Letters to the Editor - July 2008

When my mum was a young girl she had the habit of sneaking scraps of food to the house cat, much to the disapproval of her fatwher, at mealtimes.

One summer day a full grown bullock walked slowly into the farmhouse kitchen. Mum was alone, and after a good look round the bullock turned and walked back out.

Mum ran and told her dad what had happened, and after a long look and without the hint of a smile he said, “I thought I told thee not to feed animals at the table.”

Barry Jasper, Ludlow

An observation from your May issue – a very pleasant read – on bluebells. Janet Merza forgot to point out that our native bluebells, with flowers on one side only of a slightly drooping stem, are set to be taken over by Spanish bluebells which are larger, stronger and hybridise readily with ours. The Spanish ones are recognisable by their straighter stems bearing flowers on both sides of the stem.

This will be quite a problem as garden centres etc are selling the Spanish ones in preference to natives. Some council recently successfully forced a horticulture contractor to remove all the Spanish bluebells they’d planted on their council scheme and replace with native ones as per the contract. Good for them.

A.J.Astley, Ellesmere

Referring to the recent letter from Henry Harris of Totnes Devon, the game with horseshoes was played in America. They called it horseshoe pitching. It was played with real horseshoes. Two metal spikes were driven into the ground about twelve yards apart; and the horseshoes were pitched at the pin/spike with effort needed to encircle the spike with the shoe. We have a similar game known as quoits. I lived in America for four years, and the time I am talking about was late 1926-1931. I hope Mr Harris enjoyed the game.

Tony Fox, Twyford, Berkshire

Walking along a lane in Holcombe, a dead-end leading to fields, I was amazed to find many worms crossing the road. I rescued so many, picking them up and putting them into gardens. They were all quite thin – there were dozens of them. On the main road, most of the worms were squashed. I found a young toad amongst them, also dead.

I know toads and frogs migrate, but I’ve never heard of worms doing so. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Mrs Dickie Thompson, Holcombe

Some twenty-odd years ago, while canvassing during the local elections, I came across a lovely hacienda style bungalow with lovely hanging pendulums of blue, highly perfumed flowers.

In conversation with the owner, an elderly lady, I asked the name of the plant, she told me it was a wisteria, adding, that many years ago she and her husband had planted it together, but in the years spent together after planting it, it had never flowered. She sadly lost her husband some years later after a heart attack, but in the following spring after his death, it began to bloom and had done profusely every year since. The following year or so (twenty years ago) my husband, son and I moved into our present home and we decided to plant a wisteria alba in our garden, that too never flowered, despite various attempts to encourage it. Sadly I lost my husband after a long illness last October after forty-six wonderful years together. But would you believe it, the wisteria is flowering for the first time in 20 years. Is this really a coincidence or some sign or what? I would like to hear from anyone who could explain this to me or who has similar tales of their own experiences.

Mrs Jacqui Staton, Nottingham

We have come to the conclusion that our Government and councils are bird brained as they have little common sense and no long vision of our future. They walk about saving the planet from global warming but do little to cut down the damage that the human race does. Since cheap air flights, the ice caps have melted at a rapid speed causing the seas to rise and giving us serious weather changes.

Never before have we witnessed so many gales that have caused so much damage to our trees in the last two years. We need extra hedges with height to act as windbreaks.

Excessive floods and drought and heavy wet snow is certainly not the norm of our lifetime. We have serious loss of our insects, reptiles, birds and mammal species but little is done. Man has a lot to answer for as management is essential. Acres of our fertile land will go under concrete if left to this Government and if those concerned do not make a stand.

How short sighted when we need to be self sufficient in feeding ourselves and those suffering from adverse weather conditions in other parts of the world. We can’t depend upon imports which also contribute to global warming. The best people to help our Government are the farmers and environmentalists etc, and they aren’t listened to as the Government won’t admit they can’t see the woods for the trees and also that they are run by Europe which makes them a puppet Government.

H Wooldridge, Worcestershire

I was most interested in the letter from A E Timms, and the Humphrey Phelps remarks about the Milk Marketing Board. I always wondered why it was dispensed with and thought no good would come of it.

I remember my mother telling me how her mother had poured milk away when prices were low in the 1930s and what a good thing the MMB was.

Being producer retailers, we sold our milk locally until it was rationed during the war. Then the surplus was collected by Hornbey’s Dairy of Bristol.

When we became T.T. and could no longer use my uncle’s bull, we turned to artifical insemination. You had to phone the office as early as possible, and as my father was deaf and mother busy elsewhere, I had to phone with the details needed before I went to school.

The good thing was that father had a phone put in at least, solely for the purpose of phoning the AI man!

Ann Stacey, Midhurst, West Sussex

When things get on top of you
Be like the wind and whistle
Or be like the kettle and scream.

Mrs Ruth Walsh, Wareham, Dorset

My wife and I are subscribers to the Countryman and we really do enjoy it. We saw with great interest on page 102 March issue, the photo of a blackbird’s nest with the blue woven in to it.

We have a blackbird’s nest which is in thick variegated ivy around a silver birch tree in our garden. This too has blue woven in to part of the nest top, the blue being a long strand of knitting wool. This nest is a marvel of engineering, skilfully woven into and around the ivy branches, absolutely secure, as it needs to be up here due to the severe gales which we sometimes get in the Highlands.

Last year five youngsters hatched from this nest, but sadly one was caught on its first flight from the nest by a sparrowhawk, we think the others survived. Hopefully the same parents will use the nest again this season, but the hawks have already appeared.

Scottish blackbirds seem to have the same colour selective tastes as their English cousins!

W. Boardman, Aviemore, Invernesshire

I thought you might like to know that we have just spotted a pair of yellowhammers on our lawn and this caused us great excitement. There was a time when we remembered seeing flocks of yellowhammers as we cycled the country lanes.

Am I right in supposing that the reason we see so few now is because farmers no longer leave the stubble of the corn harvest over the winter but plough it in straight away?

Dorothy Wise, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire

I find the letters on white deer in the June issue interesting as there used to be a pub in Litchfield called The Bald Buck, sadly now, I'm informed, a Chinese restaurant, and in tracing the name I found that it meant a white, not  hairless, deer. The word bald is derived from the Middle English word balled, meaning white – a usage which we preserve in reference to horses, bald-faced, pie-bald and scew-bald but which is overlooked by the birding fraternity when when trying to explain ‘bald as a coot’ or the American bald-headed eagle. I once heard one of the renowned ornithologists explain to his daughter that it was because the bird looks bald from a distance.

Robert Newton, Staffordshire

I have always admired that critically endangered species… the village idiot. In the 1950s, I lived in Gloucestershire. One evening into the village inn came a hiker looking for bed and breakfast accommodation. While one of the regulars went off to see which village landlady had a vacancy, the hiker downed the local brew and chatted up the locals. One said, “Over there is our village idiot – if you place a penny and a half crown in the palm of your hand, he will always take the penny.”

The hiker did this and the village idiot took the penny without hesitation. The perceptive hiker said that he did not believe he was a real village idiot. Why did he not take the half crown? “If I did that they would stop doing this to me.”

Some of the Cotswold villages have streams flowing through them. There would be a ford where farmers’ livestock and machinery could cross. Beside the ford would be a footbridge so that pedestrians could cross dry shod. One day into the village came a townie in his limousine. When he reached the ford, he stopped.

There had been much rain recently and the stream was running strongly. Leaning on the footbridge rail was a village idiot. The town asked the village idiot if the water was deep, “no” came the reply so he gingerly drove into the ford. Halfway across the engine conked out and the townie wound down the window. “I thought you said the water was not deep”. “Well,” the village idiot replied, “it only comes halfway up my ducks.”

Recently I returned to the villages I knew well. Many villagers have been replaced by retired townies and commuters who work far away in the big towns. Of the village idiots, there are none.

Mr John Mainhood, Tonbridge

I was horrified to read in the May Country Diary by the Editor, that English Heritage insists that wheat straw be used for the thatch on all thatched listed buildings. What is wrong with Norfolk Reed? Or reed grown on wetlands in any other county? It is probably a lot more expensive, but then it is a lot longer lasting. When I was young and able to watch the threshing gangs at work, with a threshing box driven by a steam engine, the long wheat straw was bundled and kept for thatching next years rick, nothing else.

It is quite probable that not enough reed is grown nowadays because harvesting is so labour intensive. The answer is obvious. Divert subsidies paid to farmers for doing nothing to reed growers so that their crop is then viable, and something useful is produced on land that cannot be used to produce any thing else. And think of the benefit to wildlife!

Christopher Fox, Wellington

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