Rearing its ugly head

Couldn't avoid it, really. One of the two subjects you're not (according to my mother's generation) allowed to bring up in polite company. There's another - sex - which was unmentionable in any company, but I digress.

I'm talking about politics, of course. With the big day only a week away, 'election fever' has allegedly gripped the country. Well, it's gripped the media, well and truly, but most people seem to have a rather cynical 'plague on both your houses' attitude. Quite a lot can't be bothered to turn out, because they think (quite rightly in many cases) that it'll make not the slightest difference to a result. Which is a shame, because people died so that we could have the right to vote: and in countries around the world, people are still dying because they desire so passionately what we in the UK take for granted. Those queues at polling stations in countries like South Africa shame us.

I first voted in the 1970 election, which took place on 18th June. 18-year-olds had only recently been given the vote, so at the age of 18 years and 2 days, I must have been one of the youngest people in the country ever to do so, though little was made of the fact at the time, and the media certainly didn't beat a path to our door. I made the mistake of revealing that I had voted Liberal at the staff supper that evening, and my father, in front of everyone, accused me of wasting my vote.

Actually, of course, a lot of people in that constituency (then Sudbury and Woodbridge, now Suffolk Coastal) had wasted their vote. With a Tory majority of around twelve thousand, supporters of other parties hadn't a prayer. My parents, card-carrying Conservatives, couldn't see anything wrong with this. I always used to say (but not to them - we followed my mother's rule and almost never risked discussing politics) that a monkey could be elected in Suffolk Coastal if it wore a blue rosette - and lo and behold, their MP was John Selwyn Gummer, the man who fed his small daughter a beefburger to demonstrate that it wasn't dangerously full of BSE. Of course, what he was actually demonstrating was either how hard he'd been leaned on by Central Office, or how far he was prepared to go in furthering his political career. Are you surprised people are cynical about MPs? And that was long before the expenses scandal.

In Brighton, a few years later, I remember attending political meetings. One of my parents' friends, the wife of a well-known Conservative MP, on hearing that I was at Sussex, drawled, "They're all Maoists there, aren't they?" Well, no. I remember Vince, the guy who sold Socialist Worker, standing forlornly at the bottom of the stairs in the Students' Union building as everyone streamed past, ignoring him. My friends - and I - were far more intent on having a good time. Even the one who stood for Union Secretary only did so because he wanted a hand in booking the bands. But we did go to a meeting at the Dome, and I remember seeing the National Front thugs, with shaven heads and vicious mouths, shouting insults at the long-haired students, most of whom were far too stoned to pay attention. That year, 1974, produced the last hung parliament, in which the Liberals got 19% of the vote and 2% of the seats, a result so desperately unfair that I've been a supporter of some system of proportional representation ever since.

It's a system that has its faults, of course, and there are quite a few different ways of doing it, some amazingly complicated, so that you think that, if the great Devizes public can't fathom the library self-service machines, surely they won't get their heads round the single transferable vote. But it has one huge advantage. At present the government of this country is essentially decided by those voters in a few key marginals who can be bothered to turn up at the polling stations on election day. Surely a large part of the current apathy, especially amongst the young, is down to the fact that in most constituencies, whoever we vote for, it makes very little difference to the overall result. If we all felt that our single cross on the ballot paper might swing it one way or another, it might have a galvanising effect on the turnout. Many people feel they no longer have a voice, and proportional representation will give them that voice.

Of course, it would also mean that minor parties would get a look-in for the first time. Hooray - Greens in Parliament! The downside of that is that the BNP would probably also be in Parliament, along with UKIP - but you can't have one without the other, and perhaps having to take part in real politics, as opposed to mouthing off from the sidelines, would show the voters just how unpleasant, not to say barking, most of their ideas are. It's noticeable from the opinion polls, for instance, that people who don't live in areas with high immigrant populations are much more hostile towards them than people who have realised, through daily contact, that they may look a bit different but we're all pretty similar under the skin, want the same things and hold the same values, feel the same emotions. Sounds obvious, but to hear some of the things some otherwise quite rational people say, the obvious needs stating with some force. Immigrants have so much to offer, and this country has benefited immeasurably from them over many years. I have ancestors from Ireland, Portugal , the West Indies and Germany, who came here to make a new life, and succeeded triumphantly. My great-great grandfather arrived as a teenager, with nothing, and worked as a tailor: his descendants have enriched both themselves and their country, just as most other immigrants have done.

So, what will happen next Thursday? I know what I'd like to happen: I'd like a hung parliament, with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power, and a drastic reform of the Houses of Parliament, with both proportional representation and an elected Upper Chamber. But I doubt it. The result will be the same old same old: the Tories will get in, David 'airbrushed' Cameron will be our Prime Minister, and all the old injustices will come back (not to mention hunting). I remember what the 80s were like, and I don't believe they've changed that much. But I live in a rural constituency with a thumping Conservative majority: so whichever way I cast my vote, the Tory will always get in.

Heaven is a Bluebell Wood

I keep watching and waiting - everything is so late this year. Last year the bluebells were up in January and in full bloom by mid-April: now, there are just one or two flowers out, so that when I drive past the long strip under the pines up on Bowden Hill, you catch just an echo of that glorious blue here and there, so faint that it's hard to see in the dim light, but a promise of the wonders to come.

Bluebells en masse are my favourite sight in spring. When I was growing up, there was only one place locally which could present any kind of display: a small patch on the clifftop beside the path that led from Nacton Shore to Levington Creek. I took a photograph of it once, with my Instamatic, and was most disappointed to find that the blue on the paper was a pale and pathetic shadow of the reality. Something to do with ultraviolet, apparently: I don't understand the details, but at least digital technology seems to have sorted it!

But that hardly counted as a bluebell wood. Many years later, when I lived in Watford, I used to take my terrier cross Sox for regular walks in Whippendell Woods, and the ground was flooded with bluebells there, a wonderful sight. That wood was a magical place: there could be a couple of dozen cars in the car park, but you could walk round it for an hour and see one or two people at most. I didn't see such bluebells again until we moved to Wiltshire, and my friend Barbara took me one May to see West Woods.

Barbara was my 'best' friend, in every sense of the word. Not 'best' in the sense that she was exclusively mine, or vice versa, but I felt closer to her than to any of my other female friends. You could tell things to her that you couldn't confess to anyone else, expose more of your inner self, in the sure and certain knowledge that she would neither snitch nor judge, but listen, and offer the benefit of her wise advice only if asked. She was Scottish, down-to-earth, practical, thoroughly rooted in the real world, but she also had a very deep spiritual side, evidenced by her Quaker faith. She loved nature, and particularly bluebells. I had never even heard of West Woods, which lie between Kennet and Marlborough, before, but for Barbara I was willing to take the narrow lane up from Lockeridge, bump over the potholes, and dodge the occasional vast 4x4 coming back down. We parked under slim young beech trees, and I was entranced.

West Woods cover a large area, hill and valley, so that if you stand in the lowest part the slopes of breathtaking sapphire rise above you, like being under water. Every step along the paths reveals new glimpses in the distance. In places the intensity seems greater than the sky above, and the blue contrasts gloriously with the fresh young green of the beeches, and the ancient mossy sarsen stones which litter the ground. If you look at a bluebell close up, of course, it's not pure blue but a captivating mix of shades, from turquoise and royal to indigo and violet, but in the mass - and there must be millions of flowers in West Woods when they're at their height - they are a deep, pure azure in the shade, varying to lilac and amethyst as the sunlight strikes them through the trees. The woods are quiet, just a hint of birdsong high in the branches, as if everything is hushed out of reverence for the marvel below: and like Whippendell, the place seems to absorb people.

The year after Barbara took me there, I went back. It was a pilgrimage, for she had died just before the previous Christmas, of breast cancer. In her last illness, knowing of her passion, her friends had given her appropriate things: a fragrant candle: a hyacinth, which is a bluebell intensified in both colour and scent. I even researched the possibility of digging up some bulbs and trying to force them to flower early, for it was obvious that she would not live to see the spring, but she died before I could put my plan into action. The last thing I ever did for her was to hold the hyacinth up to her face, so that she could see and smell it. Bluebells will always remind me of her, and the fun and laughter we all shared, back in the carefree days when our children were small and life seemed as if it would go on for ever. 'Heaven is a bluebell wood,' she said once to another friend, Claire: and if it is, I know she is there.

'Heaven is a bluebell wood,
I'd bring one to you if I could:
A place where lakes of sapphire lie
Reflected by the April sky.'

Snow Business!

I'll lay my cards down right away - I love snow. I don't care that at my age many people would be thinking that I ought to be more concerned about breaking my hip falling over on it than whether we've still got a serviceable toboggan somewhere in one of the outbuildings. I should be watching the weather forecasts and maps with apprehension, not anticipation. But I'm so excited - they're saying we might have as much as 25, even 40 centimetres (that's 6-10 inches in old money). And if we get just the usual feeble sprinkling tonight, I shall feel seriously cheated.

I love it for so many reasons. It's so beautiful. Everything looks better in snow: it muffles ugliness as it muffles sound, and even the filthiest rubbish tips and most derelict buildings are lent a spurious cloak of enchantment. Woods are particularly magical, and I am always reminded of that lovely, lovely poem by Robert Frost, that is actually about something else entirely, but still evokes the eerie silence and otherworldliness of trees under snow. A covering makes everything different, and you see new elements in a landscape that you had never noticed before, however familiar it might be: the pattern of distant fields and hedges, the shapes of branches, the hunched bare shoulder of a hill. For a while, things that have been so commonplace you pass them by without a second glance are transformed and made glorious. And suddenly, too, the secret lives of the animals which share our tracks and gardens and fields are laid open: you can follow the route of the fox or the rabbit, and see how close, how surprisingly close, they come to your house when you're asleep.

Another reason I love snow is a bit less respectable, indeed almost selfish: I love it for the way it disrupts our humdrum lives. I admit that if I was booked on a flight to the Caribbean tomorrow morning I'd be very unhappy, but I'm not, and I'm rather looking forward to Patrick having the day off school, and the library being closed (I'm only supposed to be working in the morning anyway), and people having the opportunity for a bit of the outdoor spontaneous fun that a lot of them seem to have forgotten how to enjoy. In any case, all this fuss is rather over the top. In 1962-63, when the whole country was blanketed in snow and ice from Boxing Day to March, we gritted our teeth (and the roads) and carried on. I was ten, and remember it well: we skated on the lake in the village every day for three months, tobogganed on what passed for a hill in Suffolk, and marvelled at the miniature icebergs lining the edge of the river. Yes, children: it was so cold the sea froze. Nor did our house have central heating: we kept our three-bedroomed bungalow warm with a radiant bar fire, a small open coal fire, and a primitive fan heater. There were frost ferns on the inside of my bedroom window when I woke up each morning. But we survived unharmed (we're a hardy breed on the East coast). Now, everyone whinges if the temperature drops below zero for a night, and half an inch of snow brings London to a grinding halt. Twenty years later, in the early 80s, I was living in Watford and teaching in Berkhamsted. Despite being the furthest from the school, I climbed into my Mini every morning, made the half hour journey to work, and was usually the first in. We were like the Windmill Theatre, never closed, despite the heavy snow that fell over several winters. Now, headteachers only need to sniff a single snowflake to be on the phone to the local radio stations, telling pupils and staff not to come in. I wish it had been like that in my day, I'd have loved the chance to enjoy it! Instead, I sat on the inside looking out with my class - we had a very authoritarian head at the time, who wouldn't let them go out to play in it - and by the time I got home, it was dark. Even the school play wasn't cancelled, and I stayed overnight with a colleague so that the show could go on.

It seems ironic that this winter, about the only two or three days that haven't seen snow and ice and low temperatures, at least round here, were those around Christmas. Even so, this was only the second time in my entire life that I've woken up on Christmas morning with snow on the ground. A poor sad remnant of snow, admittedly, frozen in odd corners, but still snow. The last time was in 1981, when we had a snowball fight in my then boyfriend's garden before going in for Christmas dinner. And even then it didn't count as a white Christmas because it had all fallen the day before. As a child in Suffolk, which doesn't get a lot of snow (and not a lot of rain either), I used to reckon that if it hadn't fallen by the beginning of January, it never would. But in February, 1985, that theory went right out of the window. I went to stay with my parents, and so much fell, and drifted in the stiff winds, that the ha-ha in the park was completely obliterated, although its wall was three feet high and the ditch some seven or eight feet across. It was funny watching the dogs - my parents' Jay, my own Sox - running and playing in snow that was four inches deep before plunging out of sight in the hidden ditches. Sox was a black and white dog - part Springer, part terrier, part collie, wholly neurotic - but against the snow her coat was just differing shades of dirty grey. When the time came to go home, I thought I might be snowed in, and rang my headmaster (a different one now) to warn him I might not make it. But we dug my Mini out of the snowdrift that had formed around it, I drove the hundred miles back to Hertfordshire along clear roads, and managed to be first into work the following morning.

Well, I've just checked. It's half past five on Tuesday evening, and it's STOPPED SNOWING! Am I going to be cheated? I do hope not. Six inches will do nicely. The freezer's stocked, we've got plenty of coal, and if the school and the library are shut we won't have to go anywhere - just stay home, and enjoy the magic and miracle of snow.

Book Club Books

There's a novel I often notice in the library when I'm shelving. It's by Virginia Ironside, it's about a woman turning 60, and it's called 'No! I Don't Want To Join A Book Club' - as if doing that was the last port of call before the care home. Well, I'm not sixty yet, but I've been a member of our little book group for about ten years. It was started by Judith Churcher, one of the other mums at the school, who tragically died not long afterwards, but the rest of us carried on: we gathered new members, lost a few, and now number around seven or eight people. More than that, we reckon, would fragment discussions and make it difficult to hold it, as we do, in each other's homes. Some people have nice big rooms, but mine and Debbie's aren't quite so palatial. Plus, over the years, it's got a bit competitive regarding the food. When we met during the day, coffee and biscuits were usual (though they did tend to be M&S biscuits, or home made), but now we have evening sessions, none of us bothers to eat before we go out. Cheese and biscuits, nice bread, posh chutneys, wine, even, in Stuart's case, a two-course sit down meal, are the order of the day. As we meet perhaps half a dozen times a year, my turn doesn't come round too often, but feeding six people is a lot easier than feeding ten or eleven - plus I don't have that many comfy chairs.

Anyway, the food, though nice, is hardly the point. We're a fairly varied bunch of intelligent women, plus Stuart, our 'token man' - he's gay, and keeps trying to persuade us to tackle things like 'The Line of Beauty', while making humorous digs about the 'all men are bastards' theme of a lot of the books we choose. There are two authors, a high-powered lawyer, an ex-journalist, an ex-teacher, a letting agent, two library assistants and Stuart, who works for the Landmark Trust. He's the only one who doesn't actually live in the village. Only one of us doesn't have a dog, and apart from Stuart (again!) we all have kids of various ages - some went to the village school, some to the local private school. So our tastes - and brows - are pretty varied too. Debbie and I tend to the less literary end. Louisa ('Can we do 'Of Human Bondage' next time? I've always wanted to read it!') is definitely the most highbrow, though she enjoys more popular books too. Vinnie did an English degree as a mature student a few years ago, and is into Henry James. I like historical novels and fantasy and chick lit. One day I'll suggest we do 'The Left Hand of Darkness', by Ursula Le Guin, which should get people talking. Some of my suggestions have gone down really well - everyone loved 'Northern Light', by Jennifer Donnelly, and 'Passion', by Jude Morgan. 'My Name is Red' and 'The Child That Books Built' were less successful. We used to take it in turns to offer titles, but now it's less organised and a variety of books are put forward and a choice of two made more or less by vote. Ploughing our way through something that's long-winded or turgid will make us keen to read a lighter book next time. With so much available at the library, it's hard to fit in the time for our chosen club titles, especially if they don't much appeal. I never did get very far with 'Of Human Bondage', or with the Trollope (unfortunately Anthony, not Joanna), and I hated 'Dorian' by Will Self. On the other hand we've chosen 'Snobs' at the last meeting, and I've broken all records by finishing it less than a week later! Usually, true to form, I'm trying desperately to read the last chapter an hour before we get together. Even more usually, Henrietta (very large house, indeed pocket stately home, demanding in-laws, commuting husband and several children) never gets the time to do more than read the first few chapters.

Some book groups only do Richard and Judy titles, or go for the Booker Prize shortlist. I can safely say that I've only ever read two Booker winners. One was 'The True History of the Kelly Gang', by Peter Carey (2001), which we did do a few years ago. There are some on the list I mean to get around to trying (notably 'The Ghost Road' by Pat Barker) but most of them I wouldn't touch with a bargepole. Rightly or wrongly, the winners - and, indeed, most 'literary' fiction - have the reputation of being difficult to read, more interested in ideas than plot and character, or just plain boring. The few examples I've tackled have not tended to dispel this notion. I remember reading a Fay Weldon novel (and no, it was not 'She-Devil') and thinking half-way through, 'I have never met people like this in my entire life!' Of course, that could just mean that I've led a very sheltered existence, but I suspect that's not so. These characters were cyphers rather than living, breathing individuals: they were in the book to express an attitude, point a moral or as a plot device.

Of course there are more elements to a book than characters or plot. Good writing is important, though not as vital as you'd think: plenty of books with clunkingly awful prose reach the top of the best-seller lists (Dan Brown springs first to mind). But the novels that last seem to have the right balance of plot, character and writing. I love that feeling that creeps over you as you begin to read a new book, and realise that there is something about it that just grabs you: you make a cup of tea, get a chocolate biscuit, settle down on the sofa and prepare to enjoy yourself. The most recent one to give me that buzz was the other Booker winner I've read (before it was even on the shortlist) - 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel. Never has six hundred pages gone so quickly. I was so pleased when it won, I'd been afraid it wouldn't. You always get the impression that the one thing that literary people can't stand is popularity, and 'Wolf Hall' is certainly popular, with the betting public as well as the readers. I wonder if all the people who put money on it had read it? Probably not - but I bet they knew people who had. At one stage we were considering it for our group read, but there are something like fifty reservations on it in the library service, and as Debbie and I have both read it, we've decided to try something else. Best book of the year, for me, and I can't wait for the sequel.

Over the years we must have read forty or fifty books - Louisa keeps a record of them all in her black book (you can tell she's a legal eagle). Some pleased everyone, some attracted indifference, some had mixed reviews. But only one book was universally panned, and interestingly it led to our most lively and stimulating discussion. It was 'The Dying Animal' by Philip Roth. I can't remember who suggested it but it was quite the most horrible book I've ever read. About an ageing university lecturer who begins an affair with one of his students, a luscious Hispanic girl (played by Penelope Cruz in the film), everything is described in prurient detail and the 'hero' is so obviously the author's alter ego that you just cringe. Doesn't he just wish he could have a lovely girl less than a third of his age climb enthusiastically into his bed! I know there are some mismatched couples out there (Sarkosi and Carla spring at once to mind) but this is wishful thinking on a grand scale. Yuk. And for once, Stuart agreed with the women.

Actually, I've got another idea for our next selection. It's much the same sort of view of women as 'The Dying Animal', but from the opposite end of the literary spectrum, and it throws up all sorts of topics for discussion: prostitution, feminism, even racism. There's a copy in Market Lavington library, and though I haven't actually read it, the title tells me all I need to know. It's called 'Love Slave to the Sheikh', and it's published by Mills and Boon. I can't wait to see what they all think of it when I take it along to the meeting in January.

A Life in Music

I started this blog with music, so it's about time I wrote about it again. Heavy sessions on YouTube, making up playlists of my favourite songs, got me thinking about the part music has played in my life.

Up until the age of twelve, my musical tastes were pretty much conditioned by my parents. My mother had a fondness for musicals and Nat King Cole and Cole Porter, my father for classical music, especially Mozart. Both of them liked Chopin. In the early 60s, living near the east coast of Suffolk, we didn't get any opportunity to listen to pop. The BBC Light Programme broadcast about half an hour a week, and Radio Luxemberg had awful reception. I knew all the tunes and lyrics of 'My Fair Lady' by heart, and nothing by the Beatles.

With pirate radio, all that changed virtually overnight. You could go to Felixstowe beach and see the ships anchored three miles offshore: the DJs travelled there via Ipswich station, and fans used to go and meet them (including my sister and I). Once we had tried to listen to music that sounded as though it was being played in cottonwool in someone's bathroom two miles away: now, the signals were so loud and clear that the DJs, and the records, seemed to be right there in our bedrooms. The film 'The Boat that Rocked' got mediocre reviews, but I loved it for the memories it brought back, the excitement of those early days, when everyone seemed to listen to the same things and we were a community of fans in a new and magical world of music.

It all changed, of course, as different genres fragmented. I remember thinking about a bloke I loathed, 'How can he like Bridge over Troubled Water when I love it so much?' People were judged according to what music they favoured, and of course it changed over time. I started out a Beatles girl and switched to the Stones because their rebelliousness struck a chord - plus, they were so good to dance to. I usually tell people that the first single I ever bought was Sounds of Silence - but actually it was Dominique, by the Singing Nun - excruciatingly awful to me now, but then I was only eleven or so, before the days of the pirates, and the Simon and Garfunkel song is a much more accurate indicator of what my adult tastes would be. On the other hand, things that passed me by at the time - Tamla Motown, for example - resonate quite differently now, and I recently added a compilation album to my collection.

As a teenager, my records fell into two categories. There were stars I liked because I fancied them - the Monkees, the Beatles, the Walker Brothers - and those whose music I loved - the Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Dylan, Mamas and Papas. The West Coast sound of 1967/8 gave way to British folk/rock: I acquired albums by Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, and quietly hid my Monkees LPs. I was hooked by the historical bombast of the Strawbs, whom my sister and I went to see at the Royal Albert Hall, one of our first gigs, but the band I most regret never seeing live (too young, too far, my parents wouldn't let us go) was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, of late and much lamented memory. Through all this I was learning to play guitar, just enough chords to accompany my erratic singing, and gleaning new songs from folk clubs and the radio.

I went to university, and after the sleepy backwater of Ipswich, Brighton felt like the hub of the universe. I saw the Strawbs (for the third time), Bowie, the Stones, at last, and many other bands. Certain songs still have the power to bring back those times: Samba pa ti, by Santana, Auntie Aviator by John and Beverley Martin, the music from Clockwork Orange, pretty much all of After the Goldrush by Neil Young. Everyone was into 'prog rock', and the guy who liked Slade and Abba was mercilessly mocked. Then Punk burst on the scene and was universally derided - it was the first time, but not the last, that I was too old to like or even appreciate a new musical phenomenon. The 80s brought the New Romantics - a lot of posturing, an awful lot of awful hair, and some good tunes, even if, as Not the Nine O'Clock News pointed out, most of the time it was a case of 'Nice video, shame about the song'. It also brought a new favourite band for me - Dire Straits. I don't care that they grew far too popular too quickly, and therefore became desperately uncool: that man could play guitar all night and I'd listen to every note with rapt attention. The final guitar solo to Tunnel of Love is, as far as I'm concerned, one of the greatest of all, and still has the power to move me to tears. Grace, passion, consummate musicianship, a glorious tune: what's not to like, indeed to love?

Live Aid - which Steve and I watched on TV, desperately envious of Chris and Maureen who were actually there - introduced me to U2, whom I've loved ever since, my favourite album being the spine-tingling Joshua Tree: The Edge, like Johnny B. Good, 'plays guitar like the ringing of bells'. Old bands faded away, new ones took their place. I rediscovered folk - Kate Rusby, Maddie Prior, Cara Dillon, Seth Lakeman - but a lot of the music of the 90s and Noughties seemed too slick and manufactured. I picked out individual songs to delight in, but there were no more 'favourite bands'. My CD collection is an eclectic mix of the last 45 years of pop and rock, from the Stones to the Killers, from Dusty Springfield to Dido, but it seems as if everything 'new' has in fact been done before, sometime, somewhere.

And so the wheel comes full circle, for my sons have discovered the music of my youth, largely thanks to Live8, which introduced them, amongst others, to Clapton, the Who and Pink Floyd. Patrick loves the Beatles, and has all their albums on his MP3 player. They have fifty years of music to plunder. When I was their age, any music made more than 20 years previously was likely to be by Glenn Miller or Vera Lynn. They haven't got the wonderful sense of newness, of freshness, that characterised the music of the 60s, as people like Lennon and Macartney, Dylan and Jagger and Brian Wilson took it to places it had never been before. But oh boy, have they got some fabulous old songs in their headphones.

Lefties, Southpaws and Cack-handies

I'm right-handed, and so is Steve, and it was therefore rather a shock to find out that both our sons were left-handed. We knew straight away with Hugh, as he sucked his left thumb almost from birth: Patrick was not a thumb-sucker, but when he began to feed himself, always picked up his spoon in his left hand. Apparently only two per cent of left-handers are born to entirely right-handed parents, so it got me thinking: how come?

One pointer is that Steve's mother is left-handed. Her mother was a formidable character, and went down to the school to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that her daughter was to be allowed to use her left hand. This was very enlightened for the 1930s. However, both my mother-in-law's two sons use the right hand, and so do my brother-in-law's three children. Left-handedness has only come to my two boys.

There's a leftie on my side of the family too - my first cousin Jonathan. He's a surgeon, and when he started operating, in the 60s, he had to have all his instruments specially made. So if left-handedness was down in part to a recessive gene, this would make sense. Interestingly, one of the few things I know about my (and Jonathan's) grandfather is that he had a bad stammer. And stammering can be a sign that a left-handed child has been forced to use his or her right hand. We'll never know, but that's my gut instinct, and again it makes sense.

Even in this day and age, left-handedness isn't all plain sailing. Of course my sons were never forced to use their right hand, but a lot of people don't use their eyes and just assume that the child is 'normal'. So at nursery school, both of them used scissors in their right hands because that's what they'd been shown how to do. When I bought them a special pair of left-handed ones, at first they didn't get on with them. Once they were writing, of course, it became more obvious.

Writing's hard for a southpaw, and neither of them found this easy. Sport was also tricky. I always said, 'Use whichever hand you find most comfortable and which works best.' And both of them bat with the right hand and bowl with the left. It's a positive advantage being a leftie in many sports, cricket being one of them. Some of the greatest of all tennis players, including Laver and McEnroe, have been left-handed. Nadal is a natural right-hander, but has been coached to play with the left because it gives him such a huge advantage.

I was well aware that the boys needed positive information about left-handedness, and bought several books aimed at children and young people, extolling the numerous special attributes of left-handed people. There were lots of examples of famous artists, writers and entertainers of all kinds, including Leonardo, Marilyn Monroe and Bob Dylan, and explanations of why the left-handed brain is different, and quite possibly superior, to us boring right-handers. Hugh said that these books had really helped when he was young, and made him proud to be a leftie, standing out from the crowd. He has several left-handed guitars, and Patrick asked me the other day whether it was possible to get a left-handed piano. Yes, at a (considerable) price! Much cheaper, apparently, to get an electronic keyboard - you just change the chip.

There's a place online, 'anythinglefthanded', where you can buy all sorts of useful things oriented to the southpaw, from tin openers to scissors to pens with special nibs. But mostly my lads make do with whatever's around them, and just get on with being sinisters in a dexter world. Apparently only ten per cent of the population is left-handed, but that ten per cent is over-represented in all sorts of areas. Many of the Apollo astronauts: US Presidents: actors and musicians. No doubt, left-handers tend to be creative and interesting people who relish their difference, as Hugh and Patrick do. It makes me wish I was one too!

My Daily Deer

I've always loved deer. As a child, passionate about wildlife, I used to stalk them, creeping through the woods early in the morning, moving as lightly as I could, my eyes scanning the undergrowth for any sign of movement. There was quite a large herd in the park: they were Fallow, the darker kind that have brown and grey coats all year round, and presumably the descendants of those animals posed delightfully in the foreground of old engravings of the house. Over the course of two or three years, I got to know them well, their habits and favourite places. No two bucks had identical antlers, so I could recognise some individuals and give them names, usually culled from whatever literature I was keen on at the time: one was called Aiken, I seem to remember, and another, very distinctive with a deformed antler, Shenandoah. Sometimes I had Perdy with me, and had to keep her on a lead because she loved chasing them, and was quite capable of vanishing for hours in pursuit: but mostly I went out at dawn, on my own. The woods, which only cover about a dozen acres, were magical at that hour, wreathed in golden mist, birds singing, dew on the ground: it seemed as if I were the only person in the world, and the deer, slipping through the greenery like wraiths, were creatures of fantasy and enchantment.

Of course to the adults they were a pest. One winter I was horrified to learn that someone was coming to cull them. He was, so I was told, a 'real cowboy' from the USA. I could not bear the thought of anyone, even such a glamorous figure, killing 'my' deer: I came, after all, from the generation that had watched Bambi at a very impressionable age. The thought of offering my services (I don't suppose even at the age of ten or eleven that anyone knew more about the habits of the Orwell deer than I did) didn't occur to me: it would have been the worst sort of betrayal. I took real satisfaction from the fact that this supposed 'expert' had absolutely no success during the week or so that he was trying to shoot my friends.

Inevitably, as I grew older, my interest waned: pop music and other distractions took over, and besides I began to feel it was rather a strange thing for a teenage girl to do. Occasionally I'd see them while walking the dog, or one would be caught up in the football nets, a regular occurrence unfortunately. It was still a thrill to encounter them, though I never went seeking them deliberately. Long after I left home, my father told me that there was a white buck now with the herd: he saw it several times, and I really wished that I had done too. Apparently they are quite common amongst Fallow deer, and the originals of all those 'White Hart' pubs. Alas, that one met a dismal end in a football net, strangling itself in its panic before anyone had the chance to cut it free, and Dad was quite upset about it. But my favourite memory of the Orwell deer is quite recent: coming back to my parents from my sister's house at midnight, we drove up to the main gates of the big house, and saw, there on the lawn in front of the grand north entrance, perhaps a dozen or more quietly grazing deer, lit amber and gold in the rich glow of the floodlights, as beautiful and magical as their ancestors had been, when I was a child.

There are many deer here too, but they're Roe, not Fallow, and have quite different habits: they appear singly, or in small groups, rather than in a herd of a dozen or more, and they're small and very shy. A couple of times, though, we've actually seen them close to the house. Last winter one took up residence in our garden for a few days, feeding off the fallen apples which were a good source of nourishment in snowy weather. They might have fermented while on the ground, which would explain why the deer had considerable difficulty jumping the fence when I came out to have a closer look!

Once more I have a dog who loves to chase them: in her salad days, Rowan would roar off after them like a greyhound in pursuit of a hare, and follow flat out for half a mile or more: I remember seeing her once, from the long Abbotswood field, right across the valley and almost at the pig farm the other side. What she thought she'd do if she actually caught one, I have no idea! Of course she never had a hope: the buck or doe would go leaping like a gazelle over the grass, switching to a higher gear if the labouring Rowan seemed to be getting too close. Even now, an (almost) staid lady of nearly eight, she'll still give it a go, but stops after fifty yards or so, much to my relief: nothing is more humiliating, or futile, than standing in the middle of a field bellowing the name of a dog which has vanished five minutes ago, and you've no idea where they've got to.

Last year, Phil planted a wide strip of wheat all the way round the edge of the Far Ridge, as we call the belt of trees, last remnants of the original Abbot's Wood, which covers the steep ground between the upper plateau and the gentler slopes of the valley. I assume it was for fodder, as there wasn't very much of it. Or maybe he had another motive, for the grain proved irresistible to the local deer, and while they were feasting on it, they weren't molesting his brussels sprouts or carrots. Almost every evening, when I walked that way with Rowan, I would see at least one, standing in the middle of the wheat, munching. There was a buck - I knew it was always the same one because his antlers were slightly asymmetrical - and several females, including some young ones. They caused tremendous damage, trampling the crop down in many places, and eating much of it. In the evening sunlight, though, they were a lovely sight with their rich red summer coats, springing away from us with those huge leaps into the safety of the trees. It was noticeable that before their flight, it was the dog they watched, not me: quite sensible, given that it was always the dog that chased them!

Just like that long ago time, a man arrived with permission to shoot them. I encountered him and his companion a couple of times, and didn't like the look of him much: nor did one of my friends, who also met him. It certainly casts a blight on your evening walks when you know there's a character roaming your route armed with a high-powered rifle. He also had a Range Rover with an array of headlights on the roof, which made me instantly suspicious: it's illegal to shoot deer after dark, a practice known as 'lamping' and most often practised by poachers. And although he claimed to have permission to shoot on Bernie's land as well, when I asked Bernie's son, he said he didn't. Anyway, he didn't have any luck: the fact that I was walking with my dog around the fields and (deliberately) scaring the deer away might have had something to do with it. Lack of skill might also have played its part: if I'd gone out every evening with a rifle, even taking the dog, I'd have bagged at least one deer every night. Standing on top of a huge 4 x 4 on the edge of the field and waiting for them to come to you is not the way to do it. He hasn't been back this year, and I'm glad. The buck is still able to enjoy the grain and the discarded carrots and parsnips, and there are two does, one with a single fawn, one with twins. I see one or more of them almost every day at this time of year, and always with a smile. Nearly fifty years after those golden mornings in the Orwell woods, I am still delighted by their grace and beauty, and it's still a pleasure to meet my 'daily deer'.