Zululand

The Battle of Isandhlwana by Charles Edwin Fripp

On the afternoon of 22^ndJanuary 1879 the might of the Zulu nation wiped out a British army column. Later that night further action took place with more bloodshed. In the evening, conditions in one field hospital were appalling. There was one toilet and one cooking stove. There was a single surgeon to care for twenty-nine soldiers recovering from combat injuries or illness. There were limited medicines. Then the hospital was attacked and the thatch roof caught fire. Temperatures inside reached 48 degrees. This was the next Zulu assault, now at Rorke’s Drift in Natal, South Africa.

Within a week news had spread of the earlier crushing and embarrassing defeat of the British army at Isandhlwana. This was quickly pushed aside by stories of the later courageous rebuff. Then came the books, and then came the films. After those came the construction of myths.

Who were these magnificent warriors? They were amongst the most strongly built inhabitants of Africa. “Their system was based upon an effective combination of universal military service and obligatory blood-lust. No Zulu was considered to be a man until he had ‘washed his spear in blood’.“ They measured their wealth in heads of cattle. Their kings were pugnacious both politically and culturally. To this day they are a successful tribe, described by my Africa born niece as loud, adorable and arrogant.

I am of the generation of English brought up in the 1950s on war films that depict British bravery and pluck. Most were filmed in monochrome and starred John Mills, Harry Andrews or Alec Guinness. They were gritty, dour portrayals of famous battles when the Allies won, often against superior troops. At the age of fourteen I went to see a different film, Zulu. It is dramatic and hardboiled. It’s difference being it was filmed in colour. What stood out was the red coats of the British soldiers, their starkly white pith helmets, the magnificent brown torsos of the Zulus and the glistening blood. It is gory, cruel and unrealistically romantic. The distinctive musical soundtrack is by John Barry. This film made a big impression on me. I promised myself that one day I would visit the site of this battle.

In December 1982 I made my first visit to South Africa. Despite making attempts to travel north from Durban to Rorke’s Drift I failed to make the trip. One day I shall, I thought, one day. That day came in November 2019, a day when the thermometer didn’t reach double digits and the rain came slashing sideways from the Oskaberg hill. Not until I was embarked on this expedition did I realise the significance of the defence of Rorke’s Drift in 1879. In reality, it had little significance on the passage of events that followed. Yet the outcome of the defence had made an impact back in Britain far greater than the actual subsequent operations in the war in South Africa. Before planning this latest journey I had barely heard of the battle for Isandhlwana (that is, apart from Richard Burton’s rich voiceover in the film). Oh but how that name takes hold of my senses now.

The result of the first action on 22^nd January exposed the arrogance and incompetence that senior British Army officers could demonstrate. There was incompetence in getting basic tactics correct in preparing for a battle that they knew was imminent. Petty rivalry and niggling personal slights played a part. I find all this barely understandable in a military force that had swept aside opposition in other parts of the Empire. A lack of true leadership shown by Lord Chelmsford, when coupled with his lackadaisical communications skills, produced disastrous consequences. With the sheer number of representatives of the Imperial Crown in the Cape, there was plentiful intelligence on the Zulus. Chelmsford, through hubris or lack of nous, chose to think he knew best. He should have known that successive Zulu chiefs from Dingiswayo, then Shaka, Dingane, Mpande and Cetshwayo had brought stealth and passion to unifying the Zulu clans into a potent warrior force. To me, Chelmsford wantonly underestimated the sophistication of the Zulu.

My two days exploration of both battle sites of Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift left me with a sense of great tragedy. A legacy of violence hangs over this land a hundred and forty years later. In 1879 service in the British Army in South Africa was not for the faint hearted. It was rough, often hopeless and for far too many, fatal. Officers and men, (there were few notable women in this quest to expand the British Empire), were facing Impis whose lives were based totally on combat. King Shaka ruthlessly forged a single nation of warriors whose manhood could only be proved in washing the spears. There is at least one notable woman in the background; Shaka’s mother Nandi, who in her girlhood was a “wild, strong-willed maiden”, influenced much of Shaka’s youthful development. Zulus grew up in the embrace of a binary culture of farming and warfare. If the redcoats came to steal their land and cows they must be killed. And not just killed; they were eviscerated. This was to let the evil spirits out and cleanse the body.

When the British forces were overrun by the traditional ‘horns of the bull’ formation of Zulus at Isandhlwana the death toll of Europeans was 858 alone. By dusk there were over 3,500 bodies - including Natal Kaffirs and the fallen Zulus - strewn across the land. Blood permeated the earth all the way to Fugitive’s Drift, a crossing over the Buffalo River five miles away. The river formed the border between Natal and Zululand. Fifty-five survivors of the battle attempted to ford the river in the belief they would be safe on the Natal side. Two of the ardent would-be heroes were named Neville Coghill and Teignmouth Melville. Melville had rescued the Queen’s Colour from the battlefield; it brought dishonour to the whole regiment if a Colour was lost. He reached the river with another soldier and attempted to cross with the cumbersome Colour. Midstream they got into difficulty when their horses were disabled. Meanwhile, an injured and incapacitated Coghill, still mounted, had reached the river ahead of Melville and had reached the Natal bank. Seeing that Melville was in trouble Coghill forced his horse back into the river in an attempt to rescue Melville and the Colour. Coghill’s horse was shot and he was thrown into the water. Despite pulling Melville out of the water they were too exhausted and injured to climb far up the bank to safety. They were both hacked to pieces by Zulus who had followed them through the water. The Colour disappeared off downstream but was recovered later.

I found my way to a steep bank overlooking the Drift. There is a cross here overlooking the river that commemorates the two officers. I spent a while surveying the scene of desperation and bloodletting, reflecting on the horrors experienced by men who thought they had survived the main battle. Lt. Coghill and Lt. Melville were the first two recipients of a posthumous Victoria Cross. (A regulation stipulating that the V.C. could only be awarded to living souls changed in 1907.)

The attack on Rorke’s Drift should never have happened. The Zulu chief Cetshwayo had instructed his reserve impis, who had not fought at Isandhlwana, not to pursue the fleeing British and cross the Buffalo into Natal. The leader of the 4,000 reservists was Dabulamanzi kaMpande. Disobeying Cetshwayo his impi wanted to prove themselves in battle and set off towards Rorke’s Drift that they knew to be occupied by the British. When they arrived there, some ten miles from Isandhlwana, they found the small settlement, a Swedish Mission station. (Otto Witt had taken it over when the founder, an Irishman named James Rorke, died in 1875.)

There were three officers at Rorke’s Drift to whom the eventual defeat of the Zulus can be attributed: James Dalton, John Chard and Gonville Bromhead (played by Dennis Folbigge, Stanley Baker and Michael Caine in the 1964 film that was in an inaccurate representation of the actual battle). They were junior, inexperienced and yet highly organised officers doing a job that was largely driven by common sense. In the context of the entire British war with the Zulus they ended up as minor characters. Fortunately, Dalton in particular possessed a type of strategic brain that was missing in those officers in the main army ten miles away earlier in the day of 22^nd January 1879.

The Zulu impi arrived late in the afternoon. By 9:30 the next morning 300 Zulus lay dead, many more were mortally wounded. Just 17 British troops died. There was one man, John Williams, whose behaviour in the defence of the hospital stands out. To me he was a hero. The makeshift field hospital was made up of a number of rooms that were not connected. Once the Zulus had set fire to the thatch roof the only exit from these rooms was onto a veranda; but this was occupied by the rampaging native fighters. 

So Williams took up a pickaxe and forced a hole in the room he was in and dragged through the hole the ill patients to the next room. All the while the temperature was nearing 50 degrees. He proceeded to make two more holes in neighbouring rooms, collecting more patients as he went, before escaping out of a window in the side of the building. As our party made its way around the recreation of the hospital at Rorke’s Drift, I could only wonder in horror of the conditions Williams was working in and admire the guts and bravery of the man. He was one of eleven men awarded the Victoria Cross that night.

For those British serving in South Africa the action at Rorke’s Drift quickly passed into history. The Zulu army, having experienced triumph at Isandhlwana, never recovered from the reverse it suffered later that night. The battles and skirmishes that followed brought more personal stories that cling to this landscape. Into the picture stride two men with the stout British names of Redvers Buller and Chops Mossop.

With a fellow officer, Brigadier General Evelyn Wood, Buller had a plan to take on 1,000 Zulus camped on a plateau at Hlobane. Accounts of the battle describe the valiant attempts by Buller, on horseback, leading his men up steep crags to scale the mountain. First Buller attacked from the east, then from the west. All night his troop fought in an electric storm. Flashes of lightening highlighted Buller’s whereabouts to the impi who quickly moved to cut the soldiers off. Mossop was a trooper mounted on an extraordinary horse called Warrior. Multiple times Mossop and Warrior rode round crags to encounter groups of Zulus. Through a close rapport between rider and horse they escaped each brush with death. Inevitably Mossop and Warrior were wounded by the Zulu assegais and both became exhausted. Warrior’s saddletree was broken and gouged into his withers. Despite the horse’s pain and Mossop’s smashed arm they eventually reached the safety of the nearby camp at Kambula. The next morning Mossop went to examine his poor horse. “He found Warrior lying down and obviously far gone. Chops knelt and took his head in his lap; the horse recognised him, whinnied once and died.”

Through that night Buller had ridden up and down his lines of troops, constantly urging his men on. Frequently they rode in to Zulus who had by now surrounded the British on the plateau. Buller fought, rode, harried and numerous times rescued one of his men from being hacked to pieces. For his work that day and night, Redvers Buller was awarded the V.C.

For fifty-five years since watching that film I had a yearning to know more about the war’s characters. Some of them have now brought this landscape alive for me. Their stories add a sense of romance, pain and irony to the living land, now managed by ancestors of warriors that fought in 1879. In 2019 I met Mphiwa Ntanzi, whose grandfather and great-grandfather both fought for Cetshwayo at Isandhlwana.  Mphiwa conducted our visit to the battle site. He speaks with passion and clarity, using the inimitable clicking consonants, a feature of the Khoisan group of languages. From the back of his throat comes the sound of a spear thrust forward into a British belly and then the flesh sucking at the blade as it is withdrawn. He became excited, transfixed almost, at the telling of the events which he has done so many times. He embodies today a pride in the Zulu impis that inflicted defeat on the power of the British Empire. To my way of thinking it is entirely right that he feels this passion. I rejoice in his people’s hour of glory that was fairly won in battle. At this time in our lives of reassessing the force of imperialist white men powering their way into black lives and their land, the history of the Zulu nation is worthy of a deeper reflection.

Mphiwa - his grandfather fought here

Another contemporary figure in this landscape is Douglas Rattray, a historian at Fugitive’s Drift. His father David established a guest’s lodge at Fugitive’s Drift in 1989. David, Douglas and Mphiwa acquired a shared passion for telling the stories of the men who fought over the Ntanzis’ landscape. They have shared a keenness for the oral tradition of Zulu history. All around we found reminders of the tragedies surrounding the men who died a mile from here on 22^nd January 1879. I found no jingoism within Douglas and Mphiwa. That is one of the beautiful aspects to spending time with them. They helped me understand what Chard, Bromhead and Ntanzi lived through on 22^nd January 1879 and also the part the landscape played and how it presents today a window into the awful events that day.

I found it both exciting and humbling to tread the ground which 140 years ago hosted great drama and feats of almost unbelievable human endeavour. Beneath the field at Isandhlwana lie the bones of men slaughtered in the pursuit of an age-old desire for land. For the British it was also action to gain supremacy over a native (and by implication inferior) race. For the Zulus, they wanted to farm. Yet, maybe for a race whose instinct was to fight, that was not enough. The conclusion of the war was a terrible outcome for the Zulus and South Africa, the legacy of which lasts to this day. I think back to my visits to Soweto and the townships at Cape Flats.

With our sundowners in hand my wife and I looked out from Fugitive’s Drift west to Rorke’s Drift and north to Isandhlwana and contemplated what we felt. Today there is just wilderness. Where the gently undulating terrain in 1879 was carpeted in scrub, today it is covered with stubby trees and bushes. The sphinx’s head of Isandhlwana Mountain still rises up above a landscape now largely devoid of human drama. The rolling hills are peppered with small settlements providing home for descendants of the warriors, perpetuating a vigil over a graveyard of ghosts.

There are many books, (some listed below), films and articles devoted to both the history of the Anglo-Zulu wars and the military men who fought in them. Deliberately I have not recounted the detail of the battles – these books do a comprehensive job of that. Yet what none of them did for me was get under the skin of the people described, nor do they convey the passion and culture of the individuals taking part. (Unlike so many accounts of the Somme battles that portray the human experience of warfare.) Nor do they weld together successfully the lives of exceptional human beings to a distant land and interpret the impact of one on the other. This land reshaped the lives of Cetshwayo, Ntanzi, Coghill, Melville, Dalton, Chard, Bromhead, Buller and Mossop as they became defined through their actions in Zululand. It seems to me that the British action was carried out in the name of hypocrisy. Many of the politicians and top military brass in London cared little for the quest for even more British Empire in remote country north of the Cape. William Gladstone said of South Africa “we have chosen most unwisely…to place ourselves in the strange predicament of the free subjects of a monarchy going to coerce the free subjects of a republic”.

Boers and British imposed a terrible life on native Africans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their imperial ambitions did not start out with a desire to subdue the Zulu, but that ended up being a consequence. The Dutch, British, German and Chinese settlers and conscripts who followed the ‘discovery’ of the Cape, raped the land between the Indian Ocean and the riches of the Transvaal and left it a poorer place. There is no gold here, nor precious stones. Maybe the Zulu nation, founded and built up on the basis of tilling the land and warfare, could not prosper after the arrival of men and women from Europe with a colossus of white civilisation. The Zulus are still largely based in the Natal landscape. They still have a king. Zulu is still the most widely spoken language in southern Africa, their tribe the largest. Zulu society has not changed much since the time of Shaka. Then the chiefs had land and cattle. Now they have land and a fancy car. The lack of both employment (in the modern sense) and a universal wealth from farming is keeping many Zulus oppressed. So they hang on to the past and in the process feel free of development and the threat of change. These proud African people deserve a better life than the one the white men bequeathed.

Bibliography

The Last Zulu King; the life and death of Cetshwayo; C.T. Binns; 1963

The Washing of the Spears: the rise and fall of the Zulu nation; Donald R. Morris; 1965

Heaven’s Command; an Imperial Progress; James Morris; 1973

The Covenant; James A. Michener; 1980

The Curling Letters of the Zulu War; ed. Adrian Greaves & Brian Best; 2001

Zulu Rising; Ian Knight, 2011

Zulu Warriors; the battle for the South African Frontier; John Laband; 2014

With special thanks to Shelley Pomeroy.

A virus on the landscape 4 - isolamento

Where's the vodka?

Day 41

Charlie, the goat, and I made up over the gate this morning. I know he has forgiven me for hobnobbing with the ewes; he wagged his tail and ran across his field to greet me.

It is yet another beautiful spring morning, even warm at an early hour. The seedlings are struggling because it is so dry. Rain is forecast for three days time.

Last night I was in Paris in the spring sunshine, with Chief Inspector Maigret in Maigret’s Pickpocket. He spends a lot of time in bars. Like Inspector Montalbano he likes his food and drink. In this latest episode Madame Rose at the Vieux-Pressoir cooks him chaudrée fourassiene – a soup made of eels, baby soles and squid. After that Rose brings him a leg of lamb all washed down with two carafes of red. Phew! Then he went back to work in search of the murderer.

Day 42

Rain, rain, there’s glorious rain. We had all of two millimeters last night. This was just enough to wet the soil.

Headmaster Boris is back in school. He will be chasing up the monitors and checking what damage they have done in his absence.

Day 43

Today I am in Sanwi, a kingdom of the Ivory Coast. After the president of Belarus, whose panacea for dealing with the virus is to drink lots of vodka, the King of Sanwi has made his contribution to the list of global remedies. He will order a line of naked women to parade before him and his people to ward off the virus – allegedly he believes the girls will protect him from the bad spirits. Now, in the post-Harvey Weinstein world in which we live such an idea would best not be proposed in this country. However, in the completely unequal society that is Britain where the male sex is downtrodden, I am sure it won’t be long before a woman columnist of a British broadsheet will suggest the Chippendales perform in public to uplift spirits – and nobody, apart from a few balanced males like me (of course), will object.

Ah well, such are the complexities and contradictions of living in an advanced, liberal and civilized democracy, we shut this from our thoughts and decide on a long walk to Rougemont Castle.

The castle is an early medieval earth and timber ringwork fortress, founded by the de Lisles family in the fourteenth century. The manor of Rougement was abandoned in 1366, when Harewood House was built. The ruins rest on the north bank of the River Wharfe. Today the floor of the wood surrounding it looks like an illustration from a book of children’s nursery rhymes; it is carpeted with English bluebells. (Unlike our orchard that is carpeted with the Spanish variety.)

Rain is on its way.

Rougemont wood

Day 44

For the first time since incarceration commenced we are literally confined to quarters. It has rained most of the day. Yippee. The patch will be getting a good soaking and my King Edwards will be relieved of their thirst. The water butts will be replenished for the first time since March.

I turn to a new book that was featured in a newspaper today as one of the best books written about football. I have had a copy of The Football Man by Arthur Hopcraft in my library since 1970. I am only now enjoying lucid prose about George Best, Matt Busby, a young Ken Bates, referees and corruption in the game in the 1960s. I remember well the scandal brought on the game by three Sheffield Wednesday players.

Day 45

Today I write about my experience of visiting Zululand last year. This is part of preparing a longer piece on the Anglo-Zulu war, the futility of the battles, the arrogance and incompetence shown by Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford in January 1879 and the pride of a living Zulu man. The flow of what I wish to say is not coming easily. I have in my head the substance of the piece – the story of men making war in an inhospitable landscape – but getting the balance right is not happening.

I break off to cut rhubarb and make another crumble.

Day 46

It is cool and damp this morning but we have had little rain. The veg seeds are thirsty. I decide they are very particular. They don’t like tap water, only rain.

A comic I play golf with liked my Ogden Nash poem and has sent me one that his family had about a bird:

Poor little thing

Had no feathers on his wing

Had no mummy, had no daddy

Chop his bloody head off.

This morning our garden has been visited by birds we see rarely, making bold with our bird feeder: a jay, a great spotted woodpecker and several thrushes. All have their heads intact.

Day 49

Charlie and I have come to the conclusion that sheep are dim-witted animals. They have all the grass in our paddock to eat yet they force their heads through netting to eat dead wood. On the plus side they like to play golf. My tub of golf balls has always been upended by them each morning.

The Tall Man in the village asks me to play tennis. This turns out to be a good work out for 35 minutes followed by a socially distanced beer on his terrace for an hour afterwards. Because he is in the at risk category of citizens he sought the permission to play with me from his haematologist. She gave him the thumbs up.

Day 50

Half a century of days incarcerated.

Headmaster Boris has named his sixth child Wilfred; that is a solidly English name.

Day 51

On the morning field walk I inform Charlie that we may have to stop being up close and personal from now on. He is not impressed as he enjoys the morning head scratch I give him. I tell him that President Magufuli of Tanzania claims that a goat and a sheep tested positive for Covid-19. Charlie’s owner works in the NHS so we’ll order a goat testing kit.

We have to feel sympathy for my sister and her husband in South Africa. They are down to their last slug of gin! Beer gone. Wine gone. Currently it is forbidden to buy alcohol in Durban. Booze is only sold in bottle shops, not in supermarkets, and they are all closed and her stocks are gone. She does have a cunning plan though. She knows that in the ladies’ lounge at the golf club there is a secret stash of wine, (well it was secret), that only she and the captain know about. I shan’t be surprised when she is sent to Robben Island to serve a 10-year sentence for breaking and entering.

Day 52

The days tick by but there is optimism in the golfing fraternity that two-ball games will be allowed and we can get playing again soon. So it is tennis again today.

Day 53

Poor Charlie is one confused goat. Two days ago I told him we had to keep two metres apart at all times. This morning, I not only gave him a hug but also offered him a tumbler of vodka. The problem is the politicians. It usually is. You listen to one and you feel compelled to listen to the next one. The presidents of Tanzania and Belarus are not singing from the same hymn sheet. Tanzania thinks goats should be SD’d as they can get the pesky virus; Belarus says I should hug them and swig vodka.

My vote goes to Belarus.

Day 54

The routine of incarceration is broken – I even forget to walk the bounds and talk with Charlie – by the arrival of a ‘man-with-digger’. We have a dozen tree stumps in out hedge line that are being removed. A stone wall will be constructed in place. It is most exciting.

The BBC is going in for some jingoism today by replaying the 2005 Ashes Test at Edgbaston on the wireless. It could almost be real summer with the voices of Jonathan Agnew and Glenn Maxwell bringing the drama of 15 years ago. Strewth, how time flies.

Day 55

More and more I come to detest the BBC TV news. The editors are wallowing in the story of the path the virus is taking us. Instead of just reporting the facts they must speculate on what the government will say or do next. I doubt the Headmaster even knows that! I also hate the word ‘lockdown’. I cannot get out of my head a sense of the British people being herded indoors and the key turned, and left in a state of submission. We are all to be good citizens; you cannot make your own mind up on Headmaster Boris or new man Starmer. We are going to lock you up and brainwash you. We shall repeat what we just told you until you scream.

I much prefer an Italian word – isolamento. Like all things Italian the word has style, musical rhythm and a sense of individualism that ‘lockdown’ just does not have. Besides, when push comes to shove, the English are not a submissive lot. The Scots maybe, but not the English.

Day 56

I maintain the air of excitement after the re-landscaping of the orchard – the digger has gone - by driving to Otley to deliver presents to Otley Grump and his wife: a book and a bottle of gin. For the evening Zoom drinks party OG makes a ‘Gin Mule’ cocktail that is supposed to have a slice of cucumber in it. Only he mistakes a courgette for a cucumber – ‘an administrative error’ he reports.

It is a hot day and the May blossom in the hedgerows is beautiful.

Day 57

The summer of yesterday has given way to the winter of today. The thermometer reads 7 degrees.

But no matter, the school population is abuzz with gossip and conjecture; Headmaster Boris has let it be known he wishes to give a lecture to the whole school tonight. We suspect it is because some naughty pupils have been caught outside the school boundaries and we are to receive a severe telling off. There are even rumours that we are all to be gated for another month. If that is the case I predict an outbreak of student disobedience and rioting. It could make Lindsay Anderson’s film from 1968, If, look tame by comparison. Who will be our Mick, aka Malcolm McDowell?

Day 58

Headmaster Boris’s lecture left me a bit confused. Can we drive to see our grandchildren or not? Can I play golf this week or not? I think it would have been better if he had joined up with Headmaster Kier, head of the rapidly improving comprehensive school across town. Together they would have reached out to all the miscreants breaking the regulations.

The local garden centre is open so Liza and I go to buy plants and compost. The manager says the police have given the green light to open last week.

Day 59

The Headmaster is showing his sporty side by telling us that we can put our games kit back on – but only if we are playing golf, tennis or fishing. That not only pleases me but my neighbour, the owner of the Mules, and the tall Man. If we don’t behave ourselves on the pitch – and keep 2 metres apart from our opponents – then games will be off again says Boris.

When the embargo is lifted at 5:00 p.m. the scramble to book a tee time on the golf course website is frenetic. Dozens of us must have been logged in, ready to pounce on the online diary when the clock struck 5, then we were in, fending off other members for the slot we want. I am fortunate to book three games this week; the maximum one member can play.

Just our luck it might snow tomorrow, it is cold enough.

Day 60

Am I dreaming, did I really play golf today – for the first time in 8 weeks – or was it real? It was real what a way to celebrate our diamond jubilee of isolamento.

The Man from Blythe and I strode the green, parched fairways – always 2 metres apart of course. Oh what joy, what release, what fun to hear that north-eastern wit again. We are definitely through the end of the beginning of this national incarceration. It could be we are now at the start of the endgame. (Note to self: better thank the Headmaster this evening on behalf of thousands who played tennis or golf today.)

When I return to the garden in the afternoon to share my joy with Charlie he is far from impressed. I failed for the first time in 60 days to walk the estate and give him his early morning greeting. He knows I preferred golf to him.

Charlie is miffed. Not good to have a miffed goat as a neighbour. I will have to make amends with an early walk in the morning.

Miffed goat

A virus on the landscape 3 - Easter lock-in

 

Day 24
In the misnamed Land of the Free (people are anything but), or Land of the Blond Cuckoo, the toll of deaths in New York is horrifying. So much for the country being open again by Easter - which is what their delusional, mendacious and bad president promised a few weeks ago. Bernie Sanders has realized he cannot gain enough delegates to win the Democrat nomination for president. He has ‘suspended’ his campaign. In other words he wants to spoil Mr. Biden’s party at the convention.

I plant some chard seeds.

Day 25

Today is Good Friday. In normal circumstances millions of people would be driving to the country’s national parks to explore the British landscape. In Wales the police report they will arrest people trying to do what comes as instinctive in this season. It is a sad time when town dwellers cannot go and get some pure oxygen into their lungs. Having always had space around me, even when I lived in a city, I am heartbroken for urban people confined to quarters in this beautiful spring weather.

I remember an old wives’ tale relates that whoever in the household sows parsley on Good Friday, wears the trousers; and, it is alleged, Good Friday is the only day that Satan has no jurisdiction over my veg patch. Neither of us sows parsley.

I plant lettuce seeds. I think neither Satan nor God are watching.

Moreporks in Queenstown prison

Day 26

I am starting to feel how a caged bird must feel when confined to an aviary. I remember the Kiwi Birdlife Park near Bob’s Peak in Queenstown, New Zealand. Seeing moreporks^ looking down at us with glazed eyes from high up in their boxes was saddening. They had a small area in which to fly but what was the point? There was nowhere to go. There was no way they could spend time with others, go for a nice long fly or visit the golf course. It makes me think that in this age, when computer imagery can provide all experiences in education about natural history a child can need, we should free every bird held in captivity.

Anyway, lots of citizens will be feeling like moreporks.

Day 27

I am in Australia today. Not literally, but we were supposed to be coming to the end of our fourth week in Woodend, Victoria. As a bit of relief from the intensity of reading about the history of the Zulu nation in The Washing of the Spears, I have sought Australian contemporary drama and crime with Truth by Peter Temple. A newspaper columnist this week places this book in his top ten best crime novels published. Temple wrote two other crime novels set in Melbourne. They are good reads once you fathom the Aussie cop lingo.

I am also in Australia in my head, enjoying being with our Matthew, his wife and the grandchildren. And going for walks along the tracks into the forest, listening to my favourite Aussie bird, the Magpie, issuing its ‘bottom of the bottle’ warble.

Day 28

We walk for two hours across the silent fields and parched earth. The crops that broke through the earth two weeks ago are stuck. It is cold today. Spring is suspended.

A friend who lives in rural, southern France wrote to me this week: “Enforced isolation has prompted an increased awareness of my surroundings - the blue skies are empty of vapour trails - we are 33,800 feet below the Madrid-Mahon and the Lisbon- Berlin flight paths and so many others that crisscross the sky above us. Our rural solitude is enhanced by the Jackhammer drill sound of the woodpeckers, the cry of the circling buzzards and since last weekend the call of the cuckoo.” It sounds wonderful. We were booked to go and stay with him and his wife in June en route to Lago di Bolsena. C’est la vie.

Day 29

School prefect Raab, (Headmaster Boris is released from hospital and recuperating in the sanatorium), says today we have at least three more weeks confined to quarters. Despite not being able to play golf I think we can manage that. There is still much to be done in the veg patch, the kitchen and the reading room. My shelf of new books is still crammed. There are histories on: (OIiver) Cromwell’s England, Vietnam, Arnhem, Dresden, the Silk Roads, the wars for the American West, the wars at the Democratic party’s convention in 1968, the East India Company, the last of the Tsars and Brian Clough. There is fiction about or by (Thomas) Cromwell’s England, Maigret’s Paris, Anthony Trollope, Robert Harris, Dorothy Sayers and Brian Clough.

We just need some rain for the patch.

Day 30

Spring is reactivated, as the wind swings round to the southwest. It is time to plant more potatoes and the remainder of the veg seeds.

Day 31

Despite dawn until dusk sunshine and warm temperatures the mood is darker today. We have at least three more weeks of this incarceration. I avoid the newspapers’ obsessive reporting of the virus. I leave the radio silent. But then DB sends a copy of a report from the Henry Jackson Society entitled, Coronavirus Compensation? Assessing China’s Culpability and Avenues of Legal Response. Nobody locked in at home can ignore the economic cost of this experience. It is true that China does not play by the same rules of international law that we, in the so-called West, expect other nations to play by. China appears to have no regard for a rules-based international system. So it is all too easy to think that China IS culpable and this year it is kick-starting its march towards global supremacy.

Some commentators on the current position are getting itchy feet. They want a lifting of the barricade. They want to start re-building lives and economies. It might also be time to examine the case against China.

To soften the mood I plant seeds of French bean and Sweet Pea.

Day 32

Every morning on my walk around the ‘estate’ since the first seed sowing I stop to look for the first signs of chitting. I am dubious that the leeks are showing, also the carrots. It is so cold at nights I am not surprised. I just hope the seeds did not get frosted this week.

Day 33

I find it difficult to believe we are up to Day 33 since our cancelled flight to Melbourne and subsequent incarceration at home. I make my first visit to a supermarket. This is hardly an exciting excursion. We have to queue to enter the building. I walk around shying away from other shoppers. They shy away from me. One of them could poison me with the virus. They probably think the same about me. I want to escape.

Day 34

One newspaper headline this morning reads seventy year olds could have to be locked in for twelve months. I don’t think I could stand that. I would have to break out. On the morning Zoom call with the family we learn that Australia could prevent incoming flights for the remainder of this year. That is too awful to contemplate.

I feel a lack of making plans. Part of the joy of life is having something to look forward to. Seeing the grandchildren – in Leeds, Leicestershire and Australia – and doing things with them has become a large part of our lives. Not knowing when we can resume this ‘essential activity’  - I hope you read this Headmaster - has created a void, for them and us.

Day 35

Today I am transported to the garden at Trelissick at Feock in Cornwall. In 1974, during our first stay at Crantock after our marriage, we visited National Trust gardens in May. (My dear wife had just given me a life membership of the NT at a cost of £75!) Trelissick’s aspect is south over the estuary called Carrick Roads. This is the dreamily romantic landscape of a pirate in Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier, the King Harry ferry and our lazy cream teas in St Mawes. Azaleas and rhododendrons thrive here and there is one yellow variety, rhododendron luteum, which has a fragrant and exotic smell. Years later I bought a shrub of the same genus, planted in half a beer barrel on our terrace. It has just come into bloom. I stop to sniff it each morning; thus am I back in Trelissick.

The gloom concerning the unknowing when this lock in will be relieved is lifted by our holding an illicit tea party for six in our garden. Today is our neighbour’s birthday. She lives alone, is a very sociable person under normal circumstances and someone who prefers the company of others to her own. Cakes had been baked and we sit two metres apart in our summerhouse and orchard, buttoned up against the cold East wind.

Day 36

It is five weeks ago today that we were due to fly to Australia. We are still sad at the missed trip. The pattern of life is now becoming a trifle tedious for the first time. However, we have some welcome visitors to our landscape. Our neighbouring farmer has half his flock of sheep in his field next to ours. So, we open the gate and I now have twenty-five Mules* to talk to as I work in the patch.

The peas, onions and leeks are showing above the ground. At long last there is some daily growth in the produce to spot. Yet, as we have had no rain in April I have to water all the seedbeds every evening. The first harvested produce of the year is the rhubarb. A crumble is in the oven cooking.

We have another illicit tea party with friends the other side of the village. Being model citizens we sit two metres apart as we look out across the stunningly beautiful Wharfedale valley.

'We gated too?"

Day 37

On the early morning walk around the paddock I am followed by the twenty-five Mules. It’s a bit like Grandmother’s Footsteps; I walk, they walk. I stop and look around and they stop. I start, they start. Charlie the goat gives me the cold shoulder as if to say: “get you and your new women friends”. He turns away and does not greet me.

I am now reading Trollope – Anthony, not Joanna. My mother was a keen reader of his novels. I am slightly ashamed to admit that nearly twenty years after her death I am only now getting round to reading such delicious prose. The Warden is full of satirical references to the Church of England, Fleet Street and the Bar. What obnoxious men are the Archdeacon and John Bold. Yet it reminds me that the Church of England is being very quiet in the current state of affairs. I am so heartily tired of the television news coverage of CV I long for some juicy bits of distracting news. News such as Kim Jong-un having gone missing in North Korea, which is fascinating. I would welcome some sage words from the Archbishop of Canterbury. As Trollope might have written: the church is full of aristocratic souls, men and women not in want of wisdom, but able to share with the common man some advice on how to make life a little more rewarding.

Day 38

Today I am in the Hebrides. I am grasping with forlorn anticipation thoughts of whatever new landscape I can. Our good friends are organizing a trip for the six participants in the current Saturday virtual drinks party. To look forward to a journey to the Western Isles, albeit in 12 months time, is a wonderful idea. We shall need to dust down our copy of Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore, a book I have read twice and shall enjoy again in 2021. As OTM says, my wife may be tempted to take up scuba diving to search for the remaining bottles of whisky lying at the bottom of the sea.

Day 39

I am off in Barsetshire again today. The warden is about to resign and the odious Archdeacon cannot stop him. Hurrah for the warden. Yah boo sucks to Mr Bold. On the other hand perhaps a modicum of reform was needed in the Church. On further thought, a bit more is still required today.

Headmaster Boris still has a sick note from matron. He has brought in an inspector from the Department of Science – which trumps everything Education and the Foreign Office have to offer – and Inspector Witty says I may have to be locked in for another 12 months. Bugger that I say.

Day 40

It’s day 40 already. I can’t say it has flown by. I am not a particularly religious soul – I like the Communion service using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer because of the words and implicit wisdom – yet I consider these forty days. Scholars of the Bible write “40 appears so often in contexts dealing with judgment or testing”. Yes, we are all being tested.  In Genesis, God destroyed the earth with water, bringing rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Could we have just a couple of day’s worth now please? In Exodus Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on Mount Sinai. It was all right for him; we may have to spend 80, 120 or 240 days and nights in our private abode.

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^ Morepork, ninox novaeseelandiae, is the only surviving native owl in New Zealand. The Maori name for the owl is ‘ruru’ comes from the sad song that is repeated at regular intervals.

* A mule is a cross between a Bluefaced Leicester ram and a Swaledale ewe.