By the river

Down by the river on a hot summer's day at the Fox at Barrington, there are many entertainments to be enjoyed. There are ducks with itchy backs and fidgety feathers...

...there are acrobatic flying shows by enthusiastic squadrons of male Banded Blue Demoiselles -

- chasing one or two solitary females -

There are Large Red Damsel Flies, twitching their long bodies enticingly.

And there was, really, a grass snake which slipped into the river, wriggled upstream and vanished all within a few seconds before I could prise myself off the grass to take a snap. Nearer to home we seem to have some new young toads...they fallop into the kitchen looking absolutely charming. This one, which Andy brought up to the studio, falloped onto my table and dropped down behind into my portfolios. Minor carnage ensued as it was rescued and rehomed at the back of the garden.

A day off

Warning - contains copious amounts of photos for fabric and bees. For last Saturday was the first real day off I've had for weeks and it was planned to be filled with my favourite things, spent with a dear friend, Debs, who has the same interests.

So there was a visit to a fantastic fabric shop in Abingdon, Mason's in Bath Street. It was heaving - anyone who thinks that sewing is going out of fashion should pay it a visit.

Rammed to the ceiling, literally, with what must be thousands of bolts of every fabric you could need, not to mention haberdashery heaven.

Mostly filled with female customers and the odd chap hanging round looking somewhat bewildered.

We bought a few little things; the staff at Masons, old and young, are amazing.

Back to Deb's house, who rather wonderfully fixed up a sensational lunch from the local Cornucopia Deli - in the garden of course, with a jug of Pimms. Feeling somewhat as if I was sitting in a Country Living photoshoot. (This is a good thing).

After a pottle off to a garden centre where we *might have* bought one or two plants, we returned to examine her beehive, which has been installed for a few weeks now.

It was fascinating to see the bees constantly too-ing and fro-ing, female workers whose short lives - about 6 weeks - are full of industry. The busy atmosphere reminded me of the women bustling about the fabric shop we'd just been to.

Well protected, Debs began smoking the hive - as far as I gather, they think that there is a threat to the hive by forest fire and begin preparing for flight by eating stored honey.

Surrounded by a fair few bees who didn't seem that bothered, the hive was taken apart for inspection.

This outer frame is still undeveloped.

But further on there was more activity.

Can you see the queen bee, below? She is larger than the others, with a handy white dot painted on her. She is almost constantly laying eggs, which hatch into more (nearly all female) worker bees - so in a sense the hive is a giant clone of herself.

This frame has capped cells, some containing honey and others eggs. Some eggs were hatching as Debs held it up for inspection - and she could see some workers helping them out of their cells.

I think there is a big fat drone in the middle down there - the few drones in the hive exist only to mate with a new queen bee, when she takes flight - she may mate 20 times. Something very nasty happens to the drones once the mating process is over, which results in their immediate death. The end result is that the queen has enough sperm inside her to lay eggs for up to five years. Here you can see nectar and honey sparkling in the sun as it oozes from the comb.

When the hive had been reconstucted (during which time the bees were remarkably calm, even when the smoke ran out), Debs pulled out the board beneath the hive to find the general detritus which is kicked out by the workers - a golden dust of bee droppings, wax and other unknowns. I don't think there is a use for this, unlike almost everything else produced by bees. But it is pretty.

Not only was there a beehive, but a pond full of newts, diving about like miniature, underwater dragons.

Torn between watching bee-watching or newt-watching, I was saved by tea. Sublime rosewater and pistachio meringues - if you are ever in the vicinity of Cornucopia, do go and buy some; they are handmade by the owner, Sandy. They are fragments of Paradise.

It wasn't a difficult choice. A splendidly calorific end to my day off and warm thanks to Debs and her family for making me so welcome and recharging my almost empty batteries.



What did I buy from the textile shop? Oh, nothing much...

...just some sweet cotton fabric and what I believe is called a 'jelly roll' of vintage patchwork strips.

So pretty, it would have been rude not to.

(I am aware that my bee knowledge is rudimentary and happy to be corrected on any points).

Angels and Demons

One of my little hobbies is 'catching' insects. Not in the nasty way, but on my camera. It's the challenge of getting close enough to get a decent snap - I don't have a butterfly net, but I do have a fairly good macro lens. Last night on my evening walk I spotted this gorgeous White Plume moth nestling in the low grass. Amazingly it stayed put while I lay on my back on the dirt track, scriggled about and got my camera up and under it, about two inches away.

The other evening we saw these two Small Tortoiseshell butterflies courting, eventually settling down on for some more intimate action. The blurring is an indication of how fast they were moving. This time I took the shot from about a metre away, but my zoom did the trick.

I admit to being quietly proud of this one; a Common Blue damselfly (I think) perched on hawthorn blossom. Again I used my zoom but I was close enough not to lose quality. I was holding my camera rather precariously over the river though.

Finally, not quite as pretty, but handsome in his own way - a Staghorn beetle we found crawling across the lane. He did not like being poked onto a leaf at all and he will never know how close he came to being squashed; a minute later two huge tractors with broad, heavy, beetle flattening wheels came roaring along the lane and not even his thick armour would have saved him.

Angels and demons come in many shapes and guises - but I think it's a little unfair to be so unkind about Mr Beetle, as he's just a bit of a rough diamond.

(Edit - my apologies to Mr Beetle who is probably a Mrs, due to her smaller pinchers and many thanks to wonderful wildlife painter Mike Woodcock for pointing that out and correctly identifying the Blue Damselfly as being a Banded Demoiselle).

Bee Movie & honey

Sometimes bees can be a bit dim - rather like us. This poor girl was exhausted, but she would not drink sugar syrup from a saucer as the other bee did. It was an overcast evening a couple of weeks ago and most flowers were closing down for the night. I popped her on a little geranium where she flopped feebly about, poking her proboscis into the stamens which weren't giving her what she wanted. Finally she seemed to give up and folded her legs under her, as if waiting to die.

Feeling desperate, I brushed some syrup onto the flower she was perched on and gently nudged it towards her...

In protest, she waved her legs about and then began to clean some of the syrup from her feet. The penny dropped and she began eagerly licking the syrup from the petals before taking off. As if this was not enough, while I was filming, there was a knock at the door, which I ignored. You can just about hear it at the end and the chimney jackdaws cackling with indignation. And if you listen very carefully with the volume up you can just hear the nice Mozart I was playing.

The knock at the door was a dear friend and her daughter, popping over from another village to say hello. One of the few people I am always happy to see, even if the cottage did look as if a bomb had hit it. My fellow bee loving friend has recently acquired her first hive, so it was a lovely coincidence that she dropped in at that very moment, just as excited as I was at another bee-life saved. We hurried through to the back yard, where the 'patient' was nuzzling around in the thyme blossom and then watched as she bumbled off, over the fence, hopefully to return home.

Another sweet surprise - one of Andy's young work colleagues has also started keeping bees - and spun his first batch of honey last week. It took him longer than he imagined as he had a bumper crop. He started at 8pm and didn't get to bed until 4am - how kind he was to pass on a jar to me; it is quite delicious and if he's not careful I will be sending him a bottle or three of my homebrew...poor lad won't know what day of the week it is.

Stout from scratch

To make home brewed stout; take one 1930's recipe book and the following ingredients -

Scratch your head and ponder what *Spanish* is. Ask your Northern other half who informs you that it is liquorice (which apparently is what they call it 'up there'). Wonder where to get *black malt* and decide to replace it with chocolate malt. Realise that 'in those days' they had bigger pans but manage to cobble it together with a variety jugs and pots. Weigh the chocolate malt.


Weigh the Fuggles hops.

Weigh the dark brown sugar.

Using your biggest pan, boil up some water, add the hops and malt. The kitchen becomes infused with the intense aroma of strong, black coffee.



Add *one pennyworth of black Spanish* - bought from a traditional sweet shop. Briefly wonder what *one pennyworth* looks like and hazard that it is probably an ounce. Read the recipe and find no mention whatsoever of when to add the BS but bung it in anyway.

Pour the bitter melange of chocolaty boiling glop onto the dark brown sugar in a brewing bucket and top up with cold water to three and a half gallons. Add ale yeast and leave overnight. Return to find it is doing very little so chuck in a tablespoon of baker's yeast which does the trick.



Three days later, strain and keg up, adding half a pound more sugar and making a phenomenal amount of mess in the kitchen in the process, not having a funnel or large enough jelly bag. After a few more days, tentatively tap off a glass and be very surprised when it actually comes out looking like a 'real' glass of stout, tasting deliciously of coffee and dark chocolate. Even better chilled.

Alcohol content unknown. Read the inscription in the recipe book and whole heartily agree;