About 20 years I missed a golden opportunity when I went on a clock mending course in Sussex for a week. My great great uncle Horace was a clock mender near the Old Kent Road and for some reason I was convinced I'd inherited his skill. I reckoned that once I'd done some training, I could use my spare bedroom as a workshop and switch to working part-time in the civil service, leaving two days a week to devote to this burgeoning new career. The initial capital outlay and space requirements would be modest, so it seemed a realistic prospect. Gradually, as I became more established, I could become a full time clock mender and find fulfillment.
First I needed some training and the course in Sussex, at an old rectory which offered a range of other activities, seemed ideal. I was surprised that friends and colleagues thought it a very odd way of spending a week. Surely it was the sort of thing any normal professional career woman just turned thirty would want to do? When I explained about Horace, they looked even less convinced.
To take part, I had to go equipped with a clock in need of repair. My grandmother gave me a large mantelpiece one of hers, which didn't work at all but should have both chimed the quarters and struck the hours. (Born in 1900, she was the second daughter, the first one having died unexpectedly when she was a toddler. Her parents took the view that if the first one had died, she probably would too, so they wouldn't bother thinking of a name for her. This was still the position on the morning of her christening, when Uncle Horace - who was to be a godfather - arrived. He suggested they called her Doris, to rhyme with Horace - so that's what happened. No middle name, of course. She went on to live until she was 87.)
Arriving in Sussex, in fine summer weather, I was dismayed to find that clock mending required a basic understanding of gears. I've never managed to master the concept and apparently most clocks have several. We were told to remove the back of our clocks very carefully, keeping everything in place, and then do a detailed drawing of the inside so that we would know what went where when it came to reassembling it. Clearly I wasn't careful enough, as the contents shot out and bounced over the floor. I collected what I could find and drew what was left, which wasn't much. Things went from bad to worse as I accidentally damaged the mainspring and, despite staying up until 1am most nights trying to catch up with the rest of the group, I fell further and further behind. What made it worse was that one of the other courses was a series of wildflower guided walks, and that group was having a wonderful time. I so much wanted to be part of it.
It was clear that I not only had no talent whatsoever for clock mending, but I also really disliked it. At the time it was quite a blow, as it meant completely rethinking my career plans. I did at least manage to get the clock working by the end of the week - not fully, as it wouldn't chime, but it did strike the hours. I wrapped it carefully, drove home and proudly showed it to Peter. I wound it, set it to 11.50 and we solemnly watched it tick along towards midday. It duly struck twelve - and then stopped dead. I tried again. And again. Each time the same thing happened - 10 minutes of activity and then silence. I could tell Peter was trying not to laugh, especially when I wailed that I could have spent the week outside in the sun, learning about wildflowers, instead of being cooped up inside a stuffy workshop until gone midnight every night, doing everything wrong. Anyway I rang my grandmother to explain the clock had "gone to its maker", chucked it away and resigned myself to more years as a civil servant.
What remained was a longing to go on a guided wildflower walk and as I still hadn't done it by my 60th birthday, it immediately went on my list of challenges.
I'd thought it would be easy to find somewhere which offered them, but after lots of googling I'd drawn a blank. Plenty of places had self-guided walks, but that would be no improvement on simply going out myself with a book on wildflowers. Walking across Ham Common a couple of months ago, I bumped into Freda Hyde - a long-term Ham resident who's heavily involved in local community affairs, whom I'd known slightly for about 20 years as we shared an interest in history. I remembered that her husband Geoff used to offer monthly free guided walks across the Ham Lands, and asked her whether he might be willing to do one on the wildflowers. She said he normally did one in June and I should give him a ring.
This was looking very promising, but unfortunately the Council had mown down a large swathe of the Lands earlier in the year and Geoff said there was really nothing worth seeing. However he's very helpful and keen to foster any enthusiasm for nature, so he kindly agreed to take me over the area at the end of June, as there might still be a few plants worth looking at. I knew Geoff was knowledgeable about plants but I hadn't realised that he's the Chairman of London in Bloom and on the committee of Britain in Bloom, so I really was very lucky.
Freda came with us and we set off last Thursday, armed with magnifying glasses and in my case a notebook and phone camera.
The Ham Lands is a 72 hectare area of grassland and scrub, bordering the Thames, which was declared a local nature reserve in the late 1990s. Originally a water meadow, it was extensively excavated for gravel in the first half of the last century and the pits were then filled in with Blitz and other rubble after the war. The pits were so deep in places that when a wrecked double decker bus was tipped in, it simply vanished. The infill included soil from different areas of London, creating a variety of habitats suitable for an unusually wide range of wildflowers, including many plants which are apparently rare in London. Within yards of one another you can find plants that thrive in calcium and others that can't tolerate it, and because of the mix of soil types they all flourish.
Despite Geoff's misgivings about there being nothing much to see, within 200 yards he had pointed out 25 different wildflowers and we went on to see another 20, all in the space of only 2 hours. The list included ragwort, hogweed, hemlock, mugwort (also known as artemisia), alfalfa, field bindweed, black mustard, wild St John's wort (which looks rather different from the garden type, although they both have yellow flowers), tansy, lady's bedstraw, common mallow, wild carrot, yarrow, crow garlic, horseradish, common purple clover, common purple spotted orchid, goat's rue, rosebay willowherb, wild sweet pea, knapweed, dittander, bitter cress, warty cabbage, old man's beard, wild clematis, pineapple-scented may weed, anchusa, white bryony, teasel, woody nightshade, evening primrose, goat's beard, bird's foot trefoil, sand leek, comfrey, marguerites, red bartsia and sorrel.
Here are some that I found particularly interesting:
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| Ragwort - food for the cinnabar moth, but poisonous to horses |
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| Hogweed - so-called because pigs like its roots. The stems cause skin irritation. |
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| Wild carrot - also known as Queen Anne's Lace, because the pink tinge in the middle of the white flower allegedly indicates where she pricked her thumb and bled onto her white needlework. |
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| Horseradish - the stem smells of horseradish but the real essence is in the roots, which are hard to dig up. Grating them is apparently worse than experiencing teargas. |
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| Common purple spotted orchid |
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| Goat's rue - a delicately coloured member of the pea family |
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| Not a wildflower, but I couldn't resist including this as it shows damage done to a sycamore by squirrels. The sycamore is related to the maple and squirrels have nibbled all round the base of some the branches, to enjoy the sweet sap. These branches die while the rest of the tree survives. |
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| Rosebay willowherb - also known as fireweed, because it likes ground where there has been a fire. It is plentiful on the Ham Lands because of the soil from the Blitz. |
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| Lady's bedstraw - according to legend, Mary gave birth to Jesus on a bed made from this plant, hence its name. |
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| Wild sweetpeas - very pretty but have no scent |
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| Dittander - very sweet-smelling (and with Geoff's hand for scale) |
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| Hemlock - very poisonous. Unlike hogweed, it has a smooth, round stem with occasional purple blotches. |
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| Pineapple scented mayweed - with the tip of Geoff's hiking stick for scale. The little yellow flower smells strongly of pineapple when crushed. |
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| Anchusa - a very pretty light blue colour. Having looked at various on-line guides, I think this type is the pentaglottis sempervirens. |
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| White bryony - the only native cucumber in England |
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| Teasel - the dried spiky brown heads, widely used in flower arranging, are the previous year's growth. The current year's heads are green and quite soft and silky. Goldfinches love the very nutritious seeds. |
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| Woody nightshade - also known as bittersweet, and not to be confused with the poisonous deadly nightshade. The berries have apparently been revered for thousands of years. A necklace of them was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. |
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| Evening primrose - much larger and taller than I'd expected |
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| Goat's beard - also known as Jack Go to Bed at Noon, as when it is in bloom it has yellow flowers which close at midday. |
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| Birdsfoot-trefoil - also known as bacon and eggs, because of the colouring of the petals. |
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| Sand leek - smells of onion |
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| Comfrey - makes an excellent organic fertiliser, if you can stand the smell while it rots down |
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