Marigold Says…

We’re in Dorset and bits of other places near Dorset for a few days. G found one of my very old blog posts, must be from about 1683 as I don’t even remember it, and I have now added to it. 

 I’m very tough. Nothing frightens me. Well, not much. Just the odd thing. Such as G saying ‘let’s go to Salisbury,’ on our way to somewhere or other.

We like Salisbury, have been there several times. The difference now is ever since that former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned by Novichok and then somebody else died there from the same thing I think it’s a bit of a scary place to visit. G was very calm. He promised he would taste everything we ate first.

We found a hotel in Salisbury where the man on Reception was very bossy and pretended to be very busy, but one of the cleaners said the hotel was nearly empty and bookings had gone ‘through the floor’ since the nerve agent was discovered. People have long memories, she said, gloomily. 

We walked into the town centre, which has an enormous open square right in the middle and two buskers were playing Simon and Garfunkel songs. They were terrible. Really awful. I gave them 20 pence hoping they would decide that was enough for the day, but no such luck.

We wandered around the shops for a bit, with me shouting ‘don’t touch it’ every time we passed a door knob and went to the cathedral to seek sanctuary. I liked the street names of the smaller streets such as Oatmeal Row, Fish Row and Silver Street, all named after whatever trades used to be carried on there.

As for the cathedral, it’s very impressive. I read this bit in a leaflet inside so it must be true: The cathedral spire is 404 feet high, so it is the tallest surviving pre-1400 spire in the world. A bit selective on dates, but still very high. There’s also the best preserved copy of the Magna Carta in existence on display, but visitors can’t really get near it and it’s in a dark area and photos are ‘forbidden’ so it didn’t impress me very much.

What did impress G was the oldest ‘modern’ working clock which dates from 1386 and does not have a ‘face’ as in those days clocks only rang out the hours on a bell and didn’t have a face as there were no hands. I didn’t think much of a clock that didn’t even say the time, but G answered, ‘dating from 1386 means it’s a very old clock, Marigold. They may not have been under the same time pressures as us.’ As we aren’t remotely bothered about what day it is most of the time I could see what he meant. I waited until the hour changed and it still didn’t do anything. No wonder they went out of business. 

Edward Heath, the former PM, is buried in the cathedral and used to live here. In Salisbury, not in the cathedral.

G said the cathedral used to be at Old Sarum and was rebuilt here so we agreed we’d go there later, maybe tomorrow if we survived the night.

Back at the half empty hotel we decided, well, I decided, not to eat anything that might be a nerve agent so we had bananas, peeled while wearing two pairs of gloves, and some stale bread I found in the car boot next to the spare wheel.

Obviously, that isn’t entirely accurate as we don’t have a spare wheel just a can of glorified air freshener or whatever it is the car makers provide in place of a spare wheel these days.

Next day we went back to look at Old Sarum which always fascinates me as you can walk around an Iron Age hill fort where people lived thousands of years ago. The site survived many invaders, even the Romans, until it was finally flattened and burned by Vikings led by a king who has the best name, ever, Sweyn Forkbeard in 1003.

Trying not to give dates, but G will check this and tut tut if I don’t try and do the history part properly, so in 1226 the cathedral was moved from here to Salisbury. A man in a brown shirt, who may or not have worked there, told us the site for the new cathedral and the new city around it was chosen by shooting an arrow from Old Sarum.

We could see the cathedral spire from here and G said, ‘I don’t think so, it’s about two miles from here.’

‘Ah,’ the man said in a know-all voice so I decided he definitely worked here, ‘the arrow struck a white deer, which continued to run and run and eventually died on the spot where the cathedral now rests.’ G sniffed, but didn’t say anything. Like most legends of long ago it got more and more unlikely with every added detail.

The brown shirt man wasn’t finished though, rambling on and on like the worst history teacher I ever had, but I can’t remember any of what he said. G said, ‘that last bit was interesting,’ when we were going back to the car park and so it might have been if I could have been bothered to listen.

Could you shoot an arrow from here to where the cathedral is now? No, me neither.

We found what might have been a fossil on the way back to the car so I took a photo of it in case it was an unknown species of dinosaur.

We went as far as the entrance to Stonehenge, which was full of tourists and we’ve been before so we just just had a quick look from a distance. Anyway, it’s £28.60 (each) to go in these days, even for ‘Seniors’, which is a lot. Unless you’re American which almost everybody else seemed to be. They were all wearing garish golfing clothes and saying ‘gee this is so OLD’ to one another.

Later on, we were heading for Bournemouth for no particular reason when I said ‘can we stop at Ringwood to see if that fruit and veg shop is still there?’

G understands my occasional silliness and said ‘okay.’

Ringwood is a sort of gentle, rather old fashioned place and, best of all the fruit shop was still there. We bought an orchard’s worth of fruit, had a wander round and sat in or on the brilliant tree sculptures at the far end of the car park.

We also went into a Meeting House, very old with wooden pews and a gallery all around it. I got talking to a very odd couple who said they came here twice a week for coffee and a chat. The woman was a chronic giggler and the man had loose false teeth so I found them very entertaining.

As we’re chatting G came back from where he had been lurking in an attempt to not start laughing at the poor man’s loose teeth and the man said to him, ‘don’t let them rope you in as a helper; they’re all a bit mental.’

His wife shouted out ‘Mental, mental, chicken oriental’ at the top of her voice and they both collapsed with laughing.

‘I think they’re a comedy double act at weekends,’ G whispered. I was getting ready to avoid the false teeth which looked as if they were ready to shoot out at any moment.

I asked them if they lived in Ringwood or were just visiting and should have guessed what was coming next when the man said, ‘go on then’ to his wife.

She said, ”we live just outside, but we sold our house and now we’re renting.’

They looked at each other and both shouted out, ‘Rental, rental, chicken oriental’ before howling with laughter.

‘Time to go, Zebedee,’ G said to me and we left them to it.

The teeth were still in place.

Just about.

We looked in an estate agents window, as we do wherever we go, and saw immediately this is a pricey town. Not far from the sea, not far from the New Forest, so that explains it. Oh, and it has a Waitrose so that’s the clincher.

We drove on a bit further and ended up in Wareham which I can’t remember visiting before although G insisted we had. After we parked the car a woman driving out said, ‘there’s nearly two hours left on that’ and gave us her parking ticket. Very nice of her.

We went into a pub and I remembered we had been here before. Everywhere we went I remembered now and tried hard not to keep saying ‘ I remember this bit’ every two minutes but not always successfully.

The local beer was wonderful. I didn’t actually drink any of it, but I loved the names on the pumps. The brewery is called Dorset Piddle. Jimmy Riddle is a brown ale, then there’s Silent Slasher and Amber Piddle. The barmaid said they brought out a beer called Santa’s Potty at Christmas and the same company make wine called ‘oui, oui.’

Brilliant. Yes, childish, but brilliant.

We looked round a museum and G got very interested as it was almost all related to Lawrence of Arabia and he has just finished reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom for about the twentieth time.

When Lawrence retired he went to live in Clouds Hill just outside Wareham and was killed in a motorbike accident in1935 on his way home. The man who ran the museum, (curator?) told us a ‘mysterious black car’ had been seen in the area and this gave rise to dozens of conspiracy theories. ‘More theories than arose from Princess Diana’s death,’ he said.

Winston Churchill attended the funeral and described him as ‘one of the greatest beings alive in this time,’ which sounded a bit odd to me as he wasn’t actually alive at the time!

The curator man told us where to find a stone effigy of Lawrence in the local church and we went to look at it on the way back to the car. He also told us there was a memorial by the road side at Clouds Hill marking the scene of the accident, but we realised we had come in that way and missed it. We didn’t go back. Trying to avoid accident black spots. Even if the last one happened in 1935.

When we reached the car I noticed there was still seven minutes left on our ‘free’ ticket. I didn’t think anyone just arriving would be very grateful if I offered it to them so didn’t bother.

We went to Poole, expecting to take a look at the harbour and then go along to Sandbanks and get the chain ferry across to Studland. Many, many years ago, the early 1970s, we often drove down from Richmond, the Surrey one, to visit Brownsea Island and we loved the chain ferry. It only took about five minutes, but we have never forgotten it.

Not my photo, but the chain ferry on a much nicer day

As soon as we got to Poole the rain started, a massive cloudburst and we were soaked in seconds.

 I told G I needed to go somewhere to ring out my bra. That meant it was seriously uncomfortable so we dashed (dashed?) into the big Asda to dry off. Useful tip for shoppers. The hot air blowers in the ‘rest rooms’ are ideal for drying bras. It’s best to remove it first though. 

I asked a dragon lady behind the counter in the Asda cafe if they had baked potatoes and she snapped back, ‘not at this time of day we don’t.’ It was 1.30, basically still lunchtime. She said, ‘I could do you beans on toast, but we’re getting short of bread.’ I wanted to point out there was an entire aisle of bread about twenty yards away, but agreed to have beans on toast. G said it was the worst beans on toast he had ever eaten. He still ate it all though. 

When we went back out it was still raining and we couldn’t see the sea at all. We gave up. 

Better weather today so we went to Dorchester which we have liked in the past. Even though I have never read any books by Thomas Hardy I watched the films and told G that was just as good. He said, not really. 

We wandered around, looking in shop windows and people watching. We walked a bit more, faffed about in a shop selling oils, vinegars and pickles where the two girls running the store were very keen we tried everything. We gorged ourselves on (free) tastings of chutney, bread dipped in various oils and flavoured vinegars  and other stuff we didn’t actually go on to buy. They didn’t seem to mind and waved us off when we left. 

There’s still a Poundland here, but the only staff are a retired couple whose job it is seems to be to stand next to people at the self service tills and say ‘it’s not your fault, it’s these crappy machines’ when anything goes wrong. They don’t suggest anything apart from ‘try another till’ when problems arise. 

I wanted to walk down ‘Hovis Hill,’ the steep, cobbled street in Shaftesbury. It was a famous advert for Hovis bread of a boy pushing a bike up the hill. When we got to Gold Hill I realised it was a lot steeper than I remembered and very sensibly suggested we go for a coffee instead. I went into Costa while G stayed being polite to a very persistent lady who wanted him to become a Jehovah’s Witness. When G eventually arrived, looking a bit  flustered but not very ‘converted’ I told him ‘they don’t do toast here.’ G looked baffled. He likes the toast in Costa. We went elsewhere. Costa coffee, take note! 

The top of Gold Hill.

Again, not my photo, but that’s the famous Hovis advert, on Gold Hill.

I had a vile shock last night. Was having a pee and spied a huge spider, I am not exaggerating it was as big as a hippo. Anyway G put it on toilet paper and took it to the window, but it jumped off en route and has now vanished. My heart thumped for ages and woke up thinking about it. Am sure the shock has given me asthma. Am terrified of even going into bathroom in case it emerges from the sewers and nests in my pubes. Am walking around with fly killer and a brick.

Off to buy new electric toothbrush, as I cleaned G’s and now it doesn’t work. Didn’t know you can’t boil them in bleach!!!!

Someone asked me for a recipe the other day, but as I make up almost every dish I cook, was a bit baffled. Told her I had a good recipe for mice in aspic. Take 300 mice, stuff them with cheesey wotsits, cook them for 3 days in aspic or any stuff you’ve got handy if Aldi are out of aspic and also one for Christmas – ostrich stuffed with 20 smaller birds, many options available – but she’d put her notepad away by then.