I'm lucky enough to be able to do frequently just what Humakt suggested in his La Recherce Du Temps Perdu post of 16/1. By sheer coincidence a few weeks ago I was tottering around one of those big Discount type stores...well, more like a big tin shed really, but I noticed a " Camping sale" sign!! Late December? Must have a look...
Mostly caravan gear, airbeds,lanterns, pots and pans etc: but also a little stool/backpack combination of the type normally sold to Anglers. Reduced from £10 to £7.50 so worth a trial I thought.
Today dawned Sunny, clear blue skies, not a breeze even but cold, probably around zero degrees but a beautiful day. Off to the wood.
Some ice in the puddles and the ground is hard
The winter sun is low with little heat in it yet.
The big patches of Bracken where the Deer hide during the day are all flattened and frozen.
As always, even a casual look reveals more..Signs of the Spring to come. Bluebells and wild Daffodils are starting to show through the leaf litter.
This is one of my usual 'sit think and watch' spots. A partly fallen Hornbeam which with the addition of a length of Paracord and some camo netting makes a brilliant total hide if required.
Here's the little stool/bag. I added the length of blue webbing to keep the frame halves tight together when used as a backpack, they have the tendency to open slightly when the bag is loaded. Otherwise it is a really useful little combo for a short trip. Not unduly uncomfortable to carry over a short distance and handy for siting wherever the good views are..
So I sat, drank tea and used the other translation of La Recherche Du Temps Perdu...which you probably know is..
"Rememberance of things past"...so be warned the second part of this post may put you to sleep...Don't say I didn't warn you..
A short while ago I was having a sort out, usual thing, boxes that have been stowed away while I was sailing abroad etc: when I found something which brought back so many memories. Sitting in the wood I was thinking back to when I was a kid with my mates. We were the Saxon Fyrd, all nine of us would meet up on summer evenings, week-ends or holidays. There were no electronic games or even Televisons unless you were rich or posh, which none of us were. We would clear off and using a bow saw which one of the kids smuggled out of his Dad's shed we would cut Ash spears from the hedgerows. We all had knives, some of the group were in the local Boy Scout Unit and carried the Sheffield made leather stacked handled sheath knives. I had a German made knife with a stag handle which was my pride and joy.
Somehow one of the kids had learned of the Fyrds raised by King Alfred to protect the Saxon Burhs against invaders, that appealed to all of us, (all under 11 years)
We fought blood soaked battles with imaginary enemies on the Downland slopes with our sharpened spears, always hiding them on returning home in case the local Policeman, PC Harman caught us. He was ex Grenadier, six feet three inches tall and wore huge boots with mirror polished toecaps. If he caught us with spears he would march us up the street to the churchyard wall which had a low ornate cast iron fence on top of it. There he would make us stick our spear points in the iron fence and break them off. I know now that he did it so that the village folk could see that he had control of the warlike rabble that made up the Fyrd. Nothing was ever said about the knives on our belts because as country kids it was unthinkable that they were anything other than tools. If however he caught us on his way home to the village Police House he would just confiscate our spears. Now strangely at planting time PC Harman's Runner Bean frame and the village Post Master's who lived across the road from him always looked to me like they were made of Saxon spears.....
And what started this train of woodland thought?
This. My older Brother was an NCO in the Royal Fusiliers and served in various locals scraps in the Middle East. He was part of a BATT (British Army Training Team) in the Oman Trucial States, teaching and fighting alongside the Sultan's troops against the local anti-government banditos.
A present from my big Brother, probably bought from some street market in Oman. The steel does not bear too close an inspection, but it keeps an edge at least. Of course to an eight year old member of the dreaded Fyrd it was really captured from an invading Norse Chieftan after I had defeated him in single combat...
Now the Fyrd is long disbanded, spread all over the world. My mate Gavin died in a hail of coach bolts and scrap shrapnel while on patrol in Belfast and another Fyrd member lies in the broken hull of a British warship under the cold waters of the South Atlantic at the Falkland Islands, but some of us have survived and I can still sit in the woods and think of things past...
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