Motivation

The motto of the secondary school near here, written on the sign at the entrance, under the school name, phone number, and so on, is Achievement through caring.

Some wag with a white marker has changed it to Achievement through caning.

A load of bullocks

Is a bullock the same as a steer?

All the store cattle round here seem to be Limousins these days - tall burly beasts of an athletic and inquisitive disposition. In previous years the herd across the road have gained a record of flattening fences and going on picnics up the road. I've met them once or twice out on these jollies and got involved in chasing them back in - a thing best done from a vehicle, since you do not want to be standing in their way if they don't like the idea.

Eyeing them from the upstairs window the other day - Wednesday - I remembered this and thought of getting a gate across the front entrance. Ten years I've been here and so far got away with it. The same afternoon I went out to the country store, actually to have lunch and get some other stuff, and spent a little while pricing gates and posts. Did nothing about it, however.

Thursday morning at 3 am - yes, about 12 hours after looking at the gates in the store yard - pitch dark and raining outside, a noise under the window woke me. I could hear something moving about outside - heavy footsteps, and something being shoved across the driveway. Then some snorting, and a soft bellow. There are no street lights here, so when I stuck my bleary head out into the wet night, at first I could see nothing but a dim light-coloured shape on the lawn. Grabbing the torch I keep by the bed in order to illuminate nocturnal intruders, I shone it down into the damp garden.

Quite relaxed, huffing and shoving in a good-humoured way, grazing on my clematis Montana rubens and next door's hedge, clouds of breathy vapour rising in the torch beam, nine Limousin bullocks stood looking up at me, remodelling the landscaping. I swear one of them was smiling. Another dozen or so were in the lane. My neighbours have gates, you see.

Nobody likes being rung up at 3 in the morning, but the farmer was apologetically grateful. Another couple of minutes and they could easily have been down the road towards the town, which doesn't bear thinking about. As it was, they turned the other way and ran a mile and a half along the lanes, fetching up in a field where somebody is renovating a barn.

And the same evening, David Dimbleby couldn't do Question Time because he'd been knocked out by a bullock on his farm.

I expect he's got gates, though.

November already

At present we have this:



and this:



Children paddle in that stream in June.

It was fitting to the season and my mood of melancholy, superannuation and the transience of everything to stumble upon this little church, built in the 1880s and since abandoned to the care of a church buildings charity:











Dark inside, a notice about rare bats, and a new grave, from this summer, still raw by the path.

Just how I feel.

Lake Vyrnwy

Finding it is a bit of a fight, but up above the dam stands the memorial obelisk to the 45 men who died during its construction. Ten were killed, three of them on the same day in 1885.



Not really very surprising, since the project took almost 30 years, from 1880 to 1909, and involved miles of tunnels, two subsidiary dams, an 11-mile road and many minor bridges, as well as the demolition and drowning of a village and the laying of a 68-mile pipeline, gravity-fed, to Liverpool, all done by picks, shovels, barrows, horses, a few steam cranes and the muscle of uncounted men.

Work on the dam itself started with the 1880 Act of Parliament that ignored the tenants' petition but preserved the river level for downstream landlords' trout fishing, the reason one sluice still remains open at all times. By November 1888, having spent £620,000, they were ready to start the flooding, which took a year to complete.

37 houses, ten farms, two pubs, a shop, three chapels and a church disappeared under the water, mostly having been demolished first. The Calvinistic Methodists left it until the last minute, September 1888, to move up to temporary premises above the valley, but by the time the lake had filled they were in a new stone building designed by Liverpool Corporation's architect. It's not true you can still hear the church bell tolling when the water is at a certain level. The old church of St John was demolished and the bell re-hung in the new church dedicated to St Wddyn up on the hillside near the obelisk.

Liverpool paid for it all, £2 million by 1909, to make life tolerable for its mushroomed population, and seems to have spared no expense. The Straining Tower, where the pipeline starts, stands in 50 feet of water like a vampire's castle, and every door on the dam's eight ornamental towers has a large bronze handle that I doubt we have the skill or technology to make today, except possibly in the East.



It's one of my favourite places. There was a scaup on the lake last week, I saw a goshawk there on Sunday, and I love it when the water roars over in the winter, after a while of rain:



But I don't kid myself about the money. Of course Liverpool was a wealthy place 120 years ago. Look at the city centre - St George's Hall, the Walker, the Graces. Where did it all come from? It came from sugar, and cotton, and the transatlantic docks. And therefore from the lives and labour of hundreds of thousands of Africans kidnapped into slavery. Not only the peaceful hamlet of Llanwddyn perished so people could flush toilets in Liverpool.

Small Tortoiseshell

From inertia and distraction, I left a lot of plums to rot on the tree and on the ground this year.

The result, this dry and warm September, has been lots of the late brood butterflies - especially Red Admiral. A cloud of them rises at any disturbance, including this, the commonest butterfly of my childhood but now sadly scarce:



The wasps are dying, the horse chestnut leaves colouring, the swallows have gone, chocolate Santa Clauses are on the shelves in Morrison's.

Tick tock.