Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge

MY LOTTO DREAM

When I win the Lotto  I would almost certainly buy a large home with lots of space between it and any neighbours. But I would have people living in it with me (a valet, cook, maids, and a gardener) and be open to visitors. Come and spend the summer. The winter. And I know just the place.

On a hilltop above the Northumberland seaside village of Alnmouth there is a very large and rather antiquated building that has some history. It has been a private home, a club, a small hotel, and it is now a friary. The Friary of Saint Francis is a retreat for a better class of retreater, I’m guessing, having seen some awfully posh sports cars on the gravel in the forecourt. The few friars wear long, brown, monkish robes and sandals, but look quite well-off, a better class of friar.

The Friary building has been added upon, and there are portions with a religious flavour, but it is, at heart, an enormous country house overlooking the north end of Alnmouth Beach. There must be four floors and masses of windows facing the North Sea. The view alone would be worth a small fortune. When I win the Lotto, and I have a large fortune in mind, I would make the Friary an offer so enormous that they could not resist.

I’d leave the basic outside structure of the Friary unchanged, but I would remove all of the Christian iconography. The inside would be completely renovated. I’d want my visitors to have all the comforts of a hotel on Park Lane, luxurious accommodation with a spectacular view. And when the storms rage in from the North Sea, my winter guests might warm themselves at an open fire and watch the surf smashing onto the beach and WW2 fortifications below, or read in a recliner chair, a blanket over the knees for extra warmth. One miniature dachshund to maintain order. Two to run riot.

I might be some measure from the nearest house, but with my Lotto money I could bring the neighbourhood inside, bring my friends in. There would be a level of comfort, some nice touches: art, music, books, fine food, company, and conversation.

I’d move my mother (who has been a ghost these past 18 years) into my Lotto Dream home. It would be nice to have her in the flesh, but with time and times rolling on, her spirit would be welcome, perhaps walking a gallery. Calling out, as she did when she was ill and worried in bed: “Ross! Ross! Are you there?” I’d tempt her ghost with a dish of bread-and-butter pudding into a well-lit room overlooking the Sea. I’d read a book, and my mother would stand at the window for a spell. A magic spell. The sun shining through her. And a mini-bus load of friends arrives that evening. Dinner, then charades, perhaps cards or Scrabble, and somebody will play the piano and sing something by Cole Porter. “The girls today in society go for classical poetry. So to win their hearts one must quote (with ease) Aeschylus and Euripides...”

We could all sing along, quite loudly, because the neighbours are far down the hill, and the neighbours are us.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog at http://barkingmadinamblebythesea.blogspot.com/, dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA

The Saints Preserve Us in Shamrock, Texas

In late October 1979 I was the designated passenger as a friend drove us across America from east to west in his enormous gas-guzzling, eleven-year-old Ford, heaped with things we thought we’d need for winter in the Rocky Mountains. That included a pup-tent.

We hit old Route 66 and used the tent for the first time outside Oklahoma City, setting it up in a grassy field that seemed to be owned by the KOA. It was dark when we got the tent up. In the morning, I pushed open the flap and realized we were sharing the field with a herd of cows. No KOA office, no toilets, no showers.

We hustled out of there. On the Interstate we made good time until we reached the Texas Panhandle. Suddenly, as we came over a rise in the highway, the car’s bonnet started steaming, then billowing, and the car began to lurch about. My friend got it off onto the shoulder where the engine gave up completely. We pried the bonnet open and boiling liquids sprayed about.

I’m sure we were cussing and panicking. There was, however, a sign by the highway indicating a service station not far ahead. My friend set off on foot, and I quivered with fright in the car. At least it was a sunny afternoon.

My friend returned in a tow-truck driven by someone from the garage up ahead. The mechanic hitched up the dead Ford and we drove into Shamrock, Texas.

In 1979, it looked a bit like the end of the Earth. I’d been accustomed to beaches in Bermuda, not dust and tumbleweeds and wooden, raised sidewalks. There were a fair number of boarded-up store-fronts; everything needed a lick of paint. The mechanic said he’d look at the car, and we went looking for a Coke. When we returned the mechanic said things looked bad: The radiator had completely disintegrated. With no way to get hold of a new radiator to fit the old car, we were buggered.

Then I said something odd but not unexpected. I told my friend that if he quit smoking right then (something I’d done recently, so I was insufferable about it) everything would work out. My friend agreed, though not happily, and we wandered around Shamrock waiting for the miracle. An hour later, back at the garage, our mechanic was smiling. He’d been to the town’s dump and had found a 1968 Ford, our model, and cut the radiator out of it. We paid $100 for our afternoon in Shamrock, which was a fair bit in 1979.

I’d asked what exactly the people in Shamrock did, with it being little more than a service station. The oddest thing, it turned out. Every March the Shamrock Post Office receives many, many cards and letters to be posted from there with the Shamrock cancellation mark on the envelope. Cards and letters celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, going all over the world.

It was late October and the town was quiet and dusty as we drove back to the Interstate.

We pushed on to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and then into Durango, Colorado, which seemed like the Promised Land after the Texas Panhandle. But every St. Patrick’s Day I think of shamrocks, and 1968 Fords in Texas.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog at Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge, 2010

Winter in Amble, 2009-2010

We've all got a winter of 2009-2010 story, haven't we? I'm hoping this is the winter I remember a few years from now when the promise of Global Warming is honoured and I'll be sitting down by the River Coquet in January watching the flamingos mucking about. I'll be wearing my Bermuda shorts.

Amble in the Ice is somewhat off the beaten track. The Northumberland Council is only gritting vitally important roads (and paths and pavements are not even mentioned at County Hall). The A-1068 is getting a very little grit now and then and one can slide through the edge of town. Our few shops and the minimart are not getting much attention.

We don't have a supermarket. We have a minimart operated by the Co-op. A year ago the Co-op managed to cram a great deal of food and drink into their small space. In early summer they closed for renovations: out came about a quarter of the shelves and one of the check-outs, and in came.… Well, less of everything and none of some.… And a large empty area was created for people to queue in unhappily, and a few racks of rubbishy children's summer gear were tucked just inside the door. The liquor section was extended (successfully, I think, as our only off-licence has closed at Christmas) and the butcher's section vanished under shrink-wrapped packets of slightly off-colour meat products.

So, Amblers tend to shop out of town. Goes without saying, though I've said it anyway. There's an ASDA Superstore miles south of us. I don't have a vehicle. I use the bus and get lifts. I rely on our Co-op minimart for basics.

For over a week, the minimart has had the look of shops in East Germany before Reunification. Empty shelves 98%, some unusual items 2%. Just after New Year, our minimart had no dairy products, no fruit or vegetables, no meat or poultry or seafood. It did have a very large heap of butter-substitute products: spreads as they are referred to properly (margarine is toxic, hasn't been sold for decades). And there were many two-litre bottles of Co-op Diet Lemonade. For fuck's sake, I thought, and came home with Lemonade and two cartons of I Can't Believe it's Not Butter, and my Lotto ticket.

Yesterday I trundled (there's a good word!) through ice and snow across to the Co-op minimart and found…well, I didn't find…except for a considerable quantity of Toblerone Chocolates in different sizes (the shape remains the same or it ain't Toblerone). I'm the odd person who doesn't much like chocolate. Go figure. Already having this week's Lotto ticket (the winner, I hope!) I trundled (still quite a good word) back to the flat empty-handed.

Last night the BBC told us, early in the evening, that it was the same temperature as Moscow (-20C). Later in the night they updated this to the same temperature as the South Pole (-22C). This is cold fucking comfort for you! And, today, the story is that it will get worse. And how? Polar bears ice-fishing in the Thames? "I am the Walrus" becomes the new National Anthem?

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge
Thomas Eldridge. My 5th Great-Grand-Uncle, 1752-1843
All Saints' Church, Lubenham, Leicestershire

Time—The Greatest Thief of All

Few things are more deceptive than memories.
—Carlos Ruiz Zafón

A while ago, on 29 September to be exact, I noticed the date, and there was a tintinnabulation, one that I had, apparently, missed the day before. I do not doubt that I saw 28 September 2009 any number of times. So what? My mother died on 28 September 1992, and this was the first year that I did not think of her passing when I saw the day and month. Seventeen years to forget? Or was it just seventeen years to not remember?

On Tuesday 29 September I thought: "Good grief! Yesterday was the anniversary of my mother's death. I missed it."

Perhaps if I lived in Bermuda where she is buried, I would have planned a visit to her grave days or weeks beforehand. Some day when she came to mind and I'd have remembered those last hot days of the summer of 1992 which my mother spent in the hospice as the cancers crawled through her body and, at about three o'clock in the afternoon on 28 September, reached her fingertips. They turned dark purple as I held onto them in the hour before she stopped breathing.

I remember that remarkably well.

The only sound, a loud gasp, from the older of my mother's brothers, also in the room. Not forgotten.

I haven't a single photograph of my mother now. However, I can picture her in quite a few photographs that I grew up with, taken in her infancy and through the sixty-something years she lived. As I sit here, I cannot see her in my mind from general times in her life, as a person unposed, because her life, as it affected me, was a photographic plate exposed for about forty-two years (my age when she died). Except for that final moment. I can see her just dead on the bed. Eyes wide open. Back arched slightly. Her hair had been shampooed and cut by a hairdresser friend the day before and my mother looked quite tidy.

We've had several television programmes this past fortnight on the subject of death. Documentaries on our attitudes towards death and dying over the centuries were particularly interesting.

Cremation has only really been a going concern in the UK for about 120 years. Acceptance by some of the major churches, like the Church of England, is quite recent, but most dead folks here are cremated now. People still seem to look forward to a funeral service of some sort. Funeral homes now do most of the work. My great-grandparents would have been laid out in their coffins in the front room at home. Family and neighbours would have washed and dressed the body.

It is clearly becoming increasingly difficult to pop around to the graves of family members when the anniversaries of their deaths (and Easter Sunday) come around. I'm looking forward to being cremated, with no funeral service, and scattered off in the wild somewhere easily forgotten by a stranger.

Will anyone think of me when the anniversary date rolls around? I'm not sure that I give a hoot. I'd much rather somebody thought of me while I was alive to enjoy it. Perhaps a postcard?

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog at Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo of Wancourt British Cemetery, France, by Ross Eldridge, 2008

The War to End All Wars

My little dugout, my home these last two or three days: I am in a narrow trench about four feet deep, and my dugout is a hole scooped out of the trench side and roofed over with a piece of corrugated iron. When, at night, we settle to rest, and hang up oilsheets at the openings, and light our candle, we are quite comfortable, and happy. —Lance-Corporal Frank Earley, 1 September 1918.

Earley was killed the next day, aged 19.

I didn't learn of the death of Lance-Corporal Earley on the Western Front until I read the Imperial War Museum publication, 1918 - Year of Victory, by Malcolm Brown. I was looking for information on my grandfather's older brother, James Arthur Lancaster, killed the same day fighting alongside the Canadians on an offshoot of the Hindenburg Line.

There are only five sentences in the book about that battle. I don't know how long it lasted or how many men died. Were there any trees left near Arras by 1918? Was it raining? Had the Tommies had time for breakfast? Were prayers held? Did anyone sing God Save the King? Did anyone try and run away?

Did my mother's uncle die immediately? Was he bagged or boxed? Was he missed? He was 24 when he died fighting for his country; since he'd volunteered in 1915, I imagine he did care about his country.

I've never seen a photograph of James Arthur as an adult, but there's one taken in about 1905, picturing him, then eleven, his sister Maud, about nine, and my grandfather, William Lancaster, four or five. The boys looked much alike, their hair freshly cut, dressed in identical fine suits that may have been hired for the occasion. The boys looked a bit flash, but Maud was dressed in many layers of unattractive cloth, set off by drooping ringlets. That sort of plain takes some work.

I have a number of James Arthur's military records now. He was sent to France in October 1917. One of the last papers says he was In the Field. And on 23 September 1918, someone wrote Killed in Action and stamped and signed the page.

My great-grandparents received word of their son's death at home in Harle Syke. Who answered the door? It was just a few weeks before the war ended.

Another document, dated 4 May 1919, has my great-grandfather signing for medals awarded to his dead son: The War and Victory Medals. I have no idea where they might have gone.

The exact whereabouts of James Arthur Lancaster's grave was not known in my family until five years ago when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission advised he was buried in Wancourt British Cemetery in Northern France, not far from where he died. His name is on two memorials in Harle Syke, one by the town's bowling green. I wonder if he bowled.

On 11 November 2008, we commemorated the 90th Anniversary of the Armistice that ended the War to End All Wars. Two Royal Marines were killed in Afghanistan that day, squabbling with Afghans over some dusty real estate they want for themselves and we wouldn't know what to do with if we could take it from them successfully.

Many more have died since. So it goes.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo courtesy Ross Eldridge

Waterville

Forty years ago, I did my first dog-sit at an old home in Bermuda called Waterville. My friend MEM, named for her initials, and her husband Mike lived in an apartment there and were off to the Azores looking at property. They wanted someone to feed and walk their golden retriever.

Brandy was a lovely dog. He'd appeared at MEM's door, a stray, and attempts to locate his owners had not succeeded. Mike and MEM had a cat, Charlie Marmalade, who died not long after they adopted Brandy. Charlie was buried in a pet cemetery on the Waterville grounds.

Built in the 1700s, Waterville backs onto the harbour and was one of the grand homes of the Trimingham Family. The living quarters were upstairs and the ground floor had been warehouse space. The Triminghams had a centuries-old emporium in Bermuda, a famous place selling high-quality goods, but the business went broke a few years ago and their Front Street shop has been pulled down.

In 1969, Miss Elsie Gosling, the retired Head Librarian, lived on the upper floor of Waterville surrounded by family portraits. Her mother had been a Trimingham. The ground floor was divided into the large apartment where MEM and Mike lived (where the American author James Thurber had stayed regularly at one time) and an office of the Bermuda National Trust, which had taken over the property. When Elsie Gosling passed on, the Trust moved into the upper floor, and they are there now.

On the grounds of Waterville, back in the 1800s, a lawn tennis court had been laid out. The court was still there in 1969, though it was no longer used. The turf in Bermuda is locally called crab grass and it is rough and thick. I imagine the court was nowhere near as fast as the grass courts at Wimbledon.

Although I don't play tennis, I decided to buy the equipment to play badminton. With friends I would set up the net on Waterville's old lawn tennis court, and we'd knock a shuttlecock about in the evening and on weekends if I wasn't working overtime. I had sufficient hand-eye coordination 40 years ago to make a bit of a game of it. Frankly, more fun was the challenge of keeping the shuttlecock in the air as long as possible.

I continued my pet-sitting for years. I spent summers and Christmases at Waterville with Brandy and was sometimes joined by friends. James Thurber's ghost never visited. Finally, MEM and Mike retired and left Bermuda, not for the Azores, but for British Columbia. Brandy followed Charlie Marmalade to the Waterville pet cemetery.

Over a decade ago the National Trust turned Waterville's grass tennis court into a rose garden and placed a sculpture in the center. The huge tamarind tree that had shaded one end of the court for a hundred years partially collapsed and was cut down.

I was last at Waterville about five years ago. I ate sandwiches with a friend in the pagoda and told him about Brandy and Charlie Marmalade. As we walked through the overgrown rose garden, my friend was amazed to hear that, once upon a time, I'd lain on a tennis court there, shaded by a very tall and broad tree that is no more.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

Live, We Watch the Dead

A few weeks ago I watched the eight hearses carrying the bodies of eight British soldiers, all under the age of 30, passing through the little village of Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire. These lads, three of whom were only 18 years of age, were killed in action in Afghanistan. The last eighty soldiers returning to England's green and pleasant land in coffins draped with the Union Flag were driven slowly through Wootton Bassett, from a nearby airfield on the way to autopsies at a hospital in Oxfordshire. Up until then there might have been one, two or a very few hearses, and the processions would stop at the War Memorial in the village's main street for a minute's silence. The local shopkeepers and businessmen and pedestrians have been coming out for the passing by in greater and greater numbers.

This time, with so many of our lads flag-draped in their boxes making the trip, thousands of viewers turned out, coming not only from the vicinity, but from many parts of Britain. The press was there. The live cameras were running. I watched it happening on the telly from the comfort and discomfort of my front room. The crowds were said to be eight-deep, but I counted and it was more than that. I saw a lot of young people weeping and hugging each other; it was the old-timers in the crowd who remained stoic in the face of all that sadness. Old-timers under their sunglasses.

The closest I have come to the art of war was a spell in the Cadet Corps when I was at grammar school. I hated the experience. I did take part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Crécy in a school history class, which was interesting because my direct ancestor, the Earl of Stafford, was a commander in the English army at Crécy.

The war in Afghanistan is, I'm afraid, a black hole. It can only suck men and machines in and spit them out, ruined and destroyed. The War on Terror is a religious war; it is the same war that gave us the Crusades and the reaction to them. Jerusalem may be the navel of the world, but it is the centre of all evil as well as the focus of religious experience. I'm afraid the Christian Right and the Jewish State are just forms of Talibanism. Our Taliban is better than yours.

We in England and America don't really want fuzzy-wuzzy Islamist things in our towns and villages, not if we're being honest. Why in the world do our leaders and churchmen think we need to convert the world to Western Democracy? To the Pepsi Generation? To MacDonald's? To Starbucks?

I felt a great sadness watching the line of hearses make its way through Wootton Bassett on my television. The crowds were so extensive, and the number of long, black vehicles so large that they did not pause at the War Memorial for a minute's silence for the first time. The memorial, like so many, many others in Britain and around the world is engraved "Lest We Forget."

I think they should have made that stop, taken the minute, taken the chance that more hearts would break. Some things one really should not forget.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

Good Friday with the Blue-eyed Son

I switched the telly on and the between-programmes filler had a voice saying: "This being Good Friday, you'd expect to find a film featuring Jesus. We've got one…" And it was to be "The Greatest Story Ever Told", originally released in 1965.

I saw TGSET back in 1967. How is it that I recall that? Because it was the first movie I ever went to with a friend I met back in the late spring of 1967. And what do I remember about the film? That it was long, that Jesus had blue eyes (of course, and he always wrote in red ink, don't you know), and that the scene where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead was extraordinarily moving, even to a teenager.

Judas was, in some way, the hero of the story. He is certainly the scapegoat (everyone blames the scapegoat, as one wit put it). Without Judas's "betrayal" there would have been no crucifixion, no resurrection, no atonement, no eternal life for you and me (assuming we believe). The poor man had that terrible job to do. Imagine the love he felt for his Master, so great that he could play the part he did. Peter was prevaricating and lying, but Judas spoke the truth: "This is the man!"

The life of Judas might be the second greatest story ever told.

A great deal has happened in what might be termed my Spiritual Life over the past forty years. I suppose the major event would have been my conversion to Mormonism in the early 1970s. More recently I have wandered off into Outer Darkness. I have read a great many books with a spiritual or religious message or content, I have taught Sunday school, preached sermons, given a few obituaries and presided at my mother's funeral. I've had highs and lows to the extreme. Sometimes, at night, this year, I wake up (or I've been awake, unable to get to sleep) and I've said aloud: "Father, are you there?"

One of the Mormon General Authorities told his personal story of feeling disconnected from God and how he asked that question: "Are you there, Father?" And his Father, his God, did respond. Mine hasn't. If he does, I trust it will be gently, perhaps in a dream, rather than having a prophetic angel beam down through my ceiling in laser-lights and scare the Bejesus out of me.

As it is, I remain in a state of disconnection. Waiting. Sometimes posing the question. Perhaps hoping. And why should I be caring at all? I guess it is because I have unfinished business with dead family and friends. I'd rather like to see my mother again, my father too, and to have the seven dogs and one cat of my life running around my feet. If just for a few minutes. Is that odd? Unusual? Am I human after all?

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo Amble Gulls by Ross Eldridge

Lighting the Now

Some years ago, I wrote a newspaper column that tended to be about days gone by, which were sometimes the good old days of my youth, sometimes about the travel I'd managed when my health and finances permitted, about people that I'd met, books I'd read, things that influenced me, the shitty experiences of childhood, conversions and diversions. My therapist thought I was getting all the past out of my system. I kept a journal for over twenty-five years, scrapbooks as well, and photo albums. Everything was on paper, somehow. As we carry the past along with us, perceiving time as we do in these dimensions, I hardly expected to get everything out of my system!

Three years ago I took all my journals to an industrial incinerator plant, along with my scrapbooks. So much for what I did in 1980; so much for the newspaper clipping of my mother's funeral notice; so much for important telephone numbers; so much for jokes that were so funny when I heard them that they had to be written down; so much for my thoughts on 11 September, 2001; so much for theatre tickets, and an address blotchy on a beer-mat, and a coin I picked up that I did not recognise. Into the fire.

I left my photo albums (and I'd been the keeper of the family photographs among my siblings), my personal papers, my newspaper columns, my reference books and notes, everything that I'd written, in an old cargo container in a damp field in Bermuda. When I turned my back on it, I knew that I'd not pay the storage fees after the first six months, and I didn't, and that was three years ago. Those things have gone. Apparently, as of three years ago, I'd pretty much dumped the baggage of my past, mentally, and the physical followed.

Back in England, I found I was unable, couldn't be arsed, to write about schooldays and fishing off the rocks and climbing Mount Pisgah on Beaver Island, though I was vaguely conscious of those times. Instead of panoramic views of driving through the Grand Tetons that just go on and on, I have a little, the smallest, Post-it Note reading "Saw the Tetons". Enough seen, enough said.

I'm tending to write about the moment, or at least last night or a day or two ago. I've taken up photography, I see something interesting, camera always at the ready, I get my snapshot, and I write about it. Or delete it. I don't save it.

And, in the night, in the last few hours before sunrise, my mind races. Something I saw the day before. I have a tiny torch, the sort that one might attach to a key ring, and I reach for it, my biro pen, and a jotter pad (they are scattered all around the flat), and I write down my great thoughts. Light out. Another thought. Light on. And through the night. Light off. Light on.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

Weathering Great Britain

Winter arrived, the way it does in Great Britain.

One day the poets are out raving about the daffodils, and the weather and the scenes are picture-postcard and calendar-photo perfect.

Warkworth Castle is surrounded by golden blossoms. Songbirds are flying in from Africa. The sky is an exquisite blue that defies the palette. Our noses have stopped running. Off with the overcoats. Restaurant doors are open and the fragrance of food wafts into the street. Pretty girls and boys are everywhere.

And three or four days later the poets have to run for cover as the rains set in. Rough winds shake the darling buds of May that hadn't been shaken right off the branches in April. The people start coughing, the birds start wheezing. This is the real spring.

Right about then the summer flooding begins. The leaves hang on, however, even when the uprooted trees float down the rivers and across the tidal marshes into the sea. The two days of summer, the balmy 20°C, are remembered well as we get the sweaters out in July and when the anoraks come down in August.

A flight of birds, a mad scramble really, heralds the end of summer. A few days of glorious autumn colours and it's over.
One good thing at this point in time is that the great outdoors shops have all their unsold camping gear on sale, just in case you think it might be fit to go out and enjoy the countryside and being close to nature next, uh, summer. Now is the winter of our discount tents, sleeping bags and backpacks.

Last year, before Halloween, we had blizzards in Scotland, moderate snow in Wales and the Midlands, snow flurries in London (the earliest since 1934), and then we had about 36 hours of on-and-off hail in Amble by the Sea. Not your picturesque hail, this was heavy-duty stuff which woke me several times in the night with the clattering on the windows.

By early November, I was bundled up with the central heating turned on. I drank a good deal of hot tea to keep myself comfortable, which is not to say warm as toast. Even toast doesn't make me warm as toast. In fact, if you've been to England you know that toast is prepared the night before and served at breakfast...cold!

It's Global Warming, of course, that is responsible for this frigid weather. Thank God we don't have Global Cooling, or we'd really be fucked.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge

The Staff of Life

I live a few doors down from the only real bakery in Amble. There is another chain bakery outlet further down which has goods delivered each morning, brought in from who-knows-where. They have no aroma though. Lost somewhere on the motorway? Our minimart has bread and bakery items trucked in as well, for some reason most of these come from France. "Consumers please note this product may contain traces of frog and/or snail." Our nearest supermarket, ten miles inland, has fluffy white breads if you like that sort of thing. I don't. It's not even fit to chum fish or feed the jackdaws.

I like a locally baked (just this morning) (still warm from the oven) (fragrant) (soft) (crispy crust) (tasty) (whole wheat) (reasonably priced) loaf. I buy a small loaf twice a week, and have the counter girl slice it in medium slices, which are the thinnest (go figure) one can get nowadays. I pay £0.85 for a loaf. A large loaf to last seven days would work out less expensive, but I like the freshness of two smaller loaves, one on a Friday, one on a Tuesday.

My grandmother, the one who lived much of her life in Bermuda, bought a loaf of whole wheat bread, thicker slices than I prefer, once a week. Actually, because the Crow Lane Bakery was not close enough for Grandmother to walk to once she became truly elderly (she lived to be 104 and ate bread till the end), I was the bread-buyer. The Crow Lane Bakery was situated in the middle of a traffic nightmare and I hated trying to get to it by vehicle or on foot. However, I do understand my grandmother's dedication to the small-town bakery product.

Amble's Bread Bin Bakery is smaller than Bermuda's Crow Lane. The bread is better. Like the Crow Lane, there are other items: Sausage rolls, scones, pies, fairy cakes, fruit loaves, sandwiches, waters and fruit drinks and colas, honey, jams and marmalades, and gingerbread cookies, and more.

I sometimes get a sausage roll for lunch, or a prawn sandwich, and an orange drink. If I'm having company I'll buy some plain cake and a Victoria sponge. But I'm really a bread customer. The girls know what I'll be wanting, I think. I should ask for something completely different: Perhaps a tea cake for toasting. I don't have much time left to bamboozle them with that request, the building the Bread Bin is located in was sold to a developer, the new owners did not want the business, and the employees were given a week's notice.

I shall miss the counter staff, certainly, but it is the small town, right-out-of-the-oven whole wheat loaf on a Tuesday and Friday that I shall really miss. My Dad had a bread-making machine at the end of his too-short life (he'd have been my present age when he got it). If I could get the recipe for the Bread Bin's whole wheat loaf, and got a machine...

I wonder. I'm not very mechanical, but necessity being...

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge

Winter Reading

As a schoolboy in Bermuda I enjoyed an unplanned day of reading and daydreaming when the weather kept me from fishing or walking with a friend on the beach. Come the rain, wind and cold, I reached for a book, a blanket if necessary, a spaniel, and settled on my mother's sofa.

I recall the day I presented myself at the Senior Library, almost certainly the first moment I was able to do so. Would I have been twelve or thirteen, perhaps? That is when I started reading histories and biographies.

I am blessed in having had friends who pass books along to me, and who generally know exactly what I'd appreciate. Nearly every book I read has been handed around a group and I still use the public libraries.

These days and nights, I am drawn to non-fiction first, and the classics. I am reading plays. And I have looked for novels set in the part of England where I live, and/or written by local authors. I still enjoy a good biography.

In the past few months I have read several histories on the First World War. And I have been reading Alan Bennett's autobiographies, Untold Stories and Writing Home.

The book I'm holding in the photograph is the stage play, The History Boys, which is brilliant. Bennett adapted it for the film, and that's terrific too. I've watched it many times as it's a great way to spend ninety minutes enjoying fine language and thoughts. I was something of a history boy myself.

I celebrated another birthday recently, and, using some money my sister sent me, I bought something which is, I suppose, a bit naff. A faux-fur mink blanket. It's 79" square, and warm as can be. It feels lovely. Cailean is not sure whether it is friend or foe, and growls at it from time to time, then burrows under it (the underside has a faux-suede finish) for several hours. Friend. That's the blanket in the picture. I look pretty damn good for 82, don't I? That's because I'm not nearly 82, which would be my mother's age.

It has been a chilly, rainy day. Not fit outside for man or beast, as WC Fields put it, and perfect for lounging about under the faux-mink. We posed for the photograph, time delay, but had been reading through the morning, and continued to do so all afternoon. Cailean popped up for the flash. He did not bark: I was worried about him disturbing the neighbours when I got him, so I trained him to bark in Braille. If he needs to alert me to something at the door, he stands by it and paws the floor almost silently.

I read a bit, then wondered about this really odd and vivid dream I'd had last night about a time machine set to go from my mother's back garden except for the fuel. All it needed was gossamer from fairies' wings.

Now, instead of gossamer in Bermuda, it's back to The History Boys and the touch of faux-mink just north of Narnia.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Ross Eldridge

TRAVELOGUE

HIS FATHER WAS A REINSURANCE ACCOUNTANT: The memory file said so. His mother worked in a second-hand bookstore. His Family. In the file. Photographs and film. There's Dad boarding the morning train to go into the City. Mum drives home from the station. She collects her husband at 5.45pm.

At his fingertips.

Christopher Heap took a breath. A deep breath. There was a rush of cold air onto his face. His eyes watered briefly.

Christopher depressed a switch, and his chair back moved more upright and he was able to look ahead. He could see a clear night sky, facing north. Always the north. Ursa Major, forty-five degrees above the horizon, and Polaris. Always. A comforting feeling. Familiarity breeds contentment.

He'd been lying in a field for five years, his back against a bale of loose hay, and the air was cold. He appreciated his warm clothes. Cold air on his face. He pressed his switch. And it was morning.

The sky was lavender and gold, dark trees grew paler green. The switch. In the conservatory now, toast in a rack on a tray. He pressed his switch and became more upright. On a ridgeline a row of houses. Just like the house he knew he was in. The sunlight struck panes of glass here and there. Stars in the daytime sky.

Christopher reached for his toast. A small white plate, a blue line around the outer edge, and five pats of butter, all perfectly formed. Always. A small silver knife. "H" engraved in the handle of the knife near the top. He buttered one of the five slices of whole-wheat toast. The jar of Ruby Grapefruit Marmalade was there too, a silver spoon with the "H" cut into it. Christopher spooned a little of the fruity mix onto his first piece of toast.

He finished his last slice of toast and wiped his sticky fingers on the linen napkin on the tray. Then he pressed the switch and the chair back relaxed and he gently assumed the position that he would sleep in. Sudden night. Pinpoint stars became elongated strings of light, flowing past and behind the young man. He became comet-like in the darkness.

Warm air flowed over Christopher's naked body. It seemed to relax him even more than he had been, and his was a life of total relaxation. He closed his eyes. Depressed his switch.

The sphere hurtled across space with Christopher asleep at the switch. He'd wake again in five years.

The new version man. Physically fit. Skin that cleans itself. Hair that grows just a little then rests. The years pass and the young man remains young. There is no degeneration, no need for regeneration. Not at this speed.

Christopher is not alone out here. Many young men have been pulsed at speeds approaching that of light energy, in spheres, in every direction, aimed anywhere away from the Earth. Young men bound for distant stars, distant planets spinning around stars, distant lands on distant planets.

Christopher Heap took a breath. A deep breath. Cold air. Another five years had passed. While he was eating his toast, he wondered what in the world reinsurance is, and what books might be.

What he was, exactly, didn't concern him at all.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog. His blog is called Barking Mad in Amble by the Sea, and it is dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.