Category Archives: Musings

King Harvest…has surely come

29 Tuesday Oct 2024

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‘I’ll bring some apples’. 

‘I wouldn’t if I were you’ my mother in law said. ‘David always brings apples, because he has an orchard’. I’ve got an orchard too if you count my four trees, and I’ve got Russets! 

Eve, given a second chance couldn’t turn down a Russet.

The VOR successfully outbid herself at the Harvest Festival auction. I informed her that the bidder is meant to be trumped by another bidder, rather than themselves. Ignoring my advice she ploughed on in feverish pursuit of a giant onion, and drunk with power, blurted out random bids. I’ve got a fiver….. I’ve got ten pounds! not waiting for such obvious cues as Going Once… I wanted to intervene but was reluctant to undermine her new found confidence. Two pounds she exclaimed, obviously running out of cash, the giant onion becoming ever more elusive.

All in all it was a rather successful evening. The vicar mentioned farmers quite a lot, and I was familiar with at least one of the hymns, predictably We Plough the Fields and Scatter. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be much call for Cauliflowers’ Fluffy. There was wine and cheese afterward and the VOR turned out to be extremely popular for having thrown caution to the wind at the charity auction – especially as she had no idea what she had actually bought. When all was said and done we had acquired; three onions from a local supermarket in an unmarked paper bag, two baskets of apples – presumably to keep David happy – a couple of cabbages, some shop bought chutney, a bag of pears – although everyone agreed that it wasn’t a good year for them – a giant tomato and thankfully an enormous onion. Fortunately there wasn’t any livestock on offer. 

Hannah Twynnoy has had her headstone lovingly restored by a small group of well meaning locals in Malmesbury. Hannah had the dubious honour of being the first, and thankfully last, person to be killed by a tiger in Wiltshire in 1703. Animal husbandry doesn’t seem to have improved much over the past three hundred years, as Kimba the lion escaped from a circus last week and wandered the streets of Laddispoli in Italy for seven hours before capture.

Rony Vassallo, who is responsible for the animals at the Rony Roller Circus, said that while the thought of confronting a lion would make most people fearful, eight-year-old Kimba posed very little danger. ‘He met with people in an environment he wasn’t used to … and nothing happened. He said his fear had been ‘That someone could have harmed the animal, out of excess enthusiasm’. Which, I think, is where Hannah must have gone wrong. Imagine the damage Kimba could have done in the Cotswolds with that amount of spare time.

This Saturday morning there’s croissants and table tennis at the village hall. I’ve emailed asking for a start time but have received no reply. I guess that it’s difficult to type with a croissant in one hand and a ping pong bat in the other. 

The WI are putting on a talk about what it was like to be a servant girl in Tudor England. Tickets start at four pounds. I’m sure that if I tell the VOR, she could easily get them up to a fiver.

Painting: Apple Tree No 2 by km.lewis

A Fold in the Map

14 Monday Oct 2024

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Are you mad? A friend said. What on earth will you do with yourself in the country? 

I’ll be fine I replied. I think it may even suit me.

Larkin said that ‘Nothing, like something happens anywhere’. And nothing, like something, sometimes happens here.

Cinnamon the Capybara has escaped from a zoo during the delivery of a new tractor. Tractors are very much in vogue in my fold in the map. The VOR, my wife – the voice of reason – recently collided with one at the crossroads, writing off her Mini and proving that not just American blues singers have significant encounters at intersections. Needless to say, her driving is much improved.

How did he escape? a reporter incredulously asked. Well how do you think; by sneaking along the sides of the Nissan huts, pressing close as the searchlights swing past, then breaking from the shadows and crawling along the grass to the razor wire before frantically using a snips to make a Capybara sized hole then mounting a motorbike left by a willing accomplice. How did he escape indeed. The standard of journalism just isn’t the same out here in the sticks.

My youngest son says that my fold in the map is the perfect place to ride out the impending zombie apocalypse. All I have to do is blow two bridges and stock up on tins and toilet rolls. In light of this summers riots this may not be such a bad idea, although the atrocious weather in England’s increasingly mean and unpleasant land ensures that such disturbances only occur between downpours.  

It costs £3 a month to adopt a donkey, which seems very reasonable, especially as it stays at the donkey sanctuary rather than your own home – for which I imagine there’s a healthy discount. There’s no mention of Capybara adoptions. I think I’d rather like a guinea pig the size of a Labrador and they’re bound to be smarter than a donkey. 

I’m eagerly awaiting my copy of Boris’s fictional memoir Unhinged or is it Unchecked?.  It will not only provide me with merriment, but help fill my time here in the provinces and keep me from announcing to the VOR that a tractor has just gone past, or that a mysterious car has appeared in the lane that I haven’t seen before.

There’s an urgent need for someone to do face painting at the village fete and the VOR is thinking of volunteering. I point out my reservations, as a friend once did it and didn’t manage to get a break and not so much as a venison burger or an extremely dilute and expensive Pimms passed her lips all day.  

YOU MUST DO IT! her brother announced, in a manner reminiscent of Bojo commanding the SAS to invade Holland. I had no idea he felt so strongly about children walking around with unpainted faces. I said that perhaps she should smear the paint on, then scape it off, like Frank Auerbach, but my humorous interjection fell on stony ground. 

Any way, I wouldn’t be at the fete as I was off for a jolly jaunt to the city. I just needed to dust off my Coke hat, roll my brolly, and break out the pinstripes – only to discover that moths had eaten the crotch away in a vindictive and specifically targeted attack.  As Michael Corleone said ‘Everything’s personal’.

There’s a talk at the village hall this weekend on the old testament and biblical violence –  I wonder if the farm shop has any toilet rolls?

‘ When a thinking man reaches maturity and attains to full consciousness he cannot help feeling that he is in a trap from which there is no escape’. Chekhov.

Some little light

26 Tuesday Sep 2023

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Along the coast past the vast sweeping hook of the bay then on to the flat plain at the foot of the ridge. Right at the crossroads down through the lush green, sun dappled valley, and upwards into the hard, bright light toward the bracken and heather covered moor, with its dolmen and bronze age barrows, home to a thousand faeries and ubiquitous sheep.

Left then, past the church and the cross with the old bell that says ‘Ora pro nobis Sancte Maria’. Past the castle on the hill, along the drangway until I’m home. Not my home, but a home that is deep in my blood and in my soul.

I know this mighty theatre, my footsole knows it for mine.

I am nearer the rising peewit’s call than the shiver of her own wing.

I ascend in the loud waves’ thunder, I am under the last of the nine.

In a hundred dramatic shapes I perish, in the last I live and sing.

Taliesin…. Vernon Watkins.

The old house stands empty, with its forlorn For Sale sign battered by the sea winds.  It smells of damp, and my fathers stale tobacco. There are no voices now, no children running through its untended garden. Choose some wine will you son, dinner will be ready soon. 

My mother is frail, like a small injured bird, and I can feel the bones in her back as I hug her. The dressings on her arms, from her most recent fall, need changing. I must phone the doctor. 

Have you taken those pills? No. Why not they’ll help you. I don’t know which ones to take? I’ve told you a hundred times. I scold myself for my impatience. Be kind, she’s lost her husband of sixty years. She’s dressed for lunch, she looks forward to these outings like a child. I less so.

Let us stand, then in the interval of our wounding, 

till the silence turn golden and love is a moment eternally overflowing.

Evening……R.S. Thomas.

My father smokes a pipe, it will come to kill him. A pipe is archaic, it’s not cool like a cigarette or opulent like a cigar. It takes dedication and generous pockets. The pouch, the cleaning, scraping and poking tools, the pipe itself, of which there may be more than one, plus matches – it’s best not to light a pipe with a lighter. The pipe demands a jacket, and some sturdy leather soled brogues to tap the bowl against to dislodge the spent tobacco. My father was often in corduroy or tweed and hated the summer months.’The seasons are all potential assassins’ as Alan Bennett said. 

He’d light the pipe whilst driving, the car veering from side to side, pungent smoke billowing from its smouldering bowl and filling the car as I sat in the back with the dogs. I glance at his armchair – another thing I shall have to get rid of – and see him, deep in contemplation, blowing clouds of smoke before falling asleep clutching its warm bowl, and on waking would take a sip of his now cold tea. I realise how many hours I must have spent watching him, perhaps to better understand him, and when I finally thought I knew I realised I had no more questions to ask.

We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours forever….J.L. Carr.

A Death in the Family

20 Tuesday Jun 2023

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My father has died, getting the year off to a pretty poor start. Cancer of the throat and mouth. I suppose it’s better than foot and mouth, and certainly much easier to explain. It was fast, mercifully for him but less so for me. 

As his immune system shut down his skin started to fall off, turning him as scarlet as a dipsomaniac vicar asleep at a cricket match. Sleeping more and more, babbling incoherently and eating only soup – a dish my mother never learned to master despite its dazzling simplicity – leaving a house full of morphine and a hell of a lot to sort out.

The end inevitably came with a fall, easy to do with a tumbler of scotch in one hand and a pipe in the other. Unable to steady himself on any available surface he toppled and broke his pelvis. I sit with him in the hospital and talk with him despite the fact that he’s asleep, his breathing so shallow that I think he’s already gone, his profile a Venetian plague mask replete with enormous nose.

The rest as they say is history, although I miss the old bugger immensely and it doesn’t help that I see him every time I look in a mirror.

Old Griffiths the undertaker looks tanned as he walks before the hearse in his topper. He has a house in Tenerife, Robert says, I thought it might be Marbella, after the amount I’ve paid him – knowing he’s handled both my mother and aunt this year – perhaps handled isn’t the right word.

You look like your father, one of his decrepit friends says outside the church. 

He lives on through you, says another as I wonder if I should contact an exorcist. 

Despite the early March weather, I’m warm in my old Gieves and Hawkes suit, thankful that I had the funeral director dress my father in a robe, prior to closing the coffin lid. I guess I preferred the thought of him journeying to the afterlife dressed as Noel Coward rather than Maurice Chevalier.

Philip is taking charge of the service, a big hearty priest with a magnificent voice, disappointed not to be able to raise the roof due to my father’s aversion to hymns. We have readings instead, my three boys and I. Those were very nice Philip says, most people have something from the Lion King. 

Everyone is dressed in their best bombazine black – funerals are their only invitations these days – and there’s free food and drink. I bump into the local MP in the gents – we both wash our hands before shaking – who speaks highly of my late father. He spoke highly of you too, I say in return, lying through my teeth which I hope are free of vol au vents.

The hotel is full of familiar faces from childhood, uncles, aunts – people I called uncles and aunts who were not related – yeomen, yokels, rotarians and freemasons, members of my fathers club, and the choir who will have been mortally wounded by their inability to sing.

David has my boys cornered and is regaling them with his poetry. I had considered him for the eulogy but services are around forty five minutes in duration and he would be just warming up by then. I must rescue my boys.

He’s so like his father, Alice says. It’s almost as if he’s standing here now, and I wish he were, rather than me. 

The VOR drives us home, decanting our boys at the railway station for their journey back to different parts of London, we kiss them and thank them for coming.

I stay up late, still in my suit, raising a glass to my father with his own scotch. I guess people aren’t dead if you don’t want them to be.

Winnowing

15 Monday Apr 2019

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‘It’s a funny thing, it seems that just before daylight is the darkest hour’…  Ry Cooder.

There is a seldom used word, in old English, that describes the act of lying awake before dawn and worrying, and although the darkest hour doesn’t actually occur just before dawn, it certainly seems to be the time when many of us are haunted by our troubles, uncompleted tasks, unpaid bills and the indiscretions of the night before.

Uhtceare, from oot (the restless hour before dawn) and ceare, pronounced key-are-a (meaning care and sorrow) succinctly describes my post Brexs**t state forcing me to toss, turn and eavesdrop on bin men, milkmen and the recently ejected detritus of the city’s nightclubs returning to the warmth of their unwashed sheets.

When boisterous, blustering, buffoonish Boris rocked up in carefree Kernow on the big red bus, with a big fat lie on its side, he wasn’t promoting the London Olympics. Armed with a Ginsters pasty, a pint of Tribute and a liberal sprinkling of fairy dust, he peddled the, barely believable, fantasy of unlimited export opportunities for Cornish Yarg, Rhodda’s Clotted Cream and the delights of a Stargazey Pie unfettered by the common fisheries policy.

No longer blinded by the blarney, we realise that despite what Govey’s wife told him, the fishing industry makes up a mere 0.5% of GDP, with agriculture an equally paltry 0.52%. In contrast, the drinks industry – where I work – while never going to threaten the service industry at 70% – still accounts for some £46 billion, but rather than being ring-fenced and protected, is routinely milked as an economic cash cow that’s becoming rather emaciated and increasingly unsteady on it’s hooves.

A catastrophic cocktail of low investment, decreased margins, spiralling costs, a weak pound, and a necessity to stockpile to absorb a possible ‘no deal’ are making the pips squeak. Pubs, bars, hotels and restaurants are closing at an alarming rate and an inability to pass on, ever rising, costs to a consumer that still thinks that a fiver for a bottle of wine is a bit too steep and you begin to understand that Brexit is a three-year headache that’s about to turn into a four year migraine! Oh, and Ginsters will not be relocating to Singapore anytime soon.

As the Maybot snuggles up to Jezza, while Nigel Farage hides in the wardrobe, I hope they have been pondering the real human cost of this unmitigated disaster while restlessly awaiting the dawns early light.

However, it is not the parlous state of the nation that disturbs my reverie this morning, but a sharp and severe pain in the chest – rather than the arse. As it increases, I begin to feel a little worried, and decide to walk around in the hope of dislodging any stubborn remnants of last nights carbonara. My chilly dawn wanderings disturb the VOR who after googling my symptoms insists that I put on some clothes and go straight to the hospital, without passing Go or trousering £200.

‘The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio’… Paul Simon

I wash up in A&E with the flotsam and jetsam of the night before and descend into one of Dante’s circles of hell. An assortment of the drunk and disaffected, in various stages of inebriation and consciousness, litter the furniture – that one of their more voluble number is threatening to smash up if it wasn’t bolted to the floor.

Recognising my name, I step into an anteroom which smells of sweat and stale urine to recount my sorry tale, before being sent back out into the gladiatorial arena armed only with an information leaflet.  

An ECG later finds me in a corridor – where patients are lying on beds awaiting other beds – in a sorely underfunded and overstretched system. A tired Thai nurse, who may soon be deported, asks for the details of my next of kin, and as the doors of an adjacent service lift part, I catch a glimpse of my grey shaded self in the industrial light of it’s internal mirrors and wonder if this is how it ends? 

I don Peter Seller’s ‘bright nightgown’ – whose open back provides a much needed giggle for the exhausted staff – as the VOR returns and my mood becomes less black, although when I tell her I’m cold it reminds me of the last words of the teenage, mid western, farm boy crying out for his mama in so many war movies. Unable to lie down, I sit forlornly, struggling to preserve my modesty, as I wait for a series of tests and urge the VOR to go home and walk our dog who will be wondering where we are.

The CAT scan is a distinctly odd experience, and as the dye is pumped through my veins there is a warm sensation, together with a strong, rather undignified urge to evacuate the bowels – perhaps that explains the backless gown? The results show that thankfully, rather like Fergal Sharkey, I have a good heart.

Consequently, I have embarked upon a winnowing and decided to close my business and slow down – although the VOR informs me that I cannot keep saying that I’ve cheated death to everyone who calls to ask after my well being. Little does she know that as a result of  disengaging from the tyranny of social media, my phone usage is down by 43%, so it seems that, like Cher, I can turn back time!

It’s a beautiful spring day as I pass an old wino singing into a microphone on a bridge across the harbour. Struggling to make out the notes – which impinge ever so fleetingly upon the melody – I conclude that it’s Neil Diamond’s ‘Forever in Blue Jeans’. Pausing for thought, I realise that I have been given a gift, well not exactly a gift, but a warning and it’s the warning that is the gift. 

Here’s to a good nights sleep!

‘Money talks, but it don’t sing and dance and it don’t walk. As long as I can have you here with me, I’d much rather be. Forever in blue jeans babe’

‘I tread the sand at the sea’s edge’

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

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genith

My father walks toward me up the beach his spare frame silhouetted against the sparkling sun. ‘Breathe deeply boy’ he says as he ruffles my hair. I look into his eyes the colour of the sea and realising  a cat has my tongue bury my head in the warmth of my faithful dog’s neck seeking comfort and reassurance in her familiar smell. I am asthmatic and the sea makes me well. It is why we came here.

A daydream takes me to our house in the hills and the grave of the unknown, unnamed, tortoise. He ran away, finding temporary refuge amid the wreckage of my grandmother’s desk – a Christmas present compromised by my father’s ill-timed gift of a tool set – perhaps he had an inkling of what was to come. The doctor says that if we get rid of the animals it will help my breathing. Snowy the rabbit is adopted and subsequently eaten by the neighbours. We are unable to part with the dog.

 ‘The darkness is not dark. Nor sunlight the light of the sun’

Eight summers pass when Alan speaks to me walking by on a startling, sea shimmering, summer morn with salt in his hair and a smile on his face. ‘Why don’t you follow me out’ he says. Squinting upward, I place my trust in him tuck my beloved and battered surfboard beneath my skinny arm and allow him to shepherd me through the rip next to the pier. Forty years later I place my hand gently onto his casket and say goodbye.

 ‘And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty’

 Major Matt Mason sinks slowly beneath the glossy mirror of the mossy moat. Calisto, despite the enormous brain straining against the confines of his transparent green skull, is unable to save his friend. I grasp the Major’s clumsily articulated armature as my father grasps mine as I dive downward. I gaze into those grey eyes once more and recall our journey home from school, the day my brother died, remembering that he buried him alone in the winter rain.

Adrian and I fail to hear Akela’s footsteps on the creaking boards of the scout hall, blissfully unaware of our impending dishonourable discharge. Adrian is my best friend. His father Jack a fine cricketer. But to Ade and I he is better known as a singer, immortalised by his unforgettable, some might say unforgivable, rendition of Al Martino’s ‘Spanish Eyes’. Jack has a lingual protrusion lisp and the line ‘Please say Si Si’ reduces us to helpless laughter. Akela’s glare is far from benign as she spots the crescent shaped bite mark on my thigh and the cartoonesque, egg-shaped lump protruding from Adrian’s forehead. The old wolf uses her wisdom to expel us from the pack, confiscating our woggles and consigning us to the wilderness, like Jason McCord in Branded, to forever fight for our good names.

 Dad’s a rugby man, regularly and eagerly watching as I shiver on the touchline, my skinny, hairless and mottled knees knocking in the bitter northeasterly wind.  I place my frozen hands inside my thin cotton shirt to warm them against my unfilled out torso and wait for the pass that never comes. Checking my opposite number, I accurately guess that he’s been picked for size rather than speed. His fledgling moustache and probable pubic hair suggest that we cannot possibly be in the same academic year. If we are my folks just don’t have a big enough larder.

The ball comes above my head, exposing my bare sinewy midriff. I gather the greasy ball, with stiff little fingers, just as the overfed progeny of Brobdingnag  cuts me in two with a scything tackle that sees me crumble like a Corinthian column in an earthquake. Bundled into touch – where another large and ungainly lad falls on me – I overhear a cry of ‘Who’s that kid on the wing’ and imagine the expression on my father’s face.

 ‘I tread the sand at the sea’s edge’

 ‘What do you think he does all day’ my mother asks?

Becoming an ordinary surfer is a difficult task, but becoming a good one, one that people look up to, well that’s another story….This is how I spend my time.

 The lefthander is technically difficult, requiring one hard turn, mid face, followed by a series of rapid pumps to trim, drive, and out run the crashing lip. I am flying down the line, pushing hard on the first third of my board to flatten the rocker, simultaneously keeping my toe rail down to maintain glide along the fast moving wall. I alternate with pressure on my heels to stop the inside rail from being sucked up and pitched by the lip. Subtle changes are transmitted from my feet to my brain as the water draws off the bottom and the wave disembowels itself on the rocky slab. I take another, staying close to the hook so I can feel the foam-ball spit and spray my back like a fire hose, testing the limits of the board, the bite of the inside rail, the whip of the tail, the alignment and cant of the fins. Oh how they sing at speed.

Over dinner, silently pondering minor adjustments and the shape of my next board. I conclude that talking would make me sound like Orwell’s ‘rattling stick in a swillbucket’ and besides, I don’t like the sound of my breaking voice. My father glares at me, but I am fourteen and have long stopped listening to my father.

I feel my mother’s eyes on me, as I prepare for my first big trip, and wonder what she makes of her one remaining son. A poorly designed wetsuit seam has reduced my belly button by half over the summer, and my left foot, strapped with duct tape, has a wound that fails to heal as I refuse to stay out of the water. Add to this knees full of skating grazes, permanently bloodshot eyes, a condition called surfers ear and a mop of unruly, unwashed, salt encrusted hair. Despite, or perhaps because of this, she kisses me on the forehead and with a tear in her eye holds me just a little too long.

The first trophy is hard earned in double overhead surf. ‘The kids ok in the small stuff, but lets see how he does when it gets bigger’. Hiding it behind my back I try to look disconsolate in front of my girl – who has a Saturday job in the pet shop – but she can tell I’ve won and laughing loudly tosses her dark hair that smells of birdseed and pony nuts.

Pushing through the crowd at the water’s edge, away from the American and Australian surfers who’ve consigned me to an ignominious first round exit from the contest, I avoid Sylvie’s sympathetic smile realising that no matter how good I think I am, I’m not in their league. Sylvie returns to Biarritz knowing that I do not love her enough to follow. I return home to race rats and do not surf again for seventeen years.

 ‘Time past and time future. What might have been and what has been.’

In the waveless world of the city, where my wife grew up and my boys were raised, it’s difficult to imagine the sea, and  when I dream of home it is not as it is now. Unnatural and false full regularly appearing in colour supplements, its caramelised onions and cappuccinos fortifying overindulged, overfed, middle aged alphas, unforgivingly shoehorned into shorties by their mean lipped, male hipped wives, before their next bespoke tutored surf session. Once the epitome of cool, my sport is neatly packaged as a lifestyle choice and used to peddle  4×4’s, seaside property and life insurance for the newly retired. I don’t begrudge them their fun, but they belong on paved sand-less streets not on the last of the country’s uncommitted land, their baby soft feet weeping for the safety of shoes.

‘The free person who runs away is no better off than a fish with a hook in his mouth, given plenty of line so he can tire himself out and be reeled in calmly and easily by his own destiny’ 

Leaving the warm car in the leaf strewn lane I strike out alone down the sheep strewn banks where livestock once walked to market. Past the simple castles – mounty banks – their battlements crushed by the Normans and where Edward I danced a jig on the bones of Llewellyn the Great. Past the ancient caves, facing south into the meagre warmth of the ice age sun, where Eynon once walked with the sea in his blood and the rain on his face, his feet bare and damp, like mine, on the dew of the new morning’s marram grass. Through a cleft in the valley I glimpse the silver grey faces of the new swells, polished by the oarweeds and marching to the mournful sound of the sea bell, the legends of the drowned churches, and the incandescence of the dead.

‘Sweet fields beyond the the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green’

Entering the chill water, its surface the colour of armour, I push out relieved to escape the land and the incessant nanny ping of the cell phone. Quiet now save for the saw of the wind and the siren call of the sea. ‘Breathe deeply boy ‘ it says.

‘The end precedes the beginning, and the end and the beginning were always there, before the beginning and after the end.’

 

 

 

 

‘Song at the Year’s Turning’

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

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Blue Trees 1

Gazing absentmindedly from the safety of the rain lashed picture window of the old hotel perched on the carboniferous limestone headland – its loo unchanged for forty years – I ponder the five mile arc of Atlantic scoured beach indiscreetly described as one of the finest in Britain.

My eye settles on the figure of a young boy, surefootedly and single-mindedly, picking his way over the wet-black, jet-black, sea spray spattered rocks. Never extending his reach he sticks closely to the wet face. Upward ever upward he climbs, rope-less with no regard for his descent, he pauses to look at the sea – through eyes the colour of mine – his whole life before him.

‘I have been taught the script of the stones and I know the tongue of the wave’

I see the boy again, navigating his way through the large winter surf. Serious as he sculpts deep furrows into the smooth, grey faces of the mountainous swells – rolling over paths trodden by St Cenydd and Iestyn ap Gwrgan – his mind as empty as the bleak, wreck lined shore. Stones, bones, sea lettuce, laver weed, goose barnacle, dog whelk, grebe, merganser, ouzel , shearwater.

I call out to him but my words are carried away on the wind. He cannot hear me.

‘The sea was in dialogue with things lost, returned, and lost once more’

Leper stone, holm, mere, goat hole, culver hole, bolt hole. The Red Lady of Paviland – another boy. Wesley, Le Breos, Buckland. Ora Pro Nobis Sancte Maria. The bare ribs of the Helvetia and the frozen bones of Edgar Evans.
My boys and I, running through the sun dappled wood. Spindle tree, juniper, primrose, wood anemone, butchers broom, ash, oak, such elm, dogwood. The oniony smell of ramsons, stinking hellebore and blue gromwell. Our feral feet bare on the damp, cold-shaded sand, stopping at the rope swing before emerging into the bright summer light and ozone heavy air of the open dunes. The lusty, warm, westering wind whips a skein of sand across our brown faces, before seeking refuge in the children’s hair and pockets to return as memories on sheets and sofas. Cuckoo flower, bee orchid, carline thistle, squinancywort, sea lavender, knapweed, wigeon, lapwing, turnstone, dunlin, fulmar.

‘Tell me about the burrowing bees daddy’ my youngest asks. ‘Andrena fulva, the solitary mining bee’ I say as we kneel in the couch grass. Sandwort, saltwort, creeping fescue, hairy hawkbit. Will you pass this story on my son? Shoveler, shelduck, nightjar, chiffchaff, redpoll, siskin.

 

Tumbling gracelessly from the steep, sheep-trodden track to the sound of the family’s laughter. Struggling to disrobe before a three year old plunges into the deep icy blue of the superstitiously bottomless rock pool, the ancient home of doubloons, moidores and the dowry of Catherine of Breganza.

 

The young man next to me sleeps as we drive over the common; its two Bronze Age barrows destroyed by the small airfield used to welcome the Douglas and Zeta Joneses. I turn from the be-ponied yellow gorse to his exhausted sleeping face. Half child half man, his features changing like the timbre of his voice. I notice the leaves, feathers and twigs spilling from his pockets – an obsessively secreted treasure. I notice the dried food encrusted on his t-shirt and jeans. Thin and frail, the sticks and stones of ignorant bullies could easily break his bones. I wipe the tears from my eyes to concentrate on the winding road. There is a camber ahead and my eldest son is a precious cargo. Estranged from me now, this past year, I wonder if you recall this day. I speak to you but you do not answer.

 

‘And though you probe and pry with analytic eye, you cannot find the centre where we dance, where we play, where life is still asleep under the closed flower, under the smooth shell of eggs, in the cupped nest, that mock the faded blue of your remoter heaven’

 

Stars stand watch over the castles, dolmen, stones and bones of the hill. The wood is quiet, the restless sea as calm as our sleeping children. We savour the cold summer evening under woolly hats and rugs cradling our goodnight whisky next to an open fire.

Katherine says that our love and happiness comes from inside us and that we make it ourselves. I think about this as I look down at the warm woolly socks hiding her carefully de-sanded, city-girl feet.

 

‘What Is Cosmos’

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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‘You take the car, I’ll walk back with the dog’. I hear myself desperately say, as I try to carve out some time to myself, after four weeks family holiday.

‘It’s ok, I’ll come with you’ says the VOR, afraid that I will call into the pub, ‘Besides I have to pick up some flowers for the village fete’.

Reluctantly accepting my fate – not fete, although it is somewhat similar – I am surprised when she agrees to my suggestion of a cheeky, lunchtime ale. After the customary ten minutes choosing, the VOR settles on ‘A half of whatever you’re having’ then complains about its quality.

‘What do you have to do?’ I ask through a mouthful of hoppy beer. ‘We’ says the VOR, scuppering my chances of a sneaky second pint, ‘have to get some Cosmos from Gerald Trainer – knight of the realm and former spy’s garden. ‘Well, to be precise, it’s not his garden anymore. Penny and Ralph live there now but they are in New Zealand and Margaret said that they wouldn’t mind.

‘What Is Cosmos’? I ask, wondering how I became involved.

‘It’s an orange flower, YOU will know it when YOU see it’. ‘Do you know the house?’ ‘ Yes’ she says, ‘It’s where Edward and I bought the boat’. ‘And do you have some secateurs?’ I say, warming to the conspiratorial task but realising I have probably asked too many questions.

‘What was that beer called?’ ‘Old Molethrottler – you normally like it’ I say, as I tie the dog to the gatepost.

Trying to find some orange flowers, I walk around to the rear of the house and bump into a man in a panama hat unloading a car. ‘Hello’ I venture, feeling like a small boy who has knocked someone’s door and been caught running away. He returns my hello without enthusiasm and an expression which says ‘Who are you and what the **** are you doing in my garden?’ Before I can say ‘Ralph, I thought you were in New Zealand’ the VOR arrives.

‘Hi’ she says, extending her hand ‘I’m Katie, Jenny and John’s daughter, from the farm at the top of the hill. Margaret said it was OK to pick some orange flowers for the village fete – What are they called Jules?’ ‘Cosmos’ I answer.

‘Who’ says the man, fixing her with what I can only imagine is a quizzical stare behind his dark glasses. ‘Margaret’ says the VOR, less sure of herself now and realising that we are not at Penny and Ralph’s.

‘Are you Gerald?’ she nervously asks.

‘I am’ the man says, ‘But What Is Cosmos?’

This is my moment, and unable to resist, am just about to say – for I too am wearing dark glasses. ‘Well Gerald, I think you know precisely what Cosmos is, and we’re here for it, so hand it over’.

Fortunately the VOR interjects, ‘I think there’s been some misunderstanding and we are all at the wrong end of some Chinese whispers – So sorry to disturb’.

Gerald’s quintessentially English reserve prevents him from informing the police and we cheerfully depart leaving a confused, and inwardly seething man, to his unpacking.

We laughingly recount our experience as we hurry down the hill and the VOR wets herself with laughter in the country lane.

Later that evening we learn that the flower in question is called Crocosmia Paniculata and it grows, like a weed, in our drive.

‘Give me a taste of that beer’ says the VOR. ‘Oh now that’s nice, much better than the one at lunchtime’. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘Old Molethrottler’ I answer, struggling to keep a straight face. It has not been a great day for women’s intuition.

‘Looking for Leiermann’

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

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Auf dem Flusse

It’s early evening and darkness is already creeping over the creek as my dog and I traverse the muddy banks. Walking is a great way of organising thoughts and the realisation that I am putting off the seventeen wine tasting notes due before morning. Knowing that I have to write other things, in the elusive search for the non-standardised adjective, I steer my dog toward the village pub.

Das Wirtshaus

I know the pub well, and although recognised by staff (it’s their job after all) it has taken the best part of eleven years for any of the regulars to shout hello. Most, like me, do not hail from this part of the world and perhaps, like most city transplants, are waiting for someone they know to greet me to be sure I am alright. Sometimes I am bothered by this cool, quintessentially English, reserve, but tonight I don’t mind, preferring to sit quietly by the open fire with my dog, beer and thoughts.

Like Schubert’s wanderer I have undergone my own winter journey, and as Meyerhoffer so succinctly put it ‘life has lost its rosiness’. Although not syphilitic, like Schubert, endless visits to a psychiatric hospital, to see my eldest son, have worn a hole in my normally happy heart. Conversations are currently confined to healthcare professionals and not my dear boy who refuses to talk to me, perhaps blaming me for consenting to his admission. Heidegger said that ‘thinking is a lonely business’ and any stray, self-pitying, tears would spoil the nut-brown, hoppy, beer before me and it would be rude to disturb the reverie of my warm, dozing, dog.

Der Leiermann

The Moon is on its back in the star littered sky as I turn homeward, silhouetting the bare, rheumatically gnarled, fingers of the denuded trees that describe the direction of the prevailing wind over the cold damp hills.
I, like the wanderer, am questioning the conditions of my existence in this winter landscape, a sort of middle-aged Werther with a bit more sardonic wit and schadenfreude. Looking for Der Leiermann I surmise that, but for God’s grace, he could be any of us. A lonely, squalid, untrained, musician, cranking the hurdy gurdy with frozen fingers without the simple pleasure of a consoling ale. As I walk on I silently ask ‘will you play your hurdy gurdy to one of my songs’ but it’s Donavon’s I am given, not Schubert’s, and I count my blessings. Now on to those notes.

‘My favourite things are playing again and again but it’s by Julie Andrews and not by John Coltrane’   Elvis Costello

 

‘Kid’

14 Monday Jul 2014

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‘Some folks’ lives roll easy as a breeze
Drifting through a summer night
Heading for a sunny day
But most folk’s lives they stumble
Lord how they fall
Some never roll at all, they just fall

Some folks’ lives’

My eldest son is ill and I don’t fully understand the nature or indeed the full extent and duration of his illness – despite my amateurish attempts at comprehension.

‘Kid what changed your mood
You’ve gone all sad so I feel sad too’.

The other morning, as I pulled a shard of glass from my dog’s paw, I wished, beyond hope, that I could remove what ails my boy in such an Androclean manner.
The time when he considered me to be a hero has passed, but as he is admitted to hospital today, that’s precisely what I have to be.
I hope to write again sometime soon, but have of late, wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.