I will soon get back to the requisite business of writing about perfume, but just thought I would share some photographs with you today of a place I had never been to before (even though it is only fifteen minutes from my parents’ house), and which I fell in love with a week or so ago when my father insisted suddenly that we all go and see some daffodils that were in the environs of Baddesley Clinton, an early sixteenth century English house that sheltered persecuted Catholics in secret cellars and which has the most compelling atmosphere. It is in places like this that I feel haunted by a deep, atavistic Englishness that perturbs me, particularly wen you drive off, afterwards, in the direction of Packwood House, with its famous topiaries, and come across banks and banks of swaying, inviting, happily alive spring daffodils.
Me in daffodils taking a photo of my father in daffodils taking a picture of me in daffodils.
Where I hope to retire to if it all gets too much.
Next stop: Tokyo.
The Black Narcissus 
Beautiful.
I have really appreciated this country’s natural beauty this time, actually. The belts of green between towns…it’s something quite deep within you I think.
I know what you mean. It’s very lush and deep at this time of year, and there’s something about the mildly-warming grey days that makes the green more intense. It has a kind of pulse. I like Spring more and more the older I get.
Me too. And Autumn slightly less.
Gorgeous. Thanks for sharing this, Neil
Beautiful photo’s, I love daffodil’s, and I love the Englishness that lurks inside me, no matter where I travel. Still waiting for the full splendour of the daffodils in my northern garden. This week I think!
Jane x
Stunningly beautiful photos. Thanks so much! I’m glad you’re enjoying springtime in England. Here in the Washington,DC area we are anticipating the Japanese cherry blossom season when the beauty of nature eclipses all the other doings in this neck of the woods.
And there are plenty of doings to be eclipsed, I am sure…
Beauteous and how quintessentially English. When I lived there I was a member of the National Trust and loved visiting the various estates. Thanks for this glimpse into Spring in my (faraway) homeland. Safe trip back!
Hi Sally.
I had you in mind, actually. I was trying to capture some of that pure Englishness. Glad I succeeded in some way.
That’s very thoughtful of you. I have a corner of my garden dedicated to English flowers, but somehow its just not the same. “Englishness” is simply in the very air of ole Blighty 🙂
I felt it very keenly this time, both the good and the bad. The lumpen-ness; the lack of gracefulness; the trash and the crass.
But also the extreme beauty…
Wow! Atmospheric indeed. 🙂 Very funny about retiring to the Poor Clares. I always say I’m going to end up there. Not *there*, precisely, but somewhere in a convent. I suppose everybody wishes I’d just shut up and go. What beautiful photos (as usual) and it makes me wish I were in England. I love those walking stick knobs.
I have a cloister fantasy myself, or else a sanatorium (see my review of Le Labo Neroli) when times get overwhelming, though in reality I would be causing mayhem and being anarchic within a few hours of entering a monastery, blasting out Lady Gaga from a speaker system and trying to get the monks and nuns on the dance floor.
Yep, that’s what my mother said years ago when I told her I wanted to go into a convent. “You’ll be the only nun climbing over the walls at night to go out dancing”. Lol!
Thank you for the wonderful, atmospheric photos. I only just returned from cutting an enormous bunch of daffodils that were growing in my flower beds. Tonight the temperatures are supposed to drop into the freezing range so I wanted to save some. Safe travels on your trip back to Japan.
Thanks: it is a truly nightmarish trip back. 7 hours to Dubai, an EIGHT HOUR WAIT IN THE AIRPORT, then eleven and a half hours to Japan, then WORKING THE NEXT DAY. ugh………..
The picture of your dad under the tree, daffodils in the foreground, is just beautiful! What kind of camera do you use?
an iphone 4s
It is such a beautiful place and I find the atmosphere so wonderfully serene and welcoming, your pictures really do evoke a lot of what is special about the place. Can’t wait to send a link to my parents.
p.s. Steve keeps hounding me as to whether he, in Jules, has rated a mention yet!
That review must happen….
(and ps. where were they today?)
O, To be in England
Now that April ‘s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 5
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England—now!
Home thoughts from abroad – a constant. Beautiful photos.
A marvellous ode! And I did see some very beautiful birds in my parents’ garden. I really feasted on Englishness this time.
Mum and Dad only there on alternate Tuesdays…they had put your names on the door the previous week to get you in for free, they’ll be glad you went back with Duncan though,
We loved it. It was the perfect ending to the holiday, actually. Sorry I got the day wrong!
I love peeping around National Trust homes, particularly at this time of year when the musty, creaking interiors contrast so vividly with the lilliputian fireworks springing up in the daffs outside. I especially enjoy all those accumulated, archived bits and bobs, surprising little collages of objects fossilised together. Something so pregnant there. It was always part of the Easter hols when I was small – the four of us thrust into duffle coats and persuaded to down the Creme Eggs to walk around a NT house (the promise of a jammy scone in the tearoom has always got me shifting!), and play hide and seek behind mossy statues in the gardens. My current bit of England is decidedly less romantic (rough bit of Bristol – ugh!) – but they are flogging scraggly bunches of daffodils in Asda for a quid. So.. y’know. Maybe it’s time for a road trip. I wrote you a little email, by the way, just in case hotmail ate it! Hope all’s well.
Not sure I got the mail. Shall look again.
The thing with daffodils is that ultimately they are, for me, colour-wise, just too YELLOW. I love yellow at certain times, but it can be too much when it is in that primary colour overload. I prefer the whiter ones; much easier on the eye.
I love what you write about the NAtional Trust homes here. I also like the combination of stuffiness and overly mild middle classness with the genuine atmosphere of the places. I am not remotely interested in history unfortunately much as it shames me, but I can just feel it all psychically anyway.
Hi there! Someone in my Facebook group shared this website with
us so I came to take a look. I’m definitely loving the information. I’m book-marking and will be tweeting this to my
followers! Superb blog and superb design and style.
Thankyou.
Training is just as important as feeding and watering.
When you enroll yourself into a PPC training course you are giving yourself the upper hand over your
competitors. Humphrey Neill’s book, “the art of
contrary thinking, ‘ the best known work on the subject, is based on the simple yet powerful idea that:
.
errr.