FOXY TEDDINGTON

Staying on the subject of wild life, living in London’s suburbs has introduced us to the urban fox. The whiff of musk which we would cross at points on our Garth walks, is the prevalent perfume here. It’s ubiquitous. On closing our first floor bedroom curtains one evening last week I caught the upward stare of my first Teddington fox standing on a green patch in the communal gardens, with a, ‘Yeah?... And? Whatever,’ look, challenging me to close the curtains before he sloped off into the laurel hedge.

     The inhabitants of Harrowdene Gardens don’t leave their leftover pizzas out for foxy dinners.  They may not even eat pizza. I don’t know, I’ve stopped knocking on their doors to introduce myself.  But if I was delivering pizza perhaps they would answer their doors. Charles Forster in his recent, ‘Being a beast,’ attempted to get down on it with badgers, deer, otters and urban foxes, and found poking around London bins for pizza or curry leftovers particularly distressing. Clearly, he’d never been on a night out in Cardiff ending up in Caroline Street with the munchies.

      The Evening Standard has a current campaign to get out of date leftovers in the big supermarkets to homeless and poor Londoners. Don’t think the urban fox realises they aren’t included in the campaign, as I spied an empty take-away container (washed) and a couple of cardboard egg containers by the rose garden, abandoned once they saw they didn’t contain fresh chickens’ eggs, which their country cousins would have eaten straight from the coup.

     My second fox, sighted from our front room,  was limping badly, clearly in need of a hip replacement, which unless we change young doctors’ contracts she isn’t going to get on the NHS.

    Our guest, sleeping on an air bed in the front room and keen to get on with her day, opened the curtains early to see two young foxes, hunting collaboratively for breakfast.  Given the species are supposedly so clever, I wonder why they haven’t gone straight to the supermarket source or accost the Tesco delivery man when the food is fresh.   The Teddington fox is far too cool to ask. Now the Barnes fox is a different animal all together.      

THE DEER HUNTER

Living near Bushy Park, one of the Royal Parks, we're privileged to take our walks and cycle rides in the company of deer.  At the entrance we are reminded not to make contact, not to approach within ten metres or get between them and their young. Yesterday in the warm equinox sunlight and deep shadow, photographers were out in force making contact outside the defined safety limits.  Anything for a good photo, eh?  No, not just a good photo but an award winning photo. The shops in the high street are full of good photos of deer; on their own, resting with iconic antlers poking out of the long grass, like a Georgia O Keefe bone painting, groups of young fawn, nervous, twitching, their speckled backs merging in the autumnal hues or a single startled speciman. Even the local rugby club has an antler as their club motto and on their strip.  Boys cavort like young stags on the rugby pitch.

     In September and October there is a deer cull, which takes place after the park is closed.  I’m not sure how it works but firearms are involved. I imagine a specially commissioned possy of Scottish Highlanders in kilts and deer-stalker hats on their stomachs elbowing their way through the bleached grass like soldiers in search of the enemy.

      Lyme disease is prevalent in the park and tics need to be dealt with immediately.  I’m not sure if they are in the grass or fall from the trees but cycling through the park I make sure I keep my helmet on and avoid the long grass. That means I keep within the health and safety regs on at least two counts and lessen my anxiety of being charged by a bellowing stag who may not have noticed I’m outside the ten metre range, as he trundles across my path in, ‘I’m the king of the park-get out of my way,’ attitude.  I also carry a small tin of Vaseline, which is supposed to affixiate them. The tics of course.

        Deer have been in the park since Henry V111’s day, when he stocked his land with hare, rabbit, pheasant and deer for hunting and eating purposes. Not just one of each obviously.   At a recent talk on the history of Bushy Park by John Shaef, a local historian, we saw maps of how the park’s landscape hasn’t changed essentially since that time. Old Victorian photos of children feeding the deer, with captions such as, ’Oh dear!’ show how times have changed even if the landscape hasn’t.   Until recently the biggest cause of their death (besides culling) was car accidents. A major road goes right through the centre of the park. Now, according to an article in the London Evening Standard in nearby Richmond Park, it’s cyclists. Not by running them over, but by discarding their gel packs from races. Post-mortem examinations of deer have shown their stomachs full of litter. This clogs their digestion systems leading to starvation.  Rather like fish bloated with plastic in our oceans.

    So it was with great schadenfreude that I laughed to myself at an elder running through the long grass, her hand clasped on her handbag as if a stag was chasing her with a view to mugging. Then I realised it was a lovely Chinese woman who we’d met at Pilates at the Age UK Centre for Well Being.  She jumped like a startled young fawn when I shouted out her name, her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun, and surprisingly didn’t recognise us on our bikes as she’d only seen us rolling over on the floor doing pelvic muscle exercises on the one other occasion we’d met.   I even had to shout out our names to prompt her memory. She was most gracious and humoured us well even if she didn’t know who the hell we were.

 Next month is the rutting season, when I may have reason to be really afraid, that’s unless a lyme tic gets me first. 

THE DEER HUNTER

Living near Bushy Park, one of the Royal Parks, we're privileged to take our walks and cycle rides in the company of deer.  At the entrance we are reminded not to make contact, not to approach within ten metres or get between them and their young. Yesterday in the warm equinox sunlight and deep shadow, photographers were out in force making contact outside the defined safety limits.  Anything for a good photo, eh?  No, not just a good photo but an award winning photo. The shops in the high street are full of good photos of deer; on their own, resting with iconic antlers poking out of the long grass, like a Georgia O Keefe bone painting, groups of young fawn, nervous, twitching, their speckled backs merging in the autumnal hues or a single startled speciman. Even the local rugby club has an antler as their club motto and on their strip.  Boys cavort like young stags on the rugby pitch.

     In September and October there is a deer cull, which takes place after the park is closed.  I’m not sure how it works but firearms are involved. I imagine a specially commissioned possy of Scottish Highlanders in kilts and deer-stalker hats on their stomachs elbowing their way through the bleached grass like soldiers in search of the enemy.

      Lyme disease is prevalent in the park and tics need to be dealt with immediately.  I’m not sure if they are in the grass or fall from the trees but cycling through the park I make sure I keep my helmut on and avoid the long grass. That means I keep within the health and safety regs on at least two counts and lessen my anxiety of being charged by a bellowing stag who may not have noticed I’m outside the ten metre range, as he trundles across my path in, ‘I’m the king of the park-get out of my way,’ attitude.  I also carry a small tin of Vaseline, which is supposed to affixiate them. The tics of course.

        Deer have been in the park since Henry V111’s day, when he stocked his land with hare, rabbit, pheasant and deer for hunting and eating purposes. Not just one of each obviously.   At a recent talk on the history of Bushy Park by John Shaef, a local historian, we saw maps of how the park’s landscape hasn’t changed essentially since that time. Old Victorian photos of children feeding the deer, with captions such as, ’Oh dear!’ show how times have changed even if the landscape hasn’t.   Until recently the biggest cause of their death (besides culling) was car accidents. A major road goes right through the centre of the park. Now, according to an article in the London Evening Standard in nearby Richmond Park, it’s cyclists. Not by running them over, but by discarding their gel packs from races. Post-mortem examinations of deer have shown their stomachs full of litter. This clogs their digestion systems leading to starvation.  Rather like fish bloated with plastic in our oceans.

    So it was with great schadenfreude that I laughed to myself at an elder running through the long grass, her hand clasped on her handbag as if a stag was chasing her with a view to mugging. Then I realised it was a lovely Chinese woman who we’d met at Pilates at the Age UK Centre for Well Being.  She jumped like a startled young fawn when I shouted out her name, her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun, and surprisingly didn’t recognise us on our bikes as she’d only seen us rolling over on the floor doing pelvic muscle exercises on the one other occasion we’d met.   I even had to shout out our names to prompt her memory. She was most gracious and humoured us well even if she didn’t know who the hell we were.

 Next month is the rutting season, when I may have reason to be really afraid, that’s unless a lyme tic gets me first. 

TEDDINGTON- HELLOOOO?

Well, it’s happening. We’re here in Teddington. Been living in our new home for one whole week. It’s not quite back to my roots as I was brought up in Fulham, schooled in Battersea, and after living in Birmingham and several years abroad, lived back in Battersea before spending 37 years in the Taff Valley, South Wales. Well, that is with the exception of a year spent in Shetland.  It seems unbelievable that given my restless personality I could have sustained a life and been happy in the one place for so long.

     ‘Most people do it the other way-leave London for the country in retirement,’ ‘That must be very expensive,’ ‘You don’t sound Welsh,’ (to me)’You’ve only been here just a week and you’re coming to Pilates/Country Dancing/Welsh Choir, ‘ You want to shake up your life, eh?’ are a few of the  reactive comments we’ve had to our coming to live here. 

      People nod sweetly when we mention a daughter and a grandchild but we know that they are also wondering how we can afford to move into the wealthiest borough of London-Richmond-Upon Thames (RUT), where 69.8% of the population between 16 and 74 are in paid work. Unemployment is just 3%.   You’d have to be well off to survive here, life is expensive-no local Aldi or Lidl and until we get our Freedom passes for London transport, travelling by train up to Waterloo costs us each around £9 return.  Our intention is to have a year to 18 months out from our old life while we try and sell our house back in Taffs Well. To those of you wondering, we’re financing this year from our illicit earnings.

    According to an article, ‘Getting to know your Borough’ in TW11, an independent magazine for Teddington, inhabitants in RUT live a long and healthy life, nationally rated amongst the highest. ‘Affluence is cited as a major contributor, with wealthy inhabitants being less likely to smoke, drink and be overweight.’  

    In Rhondda Cynon Taff (RCT), one of the most deprived areas in the UK, people die young for the opposite reasons-inhabitants are more likely to smoke, drink and be overweight. I don’t know what the employment/unemployment figures are for RCT but they are probably one of polar opposites to RUT.  I guess it’s going to take a bit of time to adjust to this new identity and environment. Perhaps by the end of our time here I’ll have lose weight, given up drinking, and Rhys’ various ailments including plantar fasciitis, a painful foot condition may have gone away.

  

    We learnt from our year in Shetland that if you want to get to know people the first place to start is with the neighbours. But this isn’t Shetland, when on our first Saturday morning we knocked on  doors people did open them and say ‘Hello’. Some said ‘Welcome’ and two neighbours even said,      ‘Come on in, let me tell you where to get the bus and by the way here’s my life story while we’re at it.’  

    When we knocked on the doors of the five other flats in this block nobody opened their door. We’ve tried several times now. We know there are people living here cos we can here the front door slam and we’ve spied people going out from our front window.  The guy opposite leaves his trainers outside his door to fool us.  When I told my oldest school friend, who lives in Hackney,’ she said that knocking on people’s doors in London is a no-no.

     Last Friday we heard voices down below our sitting room and twitched the curtain to see two young men drinking large glasses of red wine and smoking at the edge of the communal garden. One of the young men had his shirt off to show off his angel and snake tattoos.  He turned to look up and I saw a tattooed gun on his upper arm. I quickly untwitched the curtain and got Rhys up from his chair to look at the loose wires hanging from below our flat. We’ve decided not to pursue door knocking as our main way to meet the neighbours.  Instead we’re going to try hanging out in the garbage room the night before the recycling is collected. 

     The next lesson from Shetland if you want to meet people when you don’t work is to join clubs or do courses. As we’re on a budget we’re looking for cheap/free clubs and courses, so I did research into The University of the Third Age and Age UK and came up with a variety of activities that might interest us. 

     When I called the class leaders, they all answered with,’Hellooo???’ as if nobody ever phoned them. The lady leading country dancing asked me how I’d got her number. When I told her it was on-line, she said,’ Oh, am I on-line? I didn’t know that.’ She then asked me if I’d done any folk dancing since school and I was thrown back to Miss Fournier, my PE teacher who was always reminding me to point my toes gracefully when I galloped down the line of my friends urging me on to mess up the dance. The lady had never heard of Circle Dancing.  Shirley, my circle dancing teacher would be quite hurt. She’s spent a lifetime getting people to dance in circles.

      In another phone call, the line went silent, and I said,’Hellooo???’  ‘Sorry,’ the chap said.’ I put the phone down while I was thinking what play we’re reading next session.’  ‘Who wrote Laburnham Grove?’ As if I knew. I’m sure he’ll remember by next month. When I enquired if I need to read the play beforehand, he assured me that the members like the surprise of reading the play afresh. Anyway, I’m sure he’ll remember the author by next month or the librarian will remind him. He’s ordered several copies from the local library for us.

     Rhys was somewhat disappointed by his visit to the London Welsh Centre.  We’d met by chance and the charms of our grandson a member on a birthday cruise up the Thames, and he suggested Rhys come along to join the choir. When he went into the lounge full of older people and greeted them in Welsh, they looked blank, and then one man said that he didn’t speak Welsh. Just like Taffs Well.  He was advised to go to the bar and there he found a lovely young Welsh speaker who he chatted up. Then he met the choir master who made it clear that Rhys’s inability to read music would be held against him and membership was by audition.

   ’ I never wanted to wear a red blazer anyway,’ he said arriving back home late and £15 poorer (cost of overland and tube). He’s trying ‘Singing for Pleasure,’ with a U3A group in Kew on Thursday where he won’t need to read music or wear a red blazer. He hopes.