Up until 1982 I was travelling to Greendene to work on my motorbike through all sorts of weather. Whatever nature could throw at me I soldiered on battling the elements to get to the pottery. In summer the biking was an absolute joy. As I zoomed up the verdant lanes, I could smell the soft scents of wild flowers and the evocative aroma of damp clumped roots hanging on to the chalk banks. The temperature would vary and as I speeded on I would notice a sudden coolness as I hit deep shadow and then hit with a warm glow as came out into the sunshine again.
In complete contrast however the winter could be a wild unpredictable beast and a bully. Wind often threatening me to drive me into the frosted banks. The worst was the freezing of the hands, which while numbed and fossilised by the cold on the bike, would have to be prised apart when I got to Greendene. Then they would start to defrost and wow, what a pain! Nothing would ease the pain, I would wildly shake them, wave my hands around like a lunatic, frantically trying to escape from my hands altogether. Cursing and swearing as I stamped and shimmied, before slowly they began to thaw. It took up to half an hour or more sometimes before I could function as a human being again!
I decided that I had to have a car with a heater in it. I didn’t mind what sort of car as long as it had a roof and got me about ok. I had little money, but I scraped together some cash and begged, borrowed from friends and family. Preferably I wanted a car with a good size boot to carry pots and paintings, but I couldn’t really afford an estate or a van.
Mike suggested I look for a Morris Traveller, the ones with the wooden frame, a kind of old fashioned shooting break, “half timbered”. It sounded a good plan. So I started looking around. They had stopped making them some years previously, so it had to be some years old and it took awhile to find.
Finally, I located one nearby and we set off to take a look. When I saw it, I wasn’t that enamoured of it, it was a strange sort of greeny khaki colour and had an Irish number plate. We both looked over it and it seemed in relatively good order, so I bought it and rather like an old pair of gloves or a tatty jumper I soon got to love it. As I say, I did come to love it, but boy it had a lot of problems which I gradually discovered over time. Nevertheless, I fell in love with its quirky Englishness, despite it coming from Ireland. Loved it’s throaty choky sound as I changed gear. The best thing of all was it had a heater and it protected me from the elements. So life at the old pottery moved on.
Extract from my Journal:
May 18th 1983 Went up to find the early purple orchid and counted seven flowering and found one in a new place near to the old caravan.
Bluebells about at their peak despite its being such a cold spring and very wet; I hope this dark bleak weather changes soon.
August 5th It’s been a welter of wild time, soft journeys through cold clay, winding up the lazy lane to see on dizzy heights where buzzards and the skylarks rise in spiral spheres. Now is the time for running through the overgrowth in a livid living light as thunder strikes and time stops.
28th Jan (On returning from a trip to the peak district to see the stone circle of Arbor Low)
Cut circles on the rain drenched heath
An echo of a once living landscape
Where distant heroes sleep in tranquil slumbers
And I walk the trodden roads long before Avalon
Next blog “The Lodger”
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