always get raided by someone, which never ceases to amaze me.
My drawing of the crows has been washed away now. But what is strange about the putting greens is that the grass is still short. Everywhere else shows signs of neglect (in golf course terms) but the putting green grass is still short? Different breed of grass! or were the greens drenched in some kind of retarder….who knows…who cares.
I stood inside the ring of trees called six for gold and wonderd what would I buy if I had gold?
a kiln and a forge
That does not seem much. But when I thought it through, it really means moving house.
Dream on…….. and look there are two birds nests on the ground!
The Country Park
I spoke to a couple the other day who were walking their sons dog (as he was away) and they described the golf course as ‘their country park’. They are right it is like a Country Park.
Since that conversation I kept finding myself thinking : What would you do if you were a child and grew up with something like this as your back garden? I think many children must have had something similar. Would it be like Swallows and Amazons, an idylic childhood with real fires, real bows and arrows and camps and war games. Boats and boat houses, lakes, tool sheds and out-buildings, the list went on and on.
Would you track wild animals and watch their behaviour and find their burrows and nests etc. Would know all the trees and plant varieties……would you turn out to be one of these kids who were never quite able to mix with other kids and prefere to live in a lone fantasy world created around the garden, not quite able to seperate their imagined world from the real world. And is it actually exactly that, that describes a good childhood? I wondered if I would have turned into one of those kinds of loner kids? You know; camping out for 3 nights in a row and hunting for fish and rabbits and that.
I looked back at my children’s childhood and thought what if this had been their garden? Would they be able to negotiate contemporary society and the world they are growing up in. I kind of felt that, if you have a big garden then you might have a small outlook on the world, and if you have a small garden then your world is big! But what…….who knows or could have changed things either way. Not Me.
For the moment I do have my own country park, which is remarkably empty of people and I still feel like its mine.
