More Buckfast

By the Thursday, I was adjusting to the rather different taste of tea made with soft water. To the point of just topping up a half empty cup of tea with more hot water. While I did not need to adjust to the absence of unsightly scum on the surface of the tea and sticking to the inside of the cups. Although the water must have had something in it as the kettle did have some scale inside.

Breakfast out of the way, back to Buckfast to meet with some friends whom BH has known for even longer than she has known me. Went around the gardens rather more carefully on this occasion, starting with the rather impressive avenue of conifers in the graveyard behind the car park. I suppose, some kind of cypress tree.

Being just above the Dart, damp enough for moss to be growing inside most of the lavender bushes around the border of the Lavender Garden.

While this willow certainly took to being layered. From where I associate to the deer fence on my allotment, where the willow staves used as intermediates between the serious posts all rooted and shooted. Which I was all for, as this meant the posts would last. As it turned out, I packed the allotments up shortly after that. See reference 1 for a selection of posts on the subject.

Tea and pasties for lunch in the awning outside the otherwise closed (and usually very satisfactory) cafeteria.

Some serious and healthy looking pleaching in the garden just outside the gate, dedicated by St. Paul via his letter to the Phillipians. I had not realised that the church at Phillipi, started around 50CE, must be one of the oldest, with the only catch being that by the sixteenth century, this old and once important city was just a heap of ruins, used as a quarry. Conquered by and renamed for the father of Alexander the Great. The site of an important battle in the wars that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar. Not to be confused with the Phillipics, a series of 14 speeches to the Senate (of Rome) by Cicero against Mark Antony, named for speeches by Demosthenes against the same father of Alexander the Great. Cicero was very popular at the time, but the subsequent war went against him and although he tried to cut a deal with Octavian (as the lesser of the various evils), he was proscribed at the start of the triumvirate, a proscription of revenge, settlement and theft. The attendant deal among the triumvirs being, according to Wikipedia, that as part of the package, that each triumvir had to sacrifice one rich friend whom one of the others did not like, with Cicero being Octavian's. Executed cleanly enough, but his head and hands were exhibited in the forum after being abused by Antony's wife of the time, Fulvia. Who also had it in for him over some sex scandal, fifteen years previous. Some people have long memories. The story is to be found at reference 2, but I don't know where I first got it from, it seeming to fall between 'Julius Caesar' and 'Antony and Cleopatra', with Fulvia's death being announced very near the beginning of this last.

The active part of the day closed, back at Holne, with white pudding sandwiches, fresh white bread being available to make them with. The same stuff as was noticed at reference 3. Notice the relics of the natural casings - presumably intestinal - shrivelled up on some of the tops. Good gear.

Wound down with a slab of the Grenada version of the 'The Forsyte Saga' from 2002 or so. A bit slimmed down from the classic BBC version of BH's childhood (my lot did not have a television in those days), but lushly made and we rather like it. Perhaps our third viewing in as many years. See references 4 and 5.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=deer+fence+chicken. No pictures, but the sketch above should give the idea.

Reference 2: https://lydiaslibrary.wordpress.com/2014/10/02/ciceros-tongue/.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/heritage-junk-food-record.html.

Reference 4: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0260615/.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/move-over-maigret.html.