seasons - Debbie Young's Writing Life

Mad Dogs and Englishmen Go Out in the Hawkesbury Sun

Posted on July 27, 2013July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

(In which the English heat wave of July 2013 has me raiding my old Greek holiday wardrobe, conjuring up nostalgia for island-hopping holidays and Greek island society – with Noel Coward’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” never far from my mind.)

The Gloucestershire village that I’ve made my home is not known for a warm climate. There’s a reason that the Tropic of Hawkesbury Upton did not feature in Noel Coward’s wonderful song about hot places, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”. But this summer its lyrics have been playing on a loop in my head.

Perched high up on the last rise of the Cotswolds before they fall away into the Severn Vale, Hawkesbury usually has lower temperatures, higher winds and more snow than in Bristol, at sea level, just 20 miles away. Even nearby Chipping Sodbury has a warmer microclimate than ours.

“When it’s jacket weather in Sodbury, it’s overcoat weather in Hawkesbury Upton,” was a favourite saying of James Harford, the aged sage who lived next door when I moved here 22 years ago.

Yet the current Hawkesbury heat wave has had me rummaging in my wardrobe for clothes that haven’t had an airing since pre-baby holidays on the Greek islands.

Transported to Greece

My favourite Greek holiday clothes include an airy turquoise beach kaftan and a Mediterranean-Sea-blue sarong, patterned with the sea turtles indigenous to the island on which I bought it: Kefalonia. Teamed with earrings from Lefkas, enamelled in the colours of the Ionian Sea and sky, they transport me back to my halcyon days of island-hopping.

Fortunately, these items still fit, despite subsequent post-motherhood pounds. You’d have to have a lot of babies to need to upsize your earrings.

It’s not just my old Mediterranean wardrobe that I’ve adopted to cope with this hot spell. Other useful habits acquired during our Kefalonian days include:

closing wooden window shutters against the heat of the day (though ours in Hawkesbury were installed to keep heat in))
carrying a water bottle wherever I go
savouring cucumber salads so refreshing that they almost qualify as a drink
looking forward to stepping outside at dusk, to be enveloped in air as cooling as diving into a swimming pool

And then there’s the perfume that instantly whisks me back to the Greek islands. No, not the sharp scent of wild herbs on arid hills, but the soft, fruity scent of suncream. These days my aura is Factor 50.

When we first started holidaying in Greece, my then boyfriend (now husband) and I were the classic Mad Dogs and Englishmen (sorry, Gordon, Scotsmen). We saw nothing wrong with going out in the midday sun.

Going Native

But after a few visits, I began to side with the locals, who spent the afternoons safely battened into their cool, bare houses. From beneath the shade of a beachside taverna, I’d smile and shake my head at conspicuously pale, newly-landed compatriots making a bare-headed beeline for the beach.

If smartphones had been invented in those days, I’d now be able to illustrate this point with a vivid image of a pasty English family of four, two adults, two teenagers, that I spotted one day in Zakynthos Town. Clad in Marks and Spencer t-shirts and shorts, they looked shocked that their cheap hats, emergency purchased from a nearby stall, did not make a dent in the afternoon sun. I suspect they bore that startled look for the rest of their fortnight on the island. It was as if they’d got off at the wrong stop on their plane:

“GREECE? What do you mean, we’re in Greece? Our tickets very clearly stated Grimsby!”

Only in the evenings, after dark, did the locals emerge en masse from their quiet, shady houses. Suddenly noisily sociable, they paraded gleefully about the town squares till well after midnight, toddlers whizzing past their ankles on tricycles whose saddles were too hot to sit on before sunset. It was as if this were a nightly wake for the overheated day: there was a real party atmosphere on every town square. On first encounter, this has much the same surprise factor for foreigners as the wooden silence of the Trojan horse transformed by hidden Greek soldiers’ battle cries.

English Summer Sayings

Will there be such a wake in Britain for our current heat wave? I doubt it. Hot summers are so rare that we’re never happy to bid them goodbye. But when it ends, we’ll be very British and accept it. With heavy rain predicted for this weekend, it won’t be long before our recent mantra of “I daren’t complain about the heat after the winter we’ve had” segues into one of our commoner British summer catchphrases:

“Well, the sunshine was nice while it lasted”
“All this rain will be good for the garden”
“What a shame for the children’s school holidays!”

And I’ll be tucking my Greek clothes back into the drawer, along with heady memories of the 2013 summer heat wave.

For the full lyrics of Noel Coward’s wonderful song, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”, click here.

Debbie and Laura on top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Summer 2011 — Harking back to France

OTHER POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE

What is it with me and holiday clothes? I’m easily brainwashed by my wardrobe, as this post about our French holiday shows:

Girls In Their Summer Clothes.

If you’re heading to France, read these words of warning about essential dress for men:

Many A Slip Between Piscine and Dip

Or ignore them if you’d like a laugh at your husband’s expense…

Family, Personal life

Stressing The Importance of Gadgets

Posted on January 31, 2013July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Stressed cat — Stroke it the right way and it’d just be a pussycat

Years ago, when I was a fresh young executive in the dog-eat-dog world of PR, it was the done thing to complain about your stress levels. Anyone in the office who didn’t was assumed to be not working hard enough.

Our boss Jim*, an ex-hack in his early 40s, was a kind man. Under pressure from the agency owners to maximise profits, he did his best to resolve our anguish, while still appearing to crack the whip. It can’t have been easy to be in sole charge of a bevy of ambitious young women, many of whom were prone to tears when losing a pitch for new business. Always the rebel, I was aghast when I overheard two women senior to me seriously discussing the merits of crying in the workplace: “It’s every professional’s right to express their true feelings.” I suspect there were days when Jim could have cried himself.

A family man with three lovely children, Jim was married to a former beauty queen. Although she adored him, I suspect she couldn’t offer him much practical help for dealing with women in suits. She’d probably have suggested a manicure to cure our stress. Jim’s solution was to send us on a stress management course.

Managing Stress

Goodness knows how much the firm paid for that course. We were all shipped off to a posh country house hotel where our training session lasted all day. The cost of the coffee break alone must have run into treble figures. Inevitably, when we returned to the office, the training course made not the slightest bit of difference to our stress levels. All it did was salve Jim’s conscience that he was looking after us properly.

At the time, I was the only dissenter. “Cure the cause, not the symptoms!” I implored him. “Just eliminate the stress, instead of managing it.” I never did like wearing a suit.

Avoiding Stress

Now that I’m working mostly from home, stress avoidance, not stress management, is my mantra. So when a nice man from confused.com challenged me to choose a stress-reducing gadget, with the chance of winning one for myself, I jumped at the opportunity. Jim could never have solved our problems with gadgets: they simply didn’t exist. In those days, the golfball typewriter was considered cutting-edge technology. If we wanted a gadget, we had to improvise. One of my colleagues infamously did so: she lobbed an ashtray at poor Jim in the middle of a difficult meeting. (Yes, it was that long ago: smoking in the office was still considered an acceptable way to manage your stress levels. Jim’s chosen prop was the cigar.)

My own approach to resolving stress is more constructive. I’ve pinpointed the early morning as the greatest source of stress in my day.

The Scream by Edvard Monch — Oh no, not the Today programme at dawn again!

The stress kicks off when the radio-alarm wakes me up, ensuring that the first voices I hear every day are not those of my loved ones, but Messrs Humphreys and Naughtie on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Much as I admire these fine broadcasters, being woken by the news headlines is about as soothing as fingernails running down a blackboard. It’s less jarring when their gentler colleagues, Justin Webb and Evan Davies, are on duty, but even my favourite radio voice of all time, David Attenborough, could not make those news stories less than stressful.

The Antidote to Stress

Instead, what I really need to sound the alarm is an iPhone, loaded with soothing tunes, in an iPod dock on my bedside table. Music, not news, would wake me up: so that’s one source of stress that would bite the dust.

Another stress factor is checking the weather, so that I can put out the right school clothes for my daughter. Summer dress or winter pinafore? Light cardigan or sweatshirt? Boots or shoes? Socks or tights? I’d therefore also download a local weather app on to my iPhone. Then, each night before bed, I could check the forecast and lay out the appropriate clothes, leaving one less thing to worry about in the morning.

Knowing the weather forecast, I’d be able to ensure that it wasn’t just any old soothing music that woke me up in the mornings, but music chosen to put the most positive spin on the weather. (Ah, you see, all those years in PR were not wasted.) Whatever weather we woke up to, its accompanying tune would be a pleasure to hear. For sunshine, the choice would be easy: “Here Comes The Sun” by George Harrison. In case of rain, “It’s Raining Men” by The Weathergirls would never fail to lift my mood. For exceptionally bad storms, I’d pick “Greased Lightning”, from the movie Grease. Snow would provide the perfect excuse to play “I’m Walking in the Air” from The Snowman. If the weather ever got too depressing, I might cheat and load ELO’s “Mr Blue Sky”, a song that my daughter and I had on permanent repeat in the car last summer to raise our spirits while driving through pouring rain. But you get the general picture.

Less Stress For All

The word music, annotated — Has charms to soothe the savage breast (William Congreve)

My system would be endlessly adaptable to suit all tastes in music. For those of classical bent, there’d be Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons”, although to reflect the impact of global warming and its ever-weirder weather systems, you might want to play the Summer movement in Winter, and vice versa.

You could also use the system to herald landmark days and events. “Get Me To The Church On Time” from My Fair Lady would signal a wedding. My daughter would not be the only one looking forward to hearing Alice Cooper sing “School’s Out”.

I’d even use it on days when I didn’t have to get up. I’ve thought of the perfect song for a lie-in, by possibly the most melodious duo of all time: Simon and Garfunkel. I bet you can guess what it would be: “The Sound of Silence”.

Soothed.com? That’ll be me.

This post was written for confused.com’s New Year Revolution Competition.

*not his real name

Family, Personal life

Watch the Birdie!

Posted on January 29, 2012July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

This morning finds us perched on the counter in the utility room, binoculars in hand, the RSPB’s list of common garden birds in the other. I’ve instructed my daughter to be mouse-quiet so as not to frighten our feathered friends away, but she’s so excited about taking part in this national survey that she can’t stop herself occasionally bursting into song or throwing a few dance steps to release her pent-up energy.

This term her class topic is the Awesome Environment, so our adoption of birdwatching as our new hobby for 2012 is timely.

Unfortunately the level of our knowledge is not so helpful. The sort of birds I recognise most readily are unlikely to be seen pecking up the toast crumbs and bacon rind outside our back door. There will be no penguins, puffins, pelicans, parrots or flamingos. A peacock is pretty unlikely – though we did once have one pass through our village. As to an oven-ready chicken – no, I don’t think so. Laura’s pretty confident about blue-tits, but we’re still slightly unsure if what we’ve just seen is a female blackbird. (It’s not helping us by not being black.) But we’re elated when we spot and correctly identify a chaffinch and a collared dove. Well, it’s a start.

But then a black and white creature appears that is definitely not on our bird-spotting guide: it’s got four legs and fur. Go away, next door’s cat, go away! No wonder the birds have all dispersed. A little later a marmalade monster stalks through from the other direction, and I realise why birdwatching never really caught on in this household before: we’ve only recently stopped keeping a cat ourselves (the last in a long line died, ending a 20 year feline reign). No wonder I’m no great shakes at identifying species – yet.

Image via Wikipedia

When we set the kitchen timer for the hour-long stint demanded by the RSPB. I wasn’t optimistic that Laura would hold out for the full sixty minutes. I considered negotiating for shifts, but that seemed defeatist.

And I’m glad that I didn’t give in, because throughout the hour we enjoy each other’s company as we sit comparing notes. I’m ashamed to say I can’t think of the last time we did something sedentary together for such a long stint, other than watching a film. Stories and games never last that long, and setting aside an hour seems an extravagant use of time in our action-packed days.

To be forced to share this hour on a calm, quiet, shared activity turns out to be pure luxury and it passes all too quickly. When the timer finally pings, we feel as calm as if we’d just done an hour’s yoga (something we used to enjoy together when she was a toddler). Thanks to the intervention of our furry neighbours, we’ve only seen a few dozen birds, but I think our ornithological interest has become permanently engaged. You’d better look out, birds, we’re watching you….

(It’s not too late to join the world’s biggest birdwatch: click here for more information.)

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Garden Birds: The Perfect Pets

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Family, Personal life

Where are all the spiders when you need one?

Posted on November 17, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

Housefly shot 1 — The Fly (Image by Greh Fox via Flickr)

Someone new has taken up residence in our kitchen uninvited. He’s been here so long, without showing any signs of leaving, that I may have to add him to the electoral register. Unless a spider domes along to take care of him – for our new resident is a plump and noisy bluebottle fly. He’s become so familiar that now and again I glance at him wondering if he’s strayed from that ancient science fiction film, “The Fly”, and listen out for the tiny voice crying “Help! Save me!”

When I was younger, I would happily kill a fly with one adept swing of the fly swat. If no more specialised weapon was available, a rolled-up newspaper would do. I spent my teenage years in a house near a small German forest. Every summer swarms of fat houseflies would pour in the minute you opened the windows – which you had to do as in the middle of that continental landmass, the weather was often unbearably hot. Returning home from school each afternoon, I’d quickly build up a double-figure score before starting my homework.

My aversion to flies may have had something to do with my sixth form Biology genetics project: bringing home a jam jar full of fruit flies, feeding them mashed banana, then anaesthetising them with ether to count how many had curly wings and how many had straight wings. Give ether to a schoolgirl? I hear your horrified cry. Surely that’s asking for trouble? This was of course the good old days, before health and safety regulations took over.

But as my memory of the awful stench of etherised, banana-stuffed fruitflies has diminished, so has my eagerness to kill flies. These days I’ll shoo them out the window if possible, but our current visitor is most uncooperative.

Nor can I kill anything else (as my friends and relations will no doubt be pleased to hear). My attitude on seeing roadkill is much the same as my horror at seeing dead bodies on the news: “Oh no, that’s some mother’s son!” I think I must have watched too much of Johnny Morris‘s “Animal Magic” TV programme when I was a child: I anthropomorphise far too easily.

So I’m dependent now on the appetites of an itinerant spider – of which there is currently no trace. A couple of months ago, you couldn’t enter a room without finding a spider – or sometimes a dozy wasp or a ladybird. I can’t kill spiders either, thanks to the indoctrination by my kindly elderly neighbour who abided by ancient country sayings. “If you want to live and thrive, let the spider keep alive,” she often told me.

Up to a point, I’m happy to maintain peaceful coexistence with a spider.. I’m no arachnaphobe, but nor do I want long-term spidery lodgers. I have therefore applied with great success the rural remedy of leaving conkers about the house, which spiders cannot tolerate.

This autumn, the massive horse chestnut tree beside my house has distributed so many conkers in the garden that we haven’t seen a spider for weeks. I think if I want to attract a spider, I’ll have to collect the conkers from the garden and throw them over my neighbour’s wall. (Well, it will make a change from snails and slugs.)

But in the meantime, a bigger problem has arisen in our camper van. We’ve acquired a couple of mice. At least our new kitchen lodger is flying solo, so we don’t have to worry about it breeding – but a pair of mice? Hmm. Now, where can I get a hungry cat?

Personal life

How to Make A Weather Forecast More Meaningful

Posted on October 2, 2011July 18, 2016 by Debbie Young

“Are pirates real, Mummy?” my daughter asks out of the blue one day.

As a child I lay awake in fear at night worrying about Captain Hook, so I’m anxious to allay her fears.

“No, darling, they’re only in stories like Peter Pan.”

A few days later, the BBC Radio 4 lunchtime news scuppers my deception with a pirate attack off the coast of Somalia. Laura looks at me accusingly.

“Oh, but they’re not pirates like Captain Hook,” I try to reassure her. “And there aren’t any in this country, anyway.”

The trouble lies in the terms of reference. To Laura, all pirates have wooden legs, parrots and hook hands, not motor launches and polybags of heroin.

The same problem crops up with the weather forecast. One morning the radio alarm wakes us up with a report about a tornado in Birmingham.

“But you told me we don’t get tornados in this country!”

“Well, not big ones, like the one in The Wizard of Oz,” I explain. “In Birmingham, there won’t have been any cattle swept up into the sky or barns blown flat – it will just have seemed a bit windy.”

Despite my attempt at reassurance, Laura is on the lookout for flying houses all day.

These national reporters of news and weather have a lot to answer for. They bandy about terms that may make good radio but which mean very little to us normal human beings. And when they do come up with a clear, evocative description – such as the infamous “barbecue summer” that the weathermen have been promising us these last two years – their promises usually turn out to be false. (Or maybe weather forecasters like barbecuing on cold rainy days. I suppose it would minimise the risk of starting a forest fire.)

So for this autumn I’ve formulated some new definitions that are much more meaningful to those of us living in the Cotswolds. Not for me the Richter scale of earthquakes (I was disappointed to find a friend experiencing a 4.5 reported in Amsterdam did not feel the earth move). Nor the anthropomorphising of hurricanes. Calling the latest one Irene did nothing to make her more amendable to my American friends stockpiling groceries and bottled water in their cellars. No, I’ll be using terms of reference that relate directly to what I see when I look out of my cottage window.

First, there’s the Tetbury Wind Scale. Force 1: autumn leaves are becalmed on trees. Force 2: a breeze flaps them about a bit. Force 3: the leaves depart the tree before their time. Force 4: twigs are blown down too. Force 5: look out! Bigger sticks are falling from the sky. Force 6: wind enough to fell a whole branch. Force 7: and the rest of the tree as well – beware of them on the roads as you drive to work. Force 8: Uh oh! Westonbirt Arboretum’s had to close while they make it safe – but there could be some nice carved wooden souvenirs on sale next summer.

Then there’s the Gloucestershire Snow Scale. Force 1 and we all just think how pretty it is, especially on the fields and trees. Force 2: we can still go about our daily business provided we take it slowly. By Force 4, only the 4x4s can make it through the lanes. Force 8 and you’ll need to find a friendly farmer and borrow his tractor.

And then there’s my Cotswold Drystone Wall weather gauge. Force 1 means you’ll spot the odd little trickle of tiny stones after a mild frost, whereas Force 8 is an avalanche: whole walls tumbling down either side of every main road. This in turn is a harbinger of a spring spent admiring the day-to-day progress of the skilled and hardy stone wallers repairing it as you drive to work.

I just hope it’s not going to be another Pothole Winter.

(This post was originally written for the October 2011 edition of The Tetbury Advertiser.)