Walking around Darite and Minions

The day dawned fine with sunshine in the morning and the threat of a few showers in the early afternoon. Sounds like perfect for a walk.

We started at Trethevey Quoit just outside of Darite, headed southish and then northish around Caradon Hill up to Minions for lunch. And then it was downhill all the way back to our starting point. Just over 6 miles and a good stretch of legs with very affable company.

Trethevey Quoit is thought to be a Neolithic 'dolmen' burial chamber. I say 'thought to be' because, as with most of these structures, nobody knows for certain. It stands 10 feet high with five standing stones, surmounted by a huge capstone, which must weigh around 20 tons. Recently it has been placed on the Monuments at Risk Register as the capstone is gradually pushing the standing stones outwards. Hopefully they won't leave it too long before they do the necessary stabilisation work.

A very nice piece of ironwork casting an interesting shadow. Maybe I'm being romantic but are there two rings with two love birds on each gate? Or are they just crappy pigeons around a feeding bowl?

A sight to gladden the heart of any walker in Cornwall at this time of year - a lovely stretch of mud glistening in the morning sun. What could be more inviting? What could be more invigorating than a good splosh?

From the splosh into a muddy lane, soft underfoot with fallen leaves. This is an old trackway leading up to the mines on Caradon Hill. It is not fanciful to think that many of Mrs P's forebears walked this way.

Odd things by the wayside #1: Obviously originally from an much older building but where from? And why here?

 

Odd things by the wayside #2: outside the shop at Minions. Just one relatively new Dr Martens boot. What the story behind this? We did look for a bare-footed one-legged person but didn't see one. The woman in the shop had no idea it was there.

Odd things by the wayside #3: let's hope the owner of this can get to sleep without it.

I thought this looked like a bridal veil.

Looking due west over the Gonemena Valley with Plymouth in the distance.

Looking down into Gonemena with its fine display of stacks and spoil heaps. Imagine, if you can, that all of these were hewn out of the ground by pick and shovel. And moved around, primarily, by muscle power.

And, shining in the distance, is the sea, round about Seaton on the coast. Funny to think that just about as I was taking this photograph, our daughter and two of our grandchildren were frolicking on the beach there. Who would have thought that we'd all be down here enjoying Cornwall?

I've got no idea who Maisie Baynes was but she was obviously held in high regard by her Gardening Club colleagues. It's a pleasure to remember a fellow gardener.

We finished the day with a visit to nearby St Cleer's graveyard to find the headstone of Mrs P's 4x-great grandparents, Charles and Dorothy Jay. We did find it but, unfortunately, it was at such an angle and so close to another headstone, that a full frontal photograph was not possible with the kit I had with me. But, from the records of the Cornwall Family History Society, the inscription reads:

Jemima BINNEY who died 17 Jul 1862 aged 21
also
Dorothy JAY who died 12 Dec 1853 aged 63
wife of
Charles JAY who died 22 Apr 1856 aged 70
grandparents of
Mary Ann BINNEY who died 8 Mar 1851 aged 8
daughter of Henry and Mary Ann BINNEY

Nearby, an unexpected find, the headstone of Henry and Mary Ann Binner, the parents of Jemima and Mary Ann mentioned above. The elder Mary Ann must have been the daughter of Charles and Dorothy which, by my calculations, makes her Mrs P's 4x-great aunt

 

Don't waste your time trolling me: I don't care.

Just one of the many joys of writing about Brexit is that you get your very own trolls with a lovely line in vitriol. What is it about Brexiteers that makes them so sensitive? It’s difficult to understand what they imagine they’re achieving by doing it. Although, truth be told, I don’t really mind as it’s possible it’s some sort of therapy for them and they clearly lack more productive outlets for their views. Perhaps it's my contribution to 'Care in the Community'.

There are a few reasons I don’t worry at all about the slurs and insults. After all, if you dish it out you can’t complain about being kicked in return. It would be nice, though, if some of them could display just a modicum of wit, or anything approaching a sense of humour, or indeed anything approaching the ability to spell. Sometimes it would be nice to be attacked for what I’ve actually said, instead of what the person thinks I said. Another reason for not minding too much is that, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it’s remarkably easy to set up filters to catch all the hateful missives from my regular adversaries. Their communications go directly into the trash folder without me ever seeing them – unless I deliberately look in the trash, which I very rarely do.  So they throw brickbats at me in vain. They assume I care what they think. They are wrong. I. could. not. care. less.

But the most important reason I don’t mind about being the target of insults and abuse is that it means that my messages are getting through. Someone who spends their valuable (?) time writing to inform me, in 'robust' terms, that I'm having no influence or affect is disproving their own argument by the mere fact of their interest in my opinion. 

So, it’s pretty clear that I’m having a strong affect on that person. And that makes me all the more determined to continue. And I shall.

Ten minutes in the afternoon of 13th November 2017

Just a few minutes on a November afternoon looking out of our lounge window at the birds, with camera in hand.

An infrequent visitor to our patch, a Great Spotted Woodpecker. It's a male as evidenced by the red nape.

 

A female Great Spotted Woodpecker (no red nape), an even less frequent visitor than the male. This shot, like some of the others, is obscured by the glass of the window.

We've been seeing Grey Herons quite a lot recently and they've taken to wandering around the field at the back of us, presumably looking for worms.

When they take off, the breadth of their wingspan becomes evident. It's got to be at least 10 foot across.

A glimpse of a Long Tailed Tit. There are lots of them around us but very few come into our garden.

But Blue Tits do.



This male Pheasant has been hanging around for a few days, pecking up the seeds that drop from our feeders.



A not-so-common House Sparrow. But their numbers are increasing from what they have been in the recent past.

 

Most numerous today were the Great Tits. Acrobatic and very active.

 

Brexit and Gardeners' Question Time

Mrs May and her new European friends

We’re at a phase in the Brexit talks where EU leaders have realised that further rebuffs of Theresa May would be very like repeatedly kicking a doleful puppy. Any more kicks and the puppy is likely to expire and the Conservative party would only go and replace it with something far worse. Still, being patronised at the recent meeting because she’s so weak and the Tory party is so hopeless made a nice change from the time before when no one wanted to talk to her, apart from four potted plants. This is what constitutes progress for the UK in the Brexit negotiations and could herald a whole new chapter in Britain’s brave buccaneering Brexit. We’re going to make fantastic trade deals with the rest of the world by making everyone feel sorry for Mother Theresa and us. Let's be honest, the only reason Mother Theresa retains a veneer of authority is because the party wants her to grasp the thorn of Brexit so she’s the one that’s poisoned by it.

Frau Merkel warned recently that the next stage of the Brexit talks, the trade negotiations, are going to be a lot more difficult than the divorce talks. Since the supposedly easier part of the negotiations hasn’t exactly moved forward with anything you might call speed, this doesn’t really bode well for the second stage: if and when, of course, the EU ever agrees to move on to it. The pot plants which Theresa May stares forelornly at begin to appear to have more agility than the Brexit negotiations. The plants may get fed a diet of crap but they still manage to look attractive. No amount of crap that Theresa feeds the British public can make Brexit look good. But at least the pot plants managed to get on the table and to sit there looking pretty. The trade talks, however, look like they’ll never get on the table in the first place and, even if they do ,they’re going to look very ugly.

There could be an important lesson here for the British government and the Conservative party. If the UK replaced David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson with a spider plant, a busy lizzie and a dickweed, the Brexit negotiations would be considerably further forward than they currently are and then, instead of threats of a hard border, we could be talking about a herbaceous one (a joke for my fellow gardeners). This idea isn’t as ridiculous as it might first sound as there is already a precedent: our friends across the Atlantic have had an ornamental cabbage as their President for a year now. Although, on second thoughts, there’s no real need to replace Boris Johnson with a dickweed because he already does a very good impression of one. And there’s certainly no reason to replace the much touted Jacob Rees-Mogg with a plant, because he’s already a fossil. Mind you it’s not like there’s much point in offering this advice to the Tory party, because even though many people speak to plants, there’s absolutely no evidence that the vegetables in the party are going to listen.

It took the EU leaders all of 90 seconds to decide that there hasn’t been sufficient progress so far and that they’ll wait until December to revisit the question of whether enough progress has been made to allow the UK to move on to the trade talks. And that 90 seconds included the usual pleasantries being translated into 25 languages. Can you remember the last time any political decision was made that quickly? I can't. In the meantime the EU will discuss a possible trade deal, but they won’t discuss it with the UK, they’ll just discuss it amongst themselves in the same kind of way that you make sure that a really annoying person is no longer in the room before you start to talk about them. But it did mean that Theresa could return to London with something like a victory which will help to bolster her position against the triffids in the cabinet. She could present them with a firm commitment from the EU that, in a few months time, it will consider looking at whether there’s been enough progress . And expectations are now so low that that counts as progress all by itself. It’s still all about the money. Reports are that the EU is insisting on something in the region of €60bn which the UK will have to cough up to settle its financial obligations before the EU will consider moving on to trade talks. That’s considerably more than the €20bn which Theresa May has offered, and considerably more than the red, white and blue cabbages in the Tory party are prepared to countenance. They still fondly believe that the UK is the stronger party in these negotiations, but the truth is that it’s the EU which possesses the pruning shears and the weedkiller. The reality of Brexit is that Britain is going to end up with what the EU is prepared to leave us with and that’s going to leave us much worse off than before.

Snippets from 1947.

I think there is no better way to get a real feel for a time than to turn to the newspapers of the day. Newspapers are unfettered by the "historical viewpoint" and they paint a picture of a moment in time with the materials that were available at the time, rather than some idealised picture of days gone by. No need to look back with rose-coloured spectacles when newspapers can tell you the way it was.

Following up on some family history recently, I've been travelling back seventy years to September 1947, and my time travel is courtesy of the pages of the Daily Herald. The Second World War has been over for two years, but Britain is still beset by enormous problems and serious economic shortages. The dreadful winter of 1946/47 nearly brought the country to its knees far more effectively than years of enemy bombing campaigns, and in September 1947 the Government was putting together contingency plans for the coming winter, whilst my mother was otherwise engaged on a more personal matter.

I've chosen two pages from the now-defunct Daily Herald which caught my eye as an illustration of the world I was born into. The examples given in the reports - football coupons being reduced to half their size in order to save paper and cinemas closing early to conserve power - illustrate just how far the economic shortages were making serious inroads into the lives of ordinary people. This came at a time when the rationing of food and luxuries was probably even more widespread than it was during the war itself.

Another interesting sidelight is provided by a couple of smaller items which relate to the future of energy supplies in the UK. One is a short article about "Atom Boys" (note the gender specificity!), a hand-picked group of 160 young men who will become the country's atom scientists of the future. I really like the idea of apprentice nuclear scientists. The article doesn't actually say "they will be a glowing beacon that will light the path to the future", but I'm sure that, but for the sub-editors pencil, it would have done. The second is an advert for miners to return to the pits. "Join the Miners - the miner's the skilled man the nation will always need". Oh, if only they could have seen into the future and spotted Margaret Thatcher looming. She screwed Moses Heyes and his colleagues and closed Bold Colliery in 1985. So much for the "skilled man the nation will always need". And plus ca change, the Tories are still screwing us. Compare and contrast with 1947 when Clement Atlee and his colleagues were giving us the NHS and the rest of the now derided Welfare State. Think about it and weep.

A Priti fine mess

Do you remember that bit in the Better Together pitch to the people of Scotland in 2014 when they were told that Scotland needed the heft and credibility of the UK to represent them on the world stage? For those who swallowed that. See the Brexit negotiations. See Boris Johnson. See Priti Patel. Aren't you mortified now? What a cock-up. The only notable thing about Britain striding the world stage is how many pratfalls it makes.

British diplomacy is a laughing stock. Britain notoriously doesn’t do a great deal to help those of its citizens who get into trouble while abroad. That’s one reason why the former BBC world affairs correspondent John Simpson used to travel to war torn regions using his Irish passport. Simpson said in an interview with the Guardian that the Irish government would be far more likely to help get him out if he was arrested or kidnapped. The Irish actually give a toss about their citizens who get into difficulties abroad, but it’s also true that all too often Britain is one of the reasons a region is war torn in the first place. However you’d imagine if you were a British citizen who had been arrested by a foreign government on trumped up charges that the very least that the UK could do would be not to make things even worse for you. But Britain can’t even manage that. The British-Iranian journalist Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested and jailed by the Iranian authorities when she was on a private visit to the country with her infant daughter, visiting her parents. She’s now serving a five year sentence in an Iranian prison for a supposed crime whose details have never been revealed to her. Her young daughter has been denied an exit visa, and her English husband denied an entry visa, separating the child from both her parents on top of everything else. Her husband has persistently pressed the British Government and the Foreign Office for help, without much success. I know a reasonable amount about Nazanin's case as, through Amnesty International, we have written many letters on her behalf over the past couple of years.

Then along comes Boris Johnson with his big mouth. Boris confidently, but wrongly, asserted to a parliamentary committee that Nazanin was in Iran in order to teach journalists, contradicting everything Nazanin, her family, and her employers have been telling the Iranians. Shortly after he made the statement, Nazanin was hauled out of her jail cell and into an Iranian court where she now faces an additional five years on top of the sentence she’s already serving. Iran claims that the Foreign Secretary’s remarks provide evidence that she was agitating against the Iranian regime. Not even a grudging apology could be dragged out of Boris Johnson, he actually tried to deny that he had claimed Nazanin was teaching journalists even though his words had been recorded by both the committee minute takers, and by the TV cameras which were present. The most he would concede was that he “could have been clearer”. But he was perfectly clear, and he perfectly clearly said something incorrect that risks keeping a British citizen years longer in an Iranian prison. Boris has a big mouth, he has a bigger ego, but he’s an irrelevant little man with big pretensions representing a irrelevant little country that imagines it’s still important.

Priti Patel, the international development secretary, went on holiday to Israel. I don’t know about you, but when I go on holiday to somewhere warmer and sunnier than the UK, which is most places, all you want to do is laze about in the sunshine, eat and drink too much, and take in the local sights. For Priti the local sights included the offices of senior Israeli politicians, including the Prime Minister Netanyahu, the former finance minister, and the public security minister. She also met with officials from the foreign ministry and with representative from a number of other Israeli organisations. In a holiday lasting less than a fortnight, she managed to fit in 12 meetings with government representatives and politicians. That’s not just a degree of workaholism that really needs the intervention of a 12 step therapy programme, it was also both breathtakingly stupid and arrogant because Priti forgot to mention any of this to the British Foreign Office, the British embassy in Tel Aviv, or her boss Theresa May. Worse, when the story first came to light she tried to claim that the Foreign Office knew all about it, when in fact she hadn’t notified them in advance at all. She hadn’t really meant to do anything wrong. If she had met with Benjamin Netanyahu is was just because she was the 3 millionth tourist in Israel this year and he wanted to surprise her. Brexiteer Priti wanted Britain out of the EU in order to restore full sovereignty to the Westminster Parliament, but she changed her plans about an official trip to Africa and got an earlier flight so that she wouldn’t have to face questioning in the Commons. Which is just as well, at least for her, as it now transpires that she held another two undeclared and undisclosed meetings with senior Israeli officials since she got back from her holidays. It turns out that Priti wanted to send British government aid money to the Israeli army for projects in the Golan, a Syrian territory which Britain and the international community regard as being illegally annexed by Israel. She came to an agreement with the Israelis without clearing it with the Foreign Office, the Prime Minister’s office, or the British embassy in Israel, all of whom would have told her that she was overstepping her authority by holding meetings without clearing them in advance, and that it’s a breach of international agreements entered into by the UK for the British government to send aid money to the Israeli army for spending in occupied territories. Worse than that, it transpires that a lobbyist from the Conservative Friends of Israel group was present during some of these meetings and had a role in arranging them. Breaches of the ministerial code don’t come much clearer. Either Priti Patel didn’t know what she did was a breach of the ministerial code, in which case she’s too inept and incompetent to remain in office, or she did know and did it anyway, in which case she’s unfit for office.

In a normal world, Boris and Priti would both have been sacked immediately. But this isn’t a normal world. This is Brexit Britain which has a Prime Minister who is too weak to keep her idiot ministers in check, and they’re too weak to force her out of office because they fear that bringing her down risks another election in which they’d have to face the voters and be held to account for their rank incompetence. Priti Patel’s formal title is now the Disgraced Former Minister Priti Patel. But just like her colleague, the Disgraced Former Minister Liam Fox, who was very keen to defend Priti over the past few days and to downplay her actions, the chances are that she’ll serve a while on the backbenches, and then crawl back into government like nothing had happened. That’s how justice works for the powerful in the UK.

Look at Boris and Priti, look at a Theresa May who heads a government that’s as chaotic and stable as a paralytic drunk on roller skates, and considerably less clear headed. This is what the broad shoulders of the UK look like. This is the security and stability that Mother Theresa promised at the General Election. There is no certainty in the UK except that the UK is an international embarrassment which is only fit for providing tax avoidance schemes in its overseas territories for the super-rich. And the rest of us? All we can do is hold our heads in our hands and watch as the clowns destroy our futures. It’s a Priti fine mess that those voting for the Tories has got us into.

Two walks based on Mevagissey

To Mevagissey for a belated birthday treat: a night in a rather swish B & B (Pebble House - highly recommended if you are in the area and looking for a place to stay). This gave us the chance to complete a little more of the Cornish Coastal Footpath. Hooray! And hooray for our free bus passes.

The walk on our first afternoon was a 5 miler from Gorran Haven, to which we caught a bus (with a very pleasant Scottish driver) and then back to Mevagissey along the coast. Glorious sunshine and a rather undulating trek.

The second day was not so good weatherwise (showers, wind etc) when we started but it did improve as we moved into the afternoon. We took the bus from Mevagissey to Charlestown and then followed the Coastal Footpath back to our starting point. We clocked 7.5 miles and these were 7.5 muddy, strenuous miles. Take a look at the elevation profile above and this will give you a good idea of the ups and downs.

On the way to Mevagissey we made a slight detour to visit St Mary the Virgin church at Braddock as Mrs P has family connections with it. Her 4x great grandmother, Dorothy Parsons (no relation to my line) was baptised there in 1791 (daughter of William and Anne) and married there in 1811 to Charles Jay. Unfortunately it was not open so we'll have to go again when it is.

The interior of St Just church at Gorran Haven. The building dates from the early 15th Century although its site has been associated with worship for some 1400 years. Originally it is thought to have been an oratory and over the years has had many secular uses, including a fish store. Extensively and sympathetically restored in the late Victorian era, it is small but perfectly formed and with a very calming atmosphere. And for the ecclesiastical pedants amongst my readers, I know it is more correctly a 'chapel of ease' rather than a church.

If you've got £3 million or thereabouts you can buy the main house at Chapel Point, just outside of Mevagissey. As an inducement it comes with its own private cove which, I'm glad to say, seems to be open access to the general public, albeit after a fairly long walk.

The late afternoon sunshine picking out part of Mevagissey, the quintessential Cornish fishing village. It is still a working harbour, with an excellent fresh fish counter selling fish straight off the boats.

Just one of the many fishing boats in the harbour. Very calm waters and some nice reflections.

Not many fungi around but this was a nice specimen of a Honey Waxcap we came across. We don't pick them but this one was already detached and gave us the opportunity to take a close look at its gills. Intricate and beautiful in its own way.

Looking due west with Dodman Point in the middle distance. Those with keen eyes might be able to make out the Lizard as a faint line on the horizon. The gloom gives a good feel for the way it was as we set off from Charlestown.

With the better weather by early afternoon, the more iconic vistas of the coastal footpath came to the fore. Here we are looking across to Black Head. This cove was inaccessible to all but the brave - or those with a boat. Very little sand but it looked a good place for rock pooling.

Looking across the sands at Pentewan. Would you believe that this is a private beach, with access restricted to those using the adjacent holiday camp. Grrrr! Because of this, a 1/2 mile detour was necessary. Double grrrr.

On the Parsons Mud Scale, this walk definitely approached a 10.

Just a Robin but a very cooperative Robin who posed long enough for me to get a few decent close-ups. And the breast? Red, orange or brown? What do you think?

And back to Mevagissey harbour in the late afternoon sunshine - again. Is there any better way to spend a day than walking along the coast?

 

On this day in November 1917, Private Phillip Philp died.

Private 34782

PHILLIP PHILP

16th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment

Died age 24

5th November 1917

Philip Philp was born in September 1893 at Tutwell, one of the eight sons and four daughters of John Henry and Emma Jane Philp. John Henry, originally a copper miner, was a woodman on the Duke of Bedford’s estate. We are lucky to have a photograph, albeit slightly out of focus, of Philip which was taken on July 2nd 1910 when he was a member of the Luckett Cricket Team. With regards to Philip’s occupation, the 1911 census tells us that he was working as a farm labourer.

The Luckett Crickett Club on July 2nd 1910. The club is still going strong to this day.

 

Phillip Philp.

We do not know exactly when he joined the army but we do know that he originally enrolled into the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry at Bodmin, although he ended up in to Royal Warwickshire Regiment It is probable that both regiments were in France and it was there that the Royal Warwicks received reinforcements, significant numbers of those sent to the 16th Battalion were not from its ‘home’ of Birmingham. It is possible that Private Philp could have been one of them. In April 1917 the 16th Battalion was attached to a Canadian formation and was involved in the attack on Vimy Ridge. Over the summer of 1917 it was in the Pas de Calais area between Arleux and Oppy and contributed to the capture of Oppy Wood, a strategically important German defensive position that overlooked British positions. This was followed by the Third Battle of Ypres during which the battalion took part in repeated attacks on Polderhoek Chateau in October. Although the attacks were initially successful, there was a high cost of life and the Château could not be held due to a combination of stiff resistance from an enemy firmly ensconced in concrete pill-boxes, heavy German artillery fire, and the fact that the pervasive mud continuously rendered the attackers’ weapons inoperative.

Polderhoek Chateau before WW1.

The chateau in 1915.

The chateau in 1917.

The Battalion was still in the Ypres Salient when Private Philp fell on 5th November. The Battalion War Diary records "1.40 pm. A small party of the enemy attempted a raid on Number 3 post in the left company’s sector but were driven off by bombs and Lewis gun fire". It is likely that involvement in this action led to Private Philp’s death. His body was never recovered and he is one of the 35000 men commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgian Flanders, just outside of Ypres.

Tyne Cot Memorial.

Phillip Philp's 'Death Penny' given to his family to commemorate his service.

Private Philp’s effects were divided between his brother and sisters, with his sister Winnie getting the greatest share.