Mouldy Egg

photo: Nick Dawe

Mould is becoming a problem. The riverside location, almost daily heavy rain for a month and a lack of ventilation are all contributing to the creation of the humid conditions required. It crept up on me somewhat, by taking over two dark cupboards in the bow and also inhabiting the food cupboard.

All of my clothing has succumbed to green furry mould and I spent the morning cleaning it as best as I could. I moved my drawings out of the Egg before Christmas in anticipation of the problem as well as supplies of canvas, paper and books.

The rest of the day will be spent washing the walls and kitchen surfaces with a weak solution of bleach. Sharing ones home with spiders is one thing but near invisible spores quite another.

One of a packet of oatcakes in the food locker.

Mould beginning on the inner egg wall.

A Chilly Welcome

The welcome mat outside my door was frozen this morning, along with the drinking water supply (despite insulation added to the tap just after Christmas). The sun’s warmth soon began a general thaw, but my mood turned chilly again when I discovered most of the clothing in my dry locker had become a thriving home to green and black mould.

Gifts from Visitors (The Dodo Shell)

Whilst living alone for just over two years in a woodland cabin beside Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts in the 1840s, HD Thoreau always had three chairs ready for visiting friends. Callers to the Egg can’t be encouraged quite so much, since my own wilderness is a relatively small, protected wildlife sanctuary. However, it has felt right to welcome the occasional voyageur such as my long time supporter, the naturalist Ralfe Whistler. Inheriting his father’s box of dodo bones and shell led to a life long passion for this extinct creature* and I was greatly pleased when Ralfe, in turn, gifted me some small shell fragments as a reminder of his visit.

If the Exbury Egg symbolises fertility, birth and renewal, it is equally a reminder of our difficult relationship with nature and of the heavy footprints marking our path as we bestride the planet. Now hanging beside my bed, the dodo shell is an important reminder of human ignorance and indifference to the rest of existence except as some ‘thing’ to be made use of. After being first recorded on Mautitius in 1598, the dodo was extinct by 1681. Fiona Harvey’s story published in the Guardian last Summer raises questions about the threats to our own wild bird populations today…

Fiona Harvey, Environmental Correspondent, Page 14, The Guardian, Friday 23 August 2013.

* Ralfe Whistler http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-24525693

Interregnum

The sovereignty of the stormy weather released its grip yesterday for a few hours of sunshine when I was free to inspect my watery bounds after a winter lashing which began on December 23rd. Winds and spring tides have returned today across the whole of southern England and beyond. The Outer Bank camera was knocked out when the sea really rose (on a high spring tide) to the challenge of breaching its water resistant casing. I hope the SanDisc SDHC* will still hold on to its memories after being dried out.

It has been an eventful time at the Egg since my last post. Solar power failed again and then when my batteries were finally recharged on a meagre diet of rare solar particles, storms knocked out electricity to the entire neighbourhood from about 11.30pm on December 23 until 8pm on Boxing Day, curtailing most activity and the reporting of it. Outdoor actions planned for New Years Day (the burning of a large blackthorn Egg) were also postponed by hail and a parallel failure of WIFI which lasted 48 hours. Backdated recollections and musings will be posted over the next few days. Happy New Year to everyone from the riverside at Exbury.

*SanDisk say they designed the card to be very resilient and durable. It is shock proof, X-Ray proof, temperature proof, magnet proof, vibration proof and reassuringly I have read – waterproof.

Flood Warning

High water is due to top the predicted 3.9m tonight, due to the continuing southwesterly gales and the Environment Agency has issued a flood alert and indicative map. The inundation would be directly across the river as well as east toward Lepe, rather than across the somewhat higher marsh around my own protected nook.

Environment Agency flood alert map, issued on January 2nd at 17.03

Hail Christmas

A salute of hailstones welcomed the dawn of Christmas Day just after 8am. I was surprised by the unusual swishing noise from sheets of hail hitting water, as a wintry squall sped toward me across the river from a soaking Beaulieu. I took shelter in time to record the reverberations as they struck the Egg’s shell.

Christmas Tree

The tree is an appropriately curved frond from a Cedar of Labanon (appropriately biblical), found nearby within the confines of Exbury Gardens. It nestles in the arc of the inner wall is decorated with flotsam from the shore. On Twelfth Night, each item will be taken down, carefully recorded and stored for my growing Egg archive.

Everyday Actions (Morning Coffee)

Moon River

My exposed arm and nose felt like ice and the stainless steel of the heater pinged and pinked as its steel case cooled. A curlew called from somewhere stage left. The stove had stayed alight for eight hours, but now at three in the morning the Egg was getting cold. Grey light from the full moon streamed through the main skylight and I took its picture through a growing river of condensation. A triple spatter of droplets fell onto the plastic bag protecting my drawings as I crawled back under the covers.

Living Beside Water

My neighbours Nick and Caroline live in the house at the top of the field and between their home and mine, curved lines of earthworks follow the contours of a hill down to the river and reveal the remains of an iron age refuge.

In Nick’s kitchen a topographical study made in the early nineteenth century depicts house boats beside a creek. The curved bender roofs of the two hulls reminded me instantly of my own situation here in Exbury. Living beside water has long had many attractions.

The Exbury Egg

Stephen Turner's Exbury Egg is addressing the meaning of place at a time of great environmental change. In the guise of The Beaulieu Beadle, he will work on, in and around the Egg for twelve months from July 15th 2013 – July 14th 2014.

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