Fortuna

"In my beginning is my end” - T.S.Eliot, ‘The Five Quartets’

A there and back winter walk with Tony, Bob and Finn. Not really circular. Tony’s daughter, Nell, is off to the Philippines shortly, volunteering for VSO. I lent her a book I had bought many moons ago. It’s the story of the first 25 years of VSO, published in 1983, and rather worryingly entitled “Arriving Where We Started”.

Our beginning was the church of Saint Andrew, Ilketshall. Tony parked on a green patch in front of the church, surrounded by thick snow. The church is nearly always locked, so we haven’t yet seen the famous wall paintings inside. Painted possibly as early as the twelfth century, one depicts the ‘Rota Fortunae’. The wheel turns. On one side is a happy individual, his or her fortunes improving as we speak. Opposite is an unhappy person, looking very downcast, who has been on the top but is now heading towards the bottom. Fortuna is the Roman goddess of fate or luck. Like most Roman deities she had an earlier Greek equivalent.

I usually wear a knee bandage these days when we go walking. Pulling it on this morning, I noticed the word ‘Fortuna’ written across the top of it. What had the Roman goddess of fate to do with my knee bandage? My search led me to a company called Fortuna Healthcare, which operates from a trading estate in Enfield. It’s a family business. The family name is Bavetta, maybe Italian. Perhaps even Roman, the company named after their divine ancestor, Fortuna Bavetta?

We wandered, sliding, onto the Great Common at Ilketshall. A group of men - of the kind that Jeremy Hardy calls ‘the armed wing of the Tory party’ - appeared with their guns, traditional clothing and bangs. They don’t like rabbits. Unless they’re eating them. We stepped aside for an oil tanker. It’s been very cold. Someone would be warm for a bit longer. We turned right at the bottom of the common. This is a very traditional part of Suffolk. It certainly felt that way, the land covered in snow, the occasional gunshot, the girl riding past on her horse, ‘St. Felix Equestrian Team’ printed on the back of her jacket. She looked down on us, like people on horses do. The girl’s father rode ahead of her, whip in hand, displaying, as he enunciated a hearty ‘good morning!’ to us, in a stentorian voice, a fine set of teeth set in a firmly Conservative jaw.

We left the road at Boundary Farm, following the footpath across open fields, an expanse of snow with few trees. I noticed a small holly tree, a fox running away, a series of large burrows along a bank, which we thought must have been made by badgers.

One of the burrows had a wooden lintel across the top of its front door.

We continued down a track called ‘Gull Lane’, passing an enclosure of large, black and surprisingly agile wild boar, ultimately destined for the stomachs of the armed wing of the Tory party.

Tony had to carry Finn a little way because of some brambles. We came close to an injured crow which couldn’t fly but kept jumping clumsily away from us, though we have developed great empathy towards our corvid friends as a result of reading ‘Crow Country’.

The wheel turns imperceptibly and then you suddenly realise that things have changed. You get older. We hit the road opposite Nunnery Farm. A certain amount of Catholic history around here. A convent at Ditchingham a Catholic church in Bungay High Street, a place we will pass later on our walk called ‘College of Our Lady of Mettingham’’.

We’re coming into cow country. The wide, white, flat view across the frozen water meadows. In the foreground, fresh dungheaps emitting clouds of steam. Next to a fire hydrant at the roadside is a discarded microwave with the word ‘Pacific’ on it. Pacific microwaves?

A large H on the fire hydrant, reminding me of a book I’m reading. It’s about an evil Nazi with a falsetto voice - Reynard Heydrich, SS boss. Ken, who I play music with, says his mum cooked meals for the Czech parachutists who assasinated Heydrich in Operation Anthropoid. The book’s stupid title is  ‘H H h H’.

A few yards further on was a noticeboard. Mostly it was information about what had been exercising Mettingham Parish Council, but my eye was caught by a small poster whose headline read ‘Take Action Now!’, accompanied by the dramatic strapline ‘Non-native shrimp found in The Broads’.

The poster showed a picture of what it called ‘The Killer Shrimp’, an oxymoron if ever I heard one, perched above a twenty p piece, to show its scale. The length of the ‘Killer Shrimp’ was a bit less than two of the seven sides (a septagon?) stretched out in a straight line. I failed to take immediate action but instead tried to catch up with Bob and Tony, who had already embarked on the Low Road Experience.

The Low Road is a lovely road - a few quirky houses., old style cow farms, views across the meadows where they can’t even grow mangle worzels, free of chemicals, to the cows, the rooks and, in summer, the bright blue dragonflies. Poplars, too, like in old Dutch paintings, only good for matchsticks.

I’ve recently re-read ‘Restoration’ by Rose Tremain. Robert Merivel, whose story she tells, travelled around the Rota Fortunae in the reign of Charles the second. His circuits are, to me, very affecting, his humanity wonderfully and abysmally evident. Apparently he’s coming again, in a sequel. I wonder if he’ll play his oboe, like he did at the Bedlam in Whittlesea to get the mad people to dance the tarantella.

We passed a house called ‘Shalom’. It made me think of the unusual, delicious pickle made by a young Israeli woman who lives in Yoxford. It’s called ‘Zhug’, and was originally taken to Israel by Yemenite Jews.

Then huge stacks of round bales, many cows and two brown bulls with rings in their noses. Tony delved into his rucksack and asked ‘Does anyone want a cheese and pickle sandwich?’. Bob and I agreed to share one. The pickle had been made by our friend Anna Crampton in September 2010. Very sadly, Anna died recently.

Hectares of hay and straw rolled into balls and used as bricks in monumental edifices, architectural landmarks, bale mountains with snow-capped summits.

Then a sign which read ‘Please Drive Carefully Peacocks Crossing’. Almost immediately we heard the panic stricken shriek of one of these spectaculer birds. I thought of the small town of Eye, which I had visited recently. The town’s crest says ‘Oculis in Coelum’. There’s a great illuminating device of this carved in various places around the town. Like the eye in the pyramid on dollars, but without the pyramid.

We discussed building regulations as we reached the outskirts of Bungay, as Bob is planning to have an extension built on his kitchen. At one end of Bungay, the sign reads ‘A Fine Old Town’ while, at the other, southern end, the sign says ‘A Waveney Valley Town’. Personally I prefer ‘A Fine Old Town’ and wish both signs carried this affectionate phrase.

We enjoyed a good view of the Great Wall of Bungay, one of the town’s major tourist attractions, along with the Chicken Roundabout and the Green Dragon. The wall is constructed from countless pieces of pipe, tiles, concrete and other materials more commonly used to build extensions. It is one of the finest twentieth century walls in the country although, on an international level it cannot compete with the achievements of the Master of Chandigarh, a former employee at the public works department of that city’s municipal council.

We made our way down Staithe Road, crossing the bridge beneath which the overfull Waveney rushed towards the sea. We left Falcon Meadow at the gate where it meets Falcon Lane, enjoying the look and feel of the carved wooden falcon on top of the gatepost.

On Bridge Street we admired the colourful houses. Bob, a French linguist and historian, told us that Chateaubriand had spent a year in Bungay ‘shagging the local doctor’s daughter’, as he delicately put it. A plaque on one of the houses read ‘Francois Rene de Chateaubriand 1778 - 1849 stayed here in 1796.

A refugee from the French Revolution. Diplomat and Writer.’ So, he was only 18. Bob explained that his skills in diplomacy had let him down. He stayed with the doctor and his family in this house and began a sexual relationship with the daughter, Charlotte Ives. Bob pointed up to one of the windows on the upper floor, declaring ‘That’s where it happened’. Chateaubriand became ‘persona non grata’ when it became known that he was already married. Another circuit of the Rota Fortunae for him!

Outside the bright blue number 30 is a funny little sign that warns ‘Beware of the Gnomes’. I think this may be the house of Roger Eno, well known local musician. We took refreshment in The Chequers. My round - a pint of Humpty Dumpty and two ginger beers. Tony and Bob were both abstaining from alcohol during January. We were joined by Peter Janssens, a friend who works in Bungay. I’m glad to report that Peter is no fan of non-alcoholic ginger beer, January or no January. Also in the pub was another old acquaintance, Dudley, who was characteristically enjoying a tete a tete and a glass of wine with an attractive young woman. You’ve got to laugh.

We somehow got talking about raffles and Peter told us a funny story about an evening at the Fisher Theatre. Peter had hired a box and invited Bob, among others, to join him. They had bought tickets for a raffle to be drawn that evening. The embarassing bit was that Bob kept having winning tickets - so much so that he had to give some prizes back! Something to do with Fortuna, no doubt.

On our return walk we think we met the Angles Way for a while. I left the navigating to my temperant friends, assuming that two pints of Humpty Dumpty might not have been good for map-reading skills. It was getting cold as we walked along what felt like a very old track which met the small lane near Mettingham Castle. Like several of the larger buildings in this part of the world, this castle had belonged to the Bigod family, famous for having repulsed the King of Cockney. A lot of people round here are still not too keen on Londoners. Bigots.

Nearing the bottom of Ilketshall Great Common once again, we observed a pair of semi-detached dwellings, set alone in the rural landscape. Some years back, at Yuletide, one side of the building used to be covered in a veritable galaxy of illuminations. Every bit of space on half of the house’s facade was covered - a reindeer, a jolly old man with a white beard, sledges, stars, electric icicles and so on. In my experience, no lights were ever displayed on the other side of the building. Quite a contrast, sort of Protestant and Catholic and, like so much else on this snowy winter walk, this made me think of Breughel. In particular, the wonderful ‘Battle between Carnival and Lent’, which usually hangs in that amazing Breughel room in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Walking up the small road on the Common, the light crepuscular, we could almost see the thin layer of meltwater in the process of freezing. The road surface was black, the crows were black, the outlines of the bare trees black, the snow a dull white. Outside St. Andrew’s church stood Tony’s trusty van. Inside the locked doors, the rota fortunae titillated the medieval mind. One day we will make an appointment with the church warden, or some higher power, and get to see the originals. In the meantime, we will suffer our fates.

Finn will continue to grow old gracefully,Tony will recover from his cold, Bob will inject warfarin into his stomach and I will continue making joint-venture pizzas with my elder son, John, in an attempt to encourage his current mild psychosis to subside...But now, a hot bath.