Yearly trick of looking new

Spring turns to Summer
As night follows day and age follows youth, so the seasons move along whether or not we humans are loving, reproducing, fighting infection or dying. Walls fall, buildings fall, whole cities and empires fall. But, for now at least, the flowers and plants and trees continue to grow, Earth turns, and after the dark comes the dawn. Further lockdown measures have been “eased” and the crowds (mostly socially distancing, but not always) are returning to beauty spots. After Summer, the Autumn will come, and Winter will be here anon. In the meantime, Phllip Larkin’s poem The Trees has been on my mind on recent walks.

Yearly trick of looking new

The Trees
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Stand by me

2020 (top two) and times gone by (bottom three)

Baby Harriet Rose
And so, in the middle of a gradually-relaxing Pandemic Lockdown, it was time to celebrate the birthday of the adult daughter formerly known as Baby Harriet. And there is much to celebrate in this unsettling period of history. For a start, we’re all alive. So what to do to celebrate a birthday in June 2020?

Tramping in Wharfedale
Less industrial than Airedale, not as dramatic as Malhamdale, Wharfedale is a lovely place to walk. And so we did. The dale was formed in the last ice age, and named from the Old Norse Hverf that became the Old English Weorf, both meaning winding river. Small settlements date back to Neolithic times, working farms have been established for generations and local people and tourists alike have tramped meandering paths across the moorland countryside. Above Burley in Wharfedale we climbed up the side of the valley to enjoy cows, sheep, fields, meadows, scrubby bushes, wild foxgloves, streams, rivulets, stiles and views…. Oh, the views.

5,000 miles
We managed around 6 miles up and down, along and beyond. The 5,000 miles in the sub-heading refers to the estimated length of all the dry stone walls in Yorkshire. You can’t beat the sight of a dry stone wall: such a familiar sight, so welcome and reassuring when returning from elsewhere in the world to "God’s Own County."

Birthday 2020 and "at home" at Versailles

Picnic and Prashad
Sitting on big rocks somewhere high we revelled in a picnic with fizz (is there anything better than eating and drinking in the open air?) And later, socially distancing in the garden, we had a Gujerati Indian takeaway from the excellent Prashad in Drighlington. The main glory was being together, being healthy, reminiscing, looking forward, blowing away the cobwebs during the day and putting the world to rights as the sun set.

2020 feast from Prashad and snapshots from America, France and Italy

Stand by me
Songwriters: Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, Ben King
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid
Oh, I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me
So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me
Stand by me
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry
No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

Maggie's bar

Hoops of steel
All most people want to know in the Covid-19 lockdown is when you can mingle freely with loved ones. I’ve had the revelation during recent months that meeting friends to chat and drink and eat is more important to me than cinema or theatre, both of which I miss mightily. So this week’s easing of “lockdown rules” found me gathered round a garden fire pit…. with folk who readily dressed up as Shakespearean characters for a Zoom chat on the great writer’s birthday. Aristotle said that a true friend is “another self” and Shakespeare, of course, has the perfect quotation about friendship:
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel
So it was a deep, abiding pleasure to drink wine, eat smoked salmon blinis, sausage pasta and homemade brownies – beneath the lights of Maggie’s bar, twinkling in the twilight, warmed by the coals, with
companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Who souls do bear an equal yoke of love

Socially distanced meetings between Julius Caesar, Juliet's Nurse, Portia, Emilia from The Comedy of Errors and Lady Macbeth

Making Hay while the sun shines

Hay Festival

text and pics to be added