“We plough the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land,
but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand:
he sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain,
the breezes, and the sunshine, and soft, refreshing rain.”
This hymn may feel like it grows out of our the soil of our English Countryside, but it was a German Peasant song discovered about 1780
The rainbow harvest table was taken at Trinity this morning.
About halfway down the Vineyard is Pedal Power the bike shop, with Mr Lee Hairdressing on one side, and a pub, converted to housing on the other.
I took my bike there last week for a new brake block. The chap went through a box of brake blocks but could not find a match. The designs change rapidly nowadays. Anyway, went back, and he had one this week. But now I need the wheel unbent. Rather stupidly, I left it locked up overnight on St Edmunds Lane and somebody has given the wheel a kick.
Pedal Power is quite traditional with a large workshop at the rear, and bikes for sale in the front, mostly Dawes and Raleigh. Then there are boxes of bike parts.
It is part of the Vineyard, a road named after the Abbey grape growing area.
Anyway, on the subjects of bikes, cycling back home tonight with the bent wheel hitting the brake blocks, I got stopped by a policeman. “Excuse me Sir? Your back lights are not showing.” True enough, the battery was getting weak.
People might be glad to know the police still do take a note of such things. Even though five minutes later I saw six young lads cycle past without a light between them, nor a policeman in sight.
Here is Abingdon’s very own Turkish Donna Kebab man with a van. He can be seen here most days at about 5:20 unlocking and locking the Market Place gates. His vehicle is the one licensed to trade there selling hot food.
Earlier this evening at about 5:25 he plugged his cooker into the market place electricity supply.
Before he has had time to even open the side-hatch of the van, a chap on a bike called across, “Mate, you got any drinks.”
So he opens up, serves the first customer and then a second customer. Only then has he time to open his first big bag of chips and start to prepare the days hot food. Top of the menu are Donna Kebabs (Döner kebab in Turkish means ‘turning kebab’ and seems to involve a hardly recognisable meat in pitta bread and salad).
Thats how most evenings start (Sundays start earlier).
The van has a relatively quiet time until people leave the pubs and its “Weerrll!! … time for a kebab!”
He asks with a broad smile “You wanna it open, for eat now?”
He doesn’t finish until about 1:30, and locks the gate behind him as he goes.
For anybody who has read the novel Nausea by John Paul Sartre, or ever feels as confused as the hero, this post is dedicated to you.
In the novel, the hero can no longer separate himself from what he sees in quite the normal way and becomes overwhelmed by just looking at a tree – all the bark and branches etc… They appear quite monstuous as he goes into a state of what most of us call mental breakdown.
These picture were all taken along the bushy , and swampy area, inbetween the Thames Walk and the Abingdon Vale Cricket pitch. Here you’ll find old tree stumps left to rot, and a clearing where a bonfire has been lit, and a ditch.
Looking back at my Abingdon 1910 reproduction map, bought for £2.20 at the library, I see that the ditch looked then more like a stream, possibly even bigger. The County Boundary between Berkshire and Oxfordshire ran down it before rejoining the Thames. So this little bit of land on the opposite bank was not Oxfordshire but Berkshire like Abingdon. The area contained mostly trees and was called the Rookery and had:
Some old stone steps leading to the bottom of a circle of stones… Anyone know what this was?
And a low bridge crossing the ditch…
And big trees that would have scared the living daylights out of the hero of Nausea, or anybody of a nervous disposition.