A Summer Spent at Home.

Southampton Common’s tall oaks beckoned me from the end of my street. My brother could often be found sitting high up in their branches but, for my lookout, I preferred the top branch of a solitary Scots pine that stood clear of a thicket of elder and birch. This outlier of the New Forest was our patch where we had adventures as cowboys, commandos and super heroes. We built dens and explored endlessly all year round, often catching snakes and lizards. Our school was housed in Nissen huts from the war and our playground was an open part of the common which was dotted with birch, gorse and broom.

Between the common and the University were the brickfields with old piles of rubble where toads would hibernate. There were treacherous boot-sucking clay pits where we would catch newts and come home looking like New Guinea mud-men. Mum made us drop our clothes at the back door. 

All of the primary school children in our street played on the Common, which seemed boundless to us. There was Peter, Rowena, John, Lorna, Mark, David, Kirsty and a few others; all of us born around 1950. Older brothers and sisters were almost invisible, bound up in homework and the cares of further education. Some were on National Service in Kenya or Cyprus.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it all came back to me when I was thinking about what to do when so many of our options were closed to us due the Coronavirus lock-down. My busy 2020 Google Calendar became a work of fiction overnight. Trips to the Norfolk Coast were off, most local nature reserves, stately homes, garden centres and pubs were shut. Even the local reservoir was closed. What could I do for exercise and stimulation? There was only one option and that was to get to know my patch. I wouldn’t be building any dens or climbing many trees but I was determined not to miss a day on my patch and make an effort to get to know it better.

In order to put some shape on my explorations I started by cataloguing the wayside weeds, one a day, and poting the results on the village Facebook page. I remembered trawling the common for groundsel for Sammy, our pet budgie, and acorns for Thumper, our bad-tempered buck-rabbit and that provided a starting point for a more personal view of our common weeds than you usually find in books. It turned out to be a great way to get to know my plants a bit better. At the same time I was looking out for the year’s markers; frog spawn, toad spawn, newts, grass snakes, butterflies and the migrant birds.

I have always had a patch. Before the common it was Swaledale and later, in my 6th form it was the Brecon Beacons. At teacher-training college it was Frenchay Common on the outskirts of Bristol and my first teaching post sent me to Salisbury Plain. When I started working in Nature conservation my new patch became Arundel in West Sussex, then Loch Leven in Scotland, then Cousin Island in the Seychelles and finally here at Little Paxton and around my home in Brampton. After so many exotic and scenic locations I’m afraid I have taken my local patch for granted, but now it’s my salvation. It feels like being a youth again with every day bringing a new discovery. 

For my 70th birthday in March my wife has bought me a light trap for catching moths. I haven’t run one since Salisbury Plain in the 1970s so I have a lot to learn. I bought a battery-powered kit so I could take it away camping, but that’s all cancelled now so I bought a mains adapter and have run the trap every suitable night in my garden. I’ve caught a few spectacular hawk moths but it’s the weird little ones that are so fascinating. They have strange names like Setaceous Hebrew Character, Chocolate Tip, Old Lady and Burnished Brass and, in super close-up they look like furry miniature aliens, angels perhaps.

It was the garden that sold this house to us and it is always a work in progress. I don’t think the garden or the house have had so much work done on them in many years.  While Hanna, who is working from home,  has organised the interior decorating, I’ve been working on the outside paint jobs and maintenance. In the garden, my first job was to build a new pond that has proved a huge boon to wildlife. Out in front we sowed wild flower mixes in the borders and they have come up beautifully. Our neighbours appreciate the face-lift and the bees and butterflies enjoy the nectar.

As restrictions relaxed we started to get out more using our old bicycles. I spent many hours and a fair bit of cash fixing the bikes up. It was a job I really enjoyed, reminding me of my first proper bike I bought for ten shillings (50P) in about 1961. I painted that old bike dragon red and put fresh tape on the drop-handlebars, tightened the spokes and replaced the saddle and brake blocks as well as most of the bearings. It lasted me about eight years and gave me a lot of blisters in places you don’t want them. This year’s bike project is a Dutch style man’s bike with Sturmey-Archer three-speed gears. I painted it British Racing Green, like a Bentley, only cheaper.

Our son Dan has Angelman Syndrome and can’t ride a bike. When he was smaller he sat on the front of a special tandem with me. It’s a German bike with a recumbent seat and peddles on the front but a normal sit-up position on the back. Very sensibly, the person in the back does the steering and it’s a fabulous bike. However, as Dan entered his late teens he became to heavy to hold up on a two wheeler, so now he has a three wheeler side-by-side bike.

Because of lockdown, our local country park at Hinchingbrooke closed its special bikes programme. Rather cheekily I asked if we could keep one at home for a while and, very generously, they agreed. The Van Raam tricycle was enormous, taking up most of our garage, but it was an immediate success and gave Dan a completely new interest that provided him with a  decent bit of exercise. We dreaded having to give it back so Hanna scoured the internet for a second-hand one and, by extreme luck, one came up for sale in North London. I hired a van and picked it up. It seemed to be in perfect condition but it was extremely hard to peddle. I fiddled with the brakes and oiled all the chains but it made no difference. We called in an expert who said it had to be the tyres. Having a puncture when your passenger is a disabled person can be quite a complicated situation so the previous owners, an Association for the Blind, had fitted solid rubber tyres. It seemed a good idea but they stuck to the road like glue. After re-fitting pneumatic tyres it was like having a new bike. Best of all, our village is half way through constructing miles of new cycle paths so we can take Dan for miles without worrying about traffic.

Apart from exploring the village itself, we have spent more time than we used to in Hinchingbrooke Country Park and Brampton Wood; both brilliant places for wildlife watching. Then there’s the river. The Great Ouse lazily wanders through Huntingdonshire taking its time meandering and detouring its way to the Fens and the Wash. 

Hanna and I were married close to 40 years ago when we both worked at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust in Arundel. The staff and volunteers bought is the most extravagant present in the form of a Canadian style canoe. (It is a three-seater so I guess they were making a hint). It has been with us in Scotland and around the country but for most of the last few years it has hung from the ceiling of a barn at Paxton Pits, collecting bird droppings. We brought it home, cleaned it up and started using it again to discover uncharted backwaters off the Great Ouse. What a delight that has been.

All-in-all, getting to know our home patch has made us feel very thankful to be where we are. For years we have considered moving to a National Park; somewhere more wild and scenic, but the practicalities for a family like us left us feeling a bit stuck. Not anymore. We love it here.