Saturday 20 November 2021

Tale of Two Teeth

Happiness is being boosted, lovely food, reading for pleasure....
Oh I wish I’d looked after me teeth
So recited Pam Ayres MBE in her famous poem I wish I’d looked after me teeth with her cavalcade of witty rhymes: chewed/food, willin’/fillin’, gobstoppers/choppers, licked/picked, careless/hairless. For someone like me who could be described as a gastronome, an epicurist, a gourmand (look them up – they all amount to the same thing – a greedy gobbler) – I can concur – I wish I’d looked after me teeth. But my cheerful dentist spotted that, during my years of teaching, I’d been using my teeth as tools and, for example, ripping out stuck staplers with my incisors so my jaggedy gnashers were in danger of breaking. She spent an hour doing some wizardry and made them look better (I think.) So, fully boosted, I will continue to enjoy tasty oral pleasures as Autumn approaches Winter. And floss!
Autumn is in full swing and the home made curry dinners (courtesy of Prashad) are here to warm the heart....



Saturday 13 November 2021

As we recall those unlived years

100 Years of Remembrance
2021 marks the centenary of the year (1921) when different elements of Remembrance were combined to create the traditions we know today: Armistice Day, the poppy symbol, the two-minute silence, the service for the Unknown Warrior and the march-past of veterans and dignitaries at monuments around the UK, including the Cenotaph in London. Regular readers will know my admiration for the Royal British Legion and much more about the history of Remebrance can be found on their website.
Past, present, future
What I always reflect on is how inclusive remembrance is: men, women, young, old, all ethnicities, nationalities, religions and backgrounds can find a home within an act of remembrance. White, purple, black and rainbow poppy wearers can find a home. Most significantly, the grieving can find a home, “a moment stolen for a tear.” Lest we forget, we need to remember…. It is a process that should be applied to all aspects of leadership and political life…. We need to know the past to understand the present and plan for a better future.
We shall remember them
BFBS
British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS UK) aims to provide TV, radio and internet entertainment and information to Britain’s Armed Forces and their dependents. They reach people around the globe and have permanent studios in (to date) 10 countries, as far afield as, for example, the Falkland Islands and Bahrain. They began in Algiers in 1943 and have consistently transmitted military news, live sport, and movies as well as material like the BBC’s children’s content to an increasing number of bases in remote settings and to families stationed at home and abroad.
Ernie Rowe
Ernie Rowe worked for 30 years at BFBS and penned her own poem in 2019 to add to the world’s growing collection of Remembrance poetry:

Remembered still those souls that tried
To save the world, but many died.
A moment stolen for a tear,
As we recall those unlived years.
The camaraderie that flew those souls
Back home to those they knew,
And loved them dear and held them close
But for our sakes released to foes
The silence that they leave behind
Is space to calm the troubled minds
Of those they loved – and can’t rewind.
Again this day we give our thanks
For those returned from serving ranks
And them ‘as gave it all away
Forever in our minds will stay.
Previous blogs featuring Remembrance as a theme:

Saturday 6 November 2021

Hope the voyage is a long one

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
John Keats, in his famous Ode to Autumn, outlines, in three stanzas the abundant harvest of Autumn, then its hard-working processes and finally its descent into the potential of Winter…. whatever Winter means. Old age? Death? And Spring will surely come again….
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run….
I’ve just about emerged from the shadow of Covid and have my booster booked (go, me!) So, I find myself once again striding out to enjoy the burnished colours and low-lying sunlight of Autumn.
Hope the voyage is a long one
As well as Keats, I’ve recently reached for the words of a Greek poet I admire, Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, better known in English as CP Cavafy. I’ve pasted below one of his poems that reminds me to “not hurry the journey.” To savour the here and now. The poem’s title, Ithaka, refers to the island home of Odysseus, the hero/antihero who took ten years to reach Ithaka (and his wife) after leaving the Trojan War. Ithaka captures the idea that life is so fleeting (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter….) that it is important to savour the journey, not to only focus on the destination. Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors has themes of loss, travel, searching, finding your identity and reunion and a joyous production I saw in an outdoor theatre in summer in Stratford-upon-Avon made its way on tour to the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford. Welcome to the north, Royal Shakespeare Company! It was an uplifting return to live theatre:
“after so long grief, such nativity.”
Moving, frantic, hilarious, inspiring. Like Keats, like Cavafy. May all your voyages be long.
Ithaka

by CP Cavafy
translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.


Saturday 30 October 2021

Wells-next-the-Sea

Wells-next-the-Sea, a dramatic setting for a long delayed celebration
Journey of a Covid Survivor
And so, we went East on the M62 and South on the A1(M) and then East and Easter and Further East along tunnel-like Autumnal lanes, going nowhere but to the edge of the island nation and the impossibly bronze and blue  horizons of the north Norfolk coast. It was what I call “getting away from it all” with precious friends.
Me, Michael, Sally, Janet
Wells-next-the-Sea
To Quay View Cottage, a three-storey, perfectly situated, beautifully clean, well-equipped holiday let which had everything we needed to hunker down at Halloween, catch up and put the world to rights. As W H Hudson (author, naturalist and ornithologist) described it:
There are few places in England where you can get so much wildness and desolation of sea and sandhills, woods, green marsh and grey saltings as at Wells in Norfolk.
View from our bedroom at Quay View Cottage
Celebrations Assemble
Reasons to gather:
  • two postponed 60th birthday weekends
  • an imminent 65th birthday
  • the awarding of an OBE
  • the recent Empty Nesting and the happiness/success of All Our Daughters
  • the recovery of Yours Truly from Ghastly Nasty Covid
Wells-next-the-Sea with, top left, the "old" lifeboat station
Gulls and Geese
The purple evening light (a bit like the “blue hour” of twilight in Scandinavia) bathed the tail end of half term holidaymakers, the younglings squealing as the seagulls and geese swooped and squabbled for territory on the harbour walls and local soccer field.
Sea Wall Defences
In such a flat, expansive landscape, a little elevation goes a long way. It was therefore memorable to walk the length of the Flood Defence Wall under dramatic skies.
Dangerous maze-like coast
The marshes, scrubland, sea, sandbanks and horizons intermingled in ever-changing arrangements, connecting and disconnecting in disorientating maze-like channels. And over us all, the massive skies, moody, broody, threatening, and glorious.
Yes, I Know I used the bottom left snap already, but it just sums up my memory of the weekend!
Holkham Bay
Our destination at the end of the Flood Defence Wall was the two-mile stretch of Holkham Beach, bleeding into dunes which sheltered us from the wind for our picnic.
There's that same pic again, along with Holkham beach, a basking seal and colourful beach huts
Offshore wind farms
Behind us was the desolation of nature and in front of us, bending the mind, were limitless skies merging into the horizon-stretching sea. Could that be a mirage or an offshore wind farm?
Wells Crab House
We self-catered apart from one evening spent in the intimate and informal Wells Crab House where you can identify the name of the fisherman who caught the food on your plate. As the website (justifiably) boasts “Nothing better than getting our deliveries so fresh with wellies still dripping with the sea.” So, there was Curry Battered Prawns, Mackerel Terrine, Haddock Pot and Salmon Noodles followed by Scallop Crumble, Crab Platter, Lobster and Fresh Cod.
Sandbanks and quicksands
Travel writer, Peter Sager, wrote of north Norfolk:
What a coast this is, with its salt marshes and lavender, its channels, dunes, bays and crumbling Ice Age cliffs, lonelier and wilder than its Suffolk neighbour, Arctic, melancholic, beautiful, treacherous, with sandbanks and quicksands, storms and floods, and never-ending erosion.
Sadly the East Coast is the likeliest bit of England to be lost to the sea if the impending climate catastrophe is not averted. Now I have spent time on this watery land, clinging to the island flats, I feel that losing north Norfolk (and, for that matter, parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and north Wales) to the sea would be a tragedy.


Saturday 23 October 2021

Worse b4 Better

61st Birthday One Week Later Than Planned.....
Birthday Redux
And so, dear reader, my previous blog explained that I contracted 
SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2)
aka Covid-19
and that I hijacked a Craig David song to explain the Week 1 journey which largely involved coughing and a sore throat. Well, Week 2 has not been the same and involved silent hypoxia (ie low oxygen levels without realising) and a feverish temperature. Floppy boneless limbs applied to both weeks. Covid is a peculiar disease:
  • Some, like me, have an “OK” first week, a shocking second week and then recover
  • Some people are asymptomatic and hardly know they’ve had it
  • Some people deteriorate rapidly and die
  • Some people become very ill for a long time
  • Some people, like me, develop silent hypoxia from which you can recover (as I did) but which can alternatively lead to a sudden plummeting of health, becoming desperately breathless and hospitalisation 
  • And there are many variations and gradations between.
I’m in the recovery stage now, building up stamina, breathing consciously and deeply, increasing the walking distance each day, resting between exertions….
Anthony Quinn, Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif
It is written…. Nothing is written….
A highlight of sofa-flopping has been indulging in long movies – like the widescreen version of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a still astonishing feat of cinematography, editing and design with pitch-perfect performances, overwhelming music, and iconographic moments like the above entrance of Omar Sharif in the far distance, like a shimmering mirage; and the jump cut below between a burning match and the rising sun. Lawrence’s epic journey(s) through the burning deserts were a good match for how I felt dredging through my body’s responses to Covid-19. When William Potter burns himself extinguishing a match between his thumb and forefinger, he challenges Lawrence to explain “What’s the trick, then?” Lawrence answers: “The trick….is not minding that it hurts.”
Silenzio, Bruno
An altogether jolliier experience was the film that capped my delayed birthday – the Disney-Pixar film Luca, ravishingly animated and charmingly told. The themes were clear as an Italian blue sky: helicopter-parenting, family – both blood and constructed, unconventional-friendships, deceit, bullying, outsiders, prejudice, escape/freedom….


Saturday 16 October 2021

Self-Isolation Birthday

Of Mice and Men
Wise poet Robbie Burns observed in 1785 that it is a shame when little mice construct their shelters, carefully, lovingly – but unwittingly – in the path of the plough. And so I, dear reader, had planned for my 61st birthday to be at Castle Garden in Sissinghurst staying in the Priest’s House with the family. (If I’m still blogging and you’re still reading in the Spring of 2023, pop back to hear all about it.) Any road up, last year, I was condemned by government regulations to spend my 60th birthday outside and this year I have mostly been having Covid….
Faint line (top left) day one and not so faint (top right) day two
With fevered apologies to Craig David
Was it for real? Damn sure
What was the deal? Let me update
Sunday a tickle or two
Then got a lottta hotter on Monday
A faint line – so fine – real deal so hit me with a PCR
Results by Tuesday – possessed by heat and coughs
Smooth talker Covid they told me
They’d love to unfold me all night long
Cheesegrater throat and hacking hawking
From back to front I flipped it back
And breathed it big
Wednesday was a hell but
Thursday felt more me
Friday was my birthday and love came down the line
And stood at the end of my garden table
We chilled on Saturday and hope to do the same through Sunday
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Until isolation ends on Thursday....
Last supper with taste and smell for a while....
Unlucky for some
Having been the most cautious person I know since March 2020, I feel as if the Tories’ confusing and contradictory strategy was designed – specifically and personally – to smite me just when I was about to relax. I’m double vaccinated (thanks, NHS) so have been fortunate and I hope I’ll have some natural immunity for a time at least. And I have a loving support system so had a smashing birthday anyway. Smell and taste seem to have departed (hopefully for a short time) but thankfully not before I enjoyed delicious stuff on the day of my nativity. I was also allowed to control the remote so resorted to an old comfort watch with the (to me) magnetic Vanessa Redgrave. The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry, but as Robbie Burns points out, mice have it easier than men because they don’t know their ultimate destination…. Here’s to a few more birthdays, wee, timorous beastie!


Saturday 21 August 2021

I have spoken

Experimenting with a Father Christmas look, gorgeous flowers, yummy fajitas
“I don’t know if you heard but the Empire is gone.”
Thus says Mando….
“When one chooses to walk the Way of the Mandalore, you are both hunter and prey….” (Hunter, prey; Yin, yang; Chicken, egg; Jedi, Sith; Innocence, experience.) This week I have mostly been watching The Mandalorian with asides for Pan’s Labyrinth (whilst ironing) and Independence Day (with the Harry Potter Film Club.) In other words, I have spent very little time on Planet Earth as it is, and when not escaping to fantastic Other Worlds (which, let’s face it, are all about Planet Earth’s deepest darkest What Ifs) I have been writing about the history of My Own Invented Other World, Rhenium. Creative writing and fictional fantasies can be powerful distractions but inevitably crash into reality when the parallels with Here and Now lurch into view:
family, fascism, identity, gender, loyalty, love, fear, courage, oppression, freedom, hatred, migration, the “outsider,” prejudice….
Are these the themes for Pan’s Labyrinth or The Mandalorian or Independence Day or Rhenium Tales….? Or do they exist in them all? Old history, repeated history; old tales, freshly-minted tales; Yin, yang; the same thing can be both comforting and depressing. As William Blake would have it, the struggle between contrary forces is necessary to human existence. The prose and the passion. Only connect. "I have spoken."
Pan's Labyrinth, The Mandalorian, Independence Day  - Fantasy or (Subconscious) Reality?



Saturday 10 July 2021

Coral

Garden Cottage at Nun Monkton
Garden Cottage
For our (Coral) wedding anniversary we returned to a tiny AirBnB where we stayed in 2019 (when visiting the Yorkshire Heart Vineyard). The oasis “Garden Cottage” is not far from York along a road going only to a remote village where cows graze freely on the village green, a green skewered by the fattest, tallest maypole I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few, madam. Nun Monkton is the name of the village. The garden hummed with insects and wrapped us in its verdant peace. The dawn chorus was full of beauty.
Alice Hawthorne Inn
Alice Hawthorne
Nun Monkton is also home to the Alice Hawthorne Inn where we ate two nights in a row, the first with long-while friends, Sue and Brian. Stoked by delicious food (Crab Mayo, Roast Beetroot, Popcorn Prawns, Yorkshire Dales Lamb, Waterford Farm Steak, Sticky Toffee Pudding, Crème Catalan, Mini Sundae), the venue felt safe and welcoming.
Beningbrough Hall Estate
In The Moment
Our anniversary hike was around the nearby Beningbrough Hall Estate, alongside the River Ouse for much of the time, picking over gnarly roots and picnicking on tree stumps. Cooling forest sections on the walk provided welcome shelter. The house had an indoor exhibition (In The Moment: the art of wellbeing) aimed at reminding viewers to stand and stare, to pause, to slow down, to reflect, to be in the moment. Some of the pieces achieved that (for me) more than others but, on a hot day, it certainly slowed down the old heart rate.
Food and Nature
Amidst medical/political uncertainty and the competing noises of the media, some constants Remain True. The sights, sounds, smells and colours of nature continue to enchant. And eating, drinking and being merry all continue to drown out the stresses of the age. The messages about the “roadmap” towards “Freedom Day” Remain Confusing: Be Free/Be Cautious, Be Released/Continue Shielding, Do/Don’t/Maybe Wear Masks, Do/Don’t/Maybe Socially Distance, Go on holiday to a Red/Amber/AmberPlus/Green/GreenPlus Country/Staycation in the UK but Don’t Go to A Crowded Place (unless it’s a nightclub), Go Anywhere/Go Certain Places Sometimes/But Don’t Go There (small print = we might change the rules overnight and we’ll bury our heads in the sands about the understaffed, underpaid, overwhelmed NHS until we “beg” private companies to swoop in with greedy shareholders….)  But Nature and Food Remain True. And so do New Arrivals.
New Kid(s) On The Block
Welcome Earnest, my latest great nephew. Welcome Gertrude Jekyll, our climbing rose. Welcome Gabriel Oak, our potted rose. New things happen. Children grow. Roses bloom. Another day begins.

Saturday 3 July 2021

Head above the parapet again

The scariest moment is always just before you start*
*Stephen King
So, I’ve been summoned back into the world of Rhenium where survivors of the human race attempt to create a better society on a new planet in a galaxy far, far away…. (if you want to see where I was back in August 2018 before I contacted agents and got a wide range of responses - some very pertinent and some just rude, click here.)  Covid-19 lockdowns didn’t boil creative juices inside me, just survivor instincts, so I put my magnum opus aside for the best part of three years in favour of reading, walking, feasting, watching TV and doing jigsaws.
Bark, roses, flowers, outdoor eating.... summer 2021
Write. Write more. Edit. Edit more.
A combination of factors has brought Raydan Wakes back under the microscope and it is now subject to the laser-bright-brutal scrutiny of my editorial pen.
Go with me to my tent; where you shall see….
How calm and gentle I proceeded still
In all my writings.
Suffice to say, the new version seems (to me) radically different from the first (two, five, thirteen?) version(s). Some sections I cannot even remember writing…. Creative writing is a very peculiar hobby! But I’m back in the saddle again, clopping along the lonesome trail…. Giddy up, cowboy! (with thanks to the critters on the pioneer trail who cheer me on….)
The colours of Rhenium society and Nick Shelton's artist's impression of two key characters


Saturday 8 May 2021

Return to Maggie's Bar

Emily, Amy, Benji, Sally, Maggie, a May evening, a starry starry night
Inclusively Injected with love
Last Summer, we were invited to Maggie’s Bar (click here for reminder). Yesterday evening we returned to enjoy the additional gazebo which warded off the meterological uncertainties of Spring 2021. Benji sat on Sally’s knee (as in collage above.) Nibbles were nibbled. Discussions roamed around the past and our present lives, hopes, dreams and lockdown experiences, the prophetic Corona cushion, WhoGivesACrapRecycledToiletRoll, TV, cinema, theatre, the future….  On our return to the bar, we could toast the gospel that the entire Shipley branch of the Harry Potter Film Club have now been Covid-Vaccinated, Double-Jabbed, Inclusively-Injected…. There was also a Birthday Bonus present for Sally. Not only does Maggie run a very popular bar, but her eyes, hands and talents can craft lovingly produced Cross Stitch works of art. As Shakespeare truly muses:
I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends
A Cross Stitched gift, more signs of Spring, ecological toilet rolls....


Saturday 17 April 2021

Learning to dance in the rain

GQ’s Men of the Year
Lists of “Top Ten” or “Best Of” regularly appear in many places in the media to spark debate and highlight trends. I’d have to endorse Mr William Shakespeare as a Man of the Year in every one of my lists, as he was “not of an age, but for all time” (© Ben Jonson) and he inhabits my soul every day. But I’m also happy to concur with some of GQ’s Men of the Year:
  • Russell T Davies (thanks for your TV series It’s A Sin and past creativity)
  • Captain Tom Moore (thanks for your past service and current inspiration)
  • Marcus Rashford (thanks for your tenacity and courage)
  • Josh O’Connor and Riz Ahmed (thanks for all your performances, in particular recently in Romeo and Juliet and Sound of Metal, but formerly in God's Own Country and Nightcrawler)
  • And Prince Phillip, HM Queen Elizabeth II’s “constant strength and guide” and “strength and stay.” 
Falling within a bell curve
Prince Phillip’s recent death (9th April) produced much broadcast material and many column inches about whether he was the last of a particular kind of man. Such dogmatic reasoning always falls flat in my head, maybe because I’m a Libran and can usually see an alternative argument for everything. Prince Phillip was not unique despite his context and background; stastical probability (given the planet’s billions of people) suggests there will be other Prince Phillip types in decades to come. The one we’ve recently lost was remarkable, I agree, and I liked his daughter, Princess Anne’s, quotation about him – “a life well lived and service freely given.” Shakespeare has Hamlet say, of his late father, “I shall not look upon his like again” but he idolises the memory of the late king and is in a profound state of grief. More empirically truthful, I think, is Tim Minchin’s lyric in If I didn’t have you (somebody else would do):
I mean, I think you’re special
But you fall within a bell curve
Outlaw’s Cave
Robin Hood, now there’s a man! Steals from the rich and distributes to the poor…. possibly? Any road up, on the day Prince Phillip died, we met Michael and Janet to complete an undulating walk in the secluded woodland of Conjure Alders in the twin valley of the Rivers Maun and Meden, at the edge of Sherwood Forest. We walked across fields with huge horizons, through woods filled with birch and alder trees, picked over tangled roots by the river and marvelled at the sandstone cliff outcrop concealing Robin Hood’s Cave. No sign of Maid Marian or the merry men (or a reduction of income inequality) in early April 2021…. Where’s Robin Hood when you need him the most?
Waiting for the storm to pass
Spring continues to springeth and daffodils to bloometh. No-one knows exactly how Covid-19’s infection rate will spread, nor how severely, so time and tide wait for no man…. so now seems a good time to hook up (safely) with other Men (and Women) of the Year…. Thank you, Brian and Sue, for the fish finger butties and chips under your verandah in Tollerton and the inspirational message:
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass,
It’s about learning to dance in the rain
Once the pandemic is endemic and (hopefully) as ubiquitous and controlled as ‘flu, I imagine many people will continue to value nature and lobby decision-makers to tackle the global climate crisis and the over-exploitation of precious resources. Thank you, Nick and Graeme, for giving us a glimpse into the future with our proxy experiences of an electric car.
Sites opening up again
So if we live long enough to be in the market for a new car, electric will be the way to go. In the meantime, the pleasures of bread-making, flower arranging, table setting and dining at home are not to be abandoned lightly when the economy “opens up.” Buy locally? Travel locally? Save the planet? It’s been a pleasure to return to the (local-ish) Bolton Abbey Estate, and re-adding it to our repertoire of beauty spots, alongside the Leeds-Liverpool canal and the River Aire. A Man of the Year from the early 19th Century, Lord Byron, “mad, bad and dangerous to know,” expressed my feelings about walks and nature perfectly in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more….
River Wharfe at Bolton Abbey, River Aire near Saltaire and Leeds-Liverpool canal

 

Saturday 10 April 2021

The Peace of Wild Things

A path diverging from the familiar....
Everything Old Is New Again
At President Joe Biden’s inauguration, the young poet, Amanda Gorman, speaking to “Americans, and The World,” expressed poetically how humans strive and thrive with passion and compassion (to borrow a phrase from another of my favourite poets, Maya Angelou):
   Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
   That even as we grieved, we grew,
   That even as we hurt, we hoped,
   That even as we tired, we tried.
I have to hope that the post-Covid world (when the disease is endemic rather than ripping across the globe without fear nor favour) will be a better world, where we can see things freshly and anew. Despite trudging many local byways over the years that I have lived in Saltaire, occasionally a new route presents itself and, on a familiar trail around the Bolton Abbey estate recently, we followed a signpost to Coney Warren and trod a path that was new to us.
Intrepid Exploration
Posforth Gill and Posforth Force
Negotating steep slopes, stiles, heathery fields, and walls by woods, it was reasonably easy to reach the Valley of Desolation where two falls, slightly tucked away but worth the find, thunder over drops. The higher falls, reached by a cul-de-sac path, is at Posforth Gill and the lower falls, the longer drops, are named Posforth Force. A perfect place for a picnic.
Reflecting back, projecting forward
Nature by day, TV by night! It’s notable that our TV-watching during this second or third Covid-lockdown (depending on whether you count local lockdowns) has mixed stressful police or medical dramas (Line of Duty, Unforgotten, ER) with gentler fare (Schitt’s Creek, Greyson’s Art Club, The Great Pottery Throw Down). It’s almost as if we need the distress to stay alert to issues and problems outside the pandemic and the beneficial stress (the eustress) to help us sleep. Whatever gets you through the night. I’ve found the poem The Peace of Wild Things a useful go-to poem during the last year. It was written by Wendell Berry (born 1934), a poet-philospher, essayist and novelist who is also a farmer and environmental activist.
Whatever Gets You Through The Night
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It is interesting that this poem was included in a collection, Tools of the trade: Poems for new doctors, given to all graduating doctors in Scotland between 2014 and 2018. By doing so, the medical organisations were acknowledging that poetry (or lyrics in general or more broadly the Arts) can play a vital role in contributing to the well being of all (both patients and health practitioners.) I have always believed this to be self-evident which is why the Tory party’s suggestion that ballerinas (and by implication all arts workers) should retrain to work in IT (Fatima’s next job could be in cyber – she just doesn’t know it yet) was so unenlightened and counter to the true “wealth of the nation” - the peace of wild things and the people who grew, hoped and tried.