I stopped writing my blog in 2020 because I thought I didn't have anything to say on that might be of interest to anyone else.
Two novels and half a dozen plays later, I've returned to write for myself as an exercise, a mental workout, a whimsy, a sort of on-line reverie.
A programme on Philip Larkin, one of the greats of English poetry had me re-reading some of his work and I came across one I hadn't seen or didn't remember, "Forget what did".
"Stopping the diary
Was a stun to memory"
Whatever Larkin's reasons for stopping were, he seems to say that a diary shouldn't be a personal but the pages...
."Should they ever be filled
Let it be with the observed
Celestial recurrences
The day the flowers come
And when the birds go"
So maybe a blog of observations has some value.
Chaffinch on Blackthorn
A walk around the field edge fringed with a snowstorm of blossom on the bare blackthorn in spring now has sloes, blue-black with a dusting of bloom, on the branches. Blackthorn, the witches tree from whence theycarved their wands, the tree of misfortune and magic but also the tree of protection that made a stout prickly hedge and from whose hard wood cudgels or shillelaghs could be fashioned.
Sloes have been found in the stomach contents of Iron Age peat bog mummies. They are so astringent that if you eat one you can't un-pucker your mouth for about twenty minutes. So, did the ancient folk cook them or were they consumed as part of a ritual? Possibly they were eaten when they had been "bletted" by frosts. I've seen blackbirds pecking at crab apples after they were frosted when presumably they are less tart.
Crab Apples waiting for the frosts
Medlars are traditionally bletted before consumption. I've never eaten a medlar but have discovered a tree in the Priory garden so will have a go when the weather changes.
Medlars
The best thing to do with sloes is to make sloe gin.
We have an old recipe book that says -
Take 1lb sloes;1pt gin; 12oz sugar. Prick the sloes with a hat-pin. Put in a sealed jar, shaking every few days for three months. Strain, bottle and drink at race meetings.
Presumably National Hunt or point-to-point in the winter months.
