Saturday 11 October 2014

Our Only Castle


 

The Chiltern Hills, were, in my personal geography, a barrier to be travelled through, on journeys between family home and study/work.  I seldom gave the area much thought. Later, much later, a home in Metroland Bucks chose itself for us as a map decision, a logical calculation based on research rather than experience. And on the whole it’s been a worthwhile move and we have a great family life. But the human continuity here is surprisingly limited. I’ve read that in the years before my house was built, the land where it lies was known as the Mushroom Field. It was only built in the 1950s, and an old neighbour remembers seeing combine harvesters working where now houses stand.
But I was brought up in an 1830s house on the edge of a medieval town.
It’s remarkable how neglected the Chilterns was over hundreds of years. My personal geography was everyone’s. In his enjoyable book ‘If Britain had Fallen’ Norman Longmate postulates a 1940 Battle of the Chiltern Hills. But in fact, it never happened and the area stays in its pretty obscurity, well-known only through its railways. This lack of pre-railway history was something of a disappointment to me, having grown up in a county with five or six standing castles including some of the country’s most famous.
That’s why Berkhamsted Castle was such a refreshing discovery when I finally saw it close to, rather than as a blur from the train. Its ruined state is due to stone thieves rather than sieges. Of course here in the Chilterns we have no workable stone, only endless jagged flints, both difficult to build with, and ensuring years of uneconomic farming.

The castle, and town, defend a strategic valley where the road was later joined by the canal and then the railway – the latter obliterated part of the castle, though it fared far better than its contemporary up the line in Northampton, which was destroyed without trace to build the ‘Castle’ station.
This is a scrap of medieval stone, water and earth, very beautiful, and surprisingly quiet, unless there are children running and climbing.

It’s also a lovely link to one of my favourite novelists. Early in The Human Factor, Graham Greene’s hero Maurice Castle wonders if his surname links him back to one of the medieval masons who worked in stone there in Berkamsted.
The castle English Heritage property but not an expensive one – in fact it’s free. There are no ‘facilities’ apart from the Castle itself and some simple display boards. Parking is difficult because of the draw of the railway station.

But then again, this is not a touristy area. Is it?

Tuesday 7 October 2014

Scenes in Pubs

'You love putting scenes in pubs' said my aunt Bernadine in one of our last conversations, one when she would have said, kindly, we were speaking author to author.
A quiet pub, busy, not too full, is a consulting room, exhibition gallery, human zoo. You sit quite comfortably with a drink that is refreshing rather than strong, and observe the scene around you, watching, joining (and overhearing) the banter, the illicit contacts, the phatic arguments, the endless competitive verities and massaged memories that make up the stories that fill the air.
There is a golden moment, maybe during the third round of drinks, when guards are down yet reactions are still sharp enough for conversation to flow with accurate listening as well as poetic speech.



Later of course, there is the inevitable, enjoyable slide. Poetry and sometimes song take over, then all becomes a little too subjective, solipsistic and self-parodying. Though there is continuing fascination in observing, joining, the endless range of effects the same number of pints can have on different people sitting around the same table.
Of course it's all very expensive and can be ruined by the intrusion of music or food (both necessities of life, of course, but not necessities of pub life). It can still, though, be bloody brilliant. Both in life and in writing.