A deserted High Street in Great Ayton. Not a soul in sight. Everyone’s hunkered down. For me, a pluvious and tempestuous battle up Roseberry, though I skipped the summit. A short walk, leaving the rest of the day for housework.
There’s an Old English word that suits our usual cleaning routine — ‘scurryfunge.’ It means dashing around cleaning when visitors are due. But Storm Babet forced a change of plan.
Who was Babet? Likely, many have carried that name through the ages. In literature, one Babet was part of Victor Hugo’s gang, Patron-Minette, in his 1862 novel Les Misérables. He was tall and thin, a jack-of-all-trades, a performer, a doc, and a crook. Hugo explains that Patron-Minette is old slang for the early dawn, a time when criminals are up to their nefarious deeds.
On the way back, I found that Newton Wood now had its own Sycamore Gap, courtesy of Storm Babet. We might hope this stump will sprout into a Resurrection or Lazarus Tree, as foresters call them, but sycamores are unwelcome amongst the oaks of Newton Wood. Their seedlings are prolific and will eventually crowd the canopy, stifling acorn germination.
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