dovegreyreader scribbles

Indigo ~ Jenny Balfour-Paul

The full title is actually Indigo - Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans which might give you some indication of the scope and breadth of Jenny Balfour-Paul's 250-page scholarly book on a subject I didn't even know I was that interested in until I went to hear her talk recently. 

Good old Launceston for organising the Charles Causley Festival year on year; a weekend of literary and arts events in a Cornish town that it could be argued is not that well known for its cultural calender. Poet Charles Causley was born and bred in the town and taught at the school there for many years.

Someone will send me an 'Outraged of Launceston' e mail now, and though I do keep an eye out maybe I miss a lot. And the town lost its only independent bookshop a while back so is now reliant on W.H.Smith's and a second-hand bookseller.

Anyway, in this new commitment-free summer that I am enjoying, I now have time to pay attention and go to these things for pleasure, and, because the Charles Causley Festival organisers have priced everything very sensibly, off I trotted to Jenny Balfour-Paul's two hour event, which included a very nice lunch, for a mere £7. 

I felt the indigo love the minute I walked in the room feeling slightly out of place in teal. People sporting their creations and Jenny (can we revert to first name terms now) wearing a wonderful selection of beautifully dyed fabrics. Colour-wise I have always been a bit indigo-smitten and it only took about ten seconds for me to want to know everything.

Where it comes from..

What do I need to grow...

How do you make a dye vat...

In fact Jenny's talk was about her new book Deeper Than Indigo - Tracing Thomas Machell, forgotten explorer 

'This intriguing odyssey, set on the edges of time, encompasses biography, memoir, detective story, travelogue and history to tell a remarkable tale of East-West connections and a mysterious love.'

It was fascinating and I will seek that out next, but first I needed to find out about indigo itself and so bought Indigo - Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans, also for sale on the day, fully referenced, a definitive work published by The British Museum. I have been steeped (sorry) in it ever since and am now so indigo-aware that I have had to sort out my Mood Indigo workroom noticeboard accordingly...

In use by the third millenium BC, it is thought the properties of Isatoris tinctoria (woad) were known to the Egyptians, with traces found on the wrappings of mummies, as well as to the Pazyrak culture living in Siberia. A rug discovered in 1949 and preserved by burial in ice in the Altai Mountains since 3-4 BC has proved to be the earliest example of pile-weaving.

There, now I didn't know any of that and though I can get very bogged down in pre-medieval historical detail thankfully Jenny makes this academic work an absolutely fascinating read. Fast forward to medieval England; Edward III is encouraging Flemish dyers, fullers and weavers to come to England where woad is second to wine in importance and by the 1580s rivalling grain as the country's main crop.

Fast forward to 2015 and the only place I can definitely tell you you will find woad growing is down in the corner of our garden by Bookhound's woodshed..

and probably in a zillion other indigo-dyers' gardens. The UK's last remaining commercial crop was processed in the Lincolnshire Fens in 1932.

And finally I have sorted out the mystery of the whole indigo thing, because vague and misunderstood it was in my mind, and now I discover that the woad leaves must be picked in the plant's first year, not when it is five feet tall in its second year and flowering. And another thing, that soil will now be starved of nitrogen as a result.

I was making polite conversation with the woman sitting next to me and found all this out...

'Have you ever tried indigo dyeing,' I asked.

'I am an indigo dyer,' she replied.

Honestly, the things I've learned...

Woad is the plant that will grow in Europe but it is not the only indigo-producer...

Indigofera tinctoria grows in India, Africa and Central America...

Polygonum tinctorium in Japan...

Marsdenia tinctoria 'tarumaker' in Asia...

...and various other plants in various other places, all capable of producing indigo dye but it's the extraction that seems very complex. The process a series of closely guarded secrets for centuries and imbued with a sense of mystery, intrigue, superstition, tradition and ceremony around the world. You have to wonder how on earth anyone discovered that by adding urine to woad, heating it at 50 degrees, whisking it for ten minutes, removing the oxygen by adding something else (maybe not all in that exact order) and then adding your fabric which would emerge yellow before magically turning blue as it met with the oxygen in the air.

It must have seemed like alchemy of the best and most exciting variety mustn't it.

The dye itself doesn't need a mordant (fixative) coating the fibres as it does rather than infiltrating them. Indigo will fade but it will remain unchanged and is apparently the only dye to do so. Look at old tapestries and the blue may be faded but it will be true (the Bayeux Tapestry a good example) and of course it is that supposed weakness, the fading, that became indigo's salvation in the shape of denim jeans. Though synthetic dye substitutes are now used at an industrial level, as I understand it, the chemical formula and dyeing process remains the same for the billion pairs of jeans produced annually.

Remember the days when you had to do your own wearing in.

Sitting in a bath full of water to shrink the things to fit.

Boiling them up to fade them and soften them.

The Levi's that could stand up on their own. 

I'll bet you could all tell some stories...

Inevitably a book like this opens countless trails handsomely repaying the investment of money and time (two weeks of wonderful and engrossing reading) and I have now ventured along several of them...

Sashiko, the Japanese quilting patterns on indigo fabric (I'm on the case)



Shibori, the Japanese indigo tie-dyeing process (books reserved from library)


And then there is the African woman who had a stall of indigo fabrics in Tavistock Market a few weeks ago...before I had felt the love, so I walked past and barely noticed them, and she hasn't been back since. I am kicking myself.

But best of all perhaps, the Kayaker saw the book on the kitchen table, saw a picture of Sapa in Vietnam and asked...

'Where's the sash?'

'What sash?'

'The one I bought back for Ganga (the Tinker)  from Vietnam... it's indigo, hand-dyed.'

I had a momentary panic because after all there has been a massive sort-out in Tinker's Cott, but the sash was safe...

And it transpired that someone had told the Kayaker to travel to Sapa, the heart of Vietnam's indigo dyeing industry, while he was there and so he had.

Pictures to follow...I was almost crying with delight.

Our very own bit of real indigo.

So there you have it. Well a bit of it. There is much much more to Jenny Balfour-Paul's book than I have mentioned here, not least the fact that indigo 'was tainted by the associated evil of human exploitation' and slavery; a labour-intensive main crop alongside sugar, coffee and cotton. If you are interested in the by-history of a product or just love the colour and fancy some good 'Did You Know' moments, this is the book for you.

Meanwhile, has anyone tried indigo dyeing...It took William Morris eight years to master the indigo dyeing process required to print his fabrics so I'm not rushing it.

Should I grow some Polygonum tinctoris...

Is Sashiko quilting as relaxing as it looks (too late have already bought the book and sent for supplies) 

Or what about Shibori...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Summer House

Finally we have reclaimed the summer house after years of children various laying claim to the space for bikes, kayaks, baby ducklings, furniture repository, parties, contents of apartment storage, bachelor pad and the rest.

It took us a while to realise that we had vacant possession, that it was actually empty bar an old leather chair that no one wanted, an old leather sofa that one puppy and one kitten had massacred three years ago, an old gate-leg table that didn't fit anywhere else, along with sundry items like a camping stove, a kettle and a set of mis-matched crockery and cutlery etc.  So we set to on a fine sunny day, feeling a bit Wind-in-the-Willowish and channelling our inner Mole; sweeping, dusting out the cobwebs, creating a little kitchenette, and as the sun set through the windows that look across the Tamar Valley...



...there we were slouched in the chairs and realising that this was like parking a caravan in the very best spot in the world whilst having hot water and a comfortable bed about fifty yards away.

With the addition of a few accoutrements and decoration what more could we want for a summer of Wimbledon, athletics and catching up on some films as well as reading and 'being'  because I forgot to say it has electricity and so we quickly installed a TV and a radio.

The irony of the fact that we now live in a house that boasts not one, not two, but three kitchens, and that we plan to spend the summer months cooking sausages and beans on a camping stove in what is basically a shed is not lost on us. But Bookhound and I are going to give ourselves until next spring to just 'be' and before finally deciding whether or not to make Tinker's Cott available for the occasional four-people-no-pets holiday let (sorry about the pets, but we could rent out a dog for walking and lend a cat). It was always the plan, fully endorsed by the Tinker, and at least that would be one very lovely kitchen and cottage in use again. And maybe I'll do some patchwork classes, or hold some reading retreat days, or walking weekends, or elderflower cordial-making breaks, or jam-making bonanzas...

There is a lot of potential and we are thinking about it all so watch this space in 2016.

I hadn't quite realised that for the past five years out of six, and for several years prior to that, I have happily and willingly committed to take dovegreyreader scribbles along to summer literary festivals and in doing so surrendered much of each year from January onwards (if I am honest)  to reading books that I might not ordinarily choose. Researching authors and reading their backlist, preparing interviews, making gifts, being there with half the house in tow and then writing everything up afterwards was hugely enjoyable but all-consuming. It took me the whole of August to write up last summer's events, and whilst I have no complaints because I loved doing it, what an experience it was and what lasting friendships we have made as a result, but how very relieved I am to have called a halt and got off the festival roundabout. I think I somehow guessed that our time with the Tinker had to be limited as he approached his ninetieth birthday, and that what time we had left I really wanted to enjoy, and nor did I want to commit and then have to pull out and let people down, which is exactly what would have happened this year.

I am being very strict with myself and with grateful thanks to all sorts of kind 'offers' this year...litfests, interviews, 'appearances', I have stuck to my promise and politely declined.

So we have this rather odd sense of freedom because until two years ago we used to do all that and work too, and now we are doing neither. 

What is this thing called 'time'?

What is this thing called 'being'?

Missing the Tinker and feeling sad aside, which we do more than I can say, we are loving it all. Loving every single minute of waking up each day and not having to do anything if we don't want to, and conversely doing something if we do want to, and often on the spur of the moment because we can. I think it's probably called 'retirement' except I don't feel in the least bit retired, more released and ready for the next stage.

Exciting times.

 

 

Happy Birthday to...

...Magnus who, like the Queen, has two birthdays. The actual one of which we have not a clue and the official one which is today, June 25th, the day he chose to come and live with us, and in honour of which I have dragged this post up from the basement three years ago...

A funny thing happened on Monday...

It's obviously 'New Animal' week around here and sometimes perhaps things are just 'meant' to happen aren't they.

The Rocky-sized cat 'space' and that rug in front of the Aga has been empty for quite a while now, and we had long ago decided a replacement would somehow just turn up. So Bookhound just happened to go out for a walk on Monday afternoon and after about an hour the phone rang...

'I've found a kitten in the lane...and I've waited and waited...'

Now we had seen a stray cat hanging around of late. In fact we had done a double take because it was a bit of a slimmed down Rocky look-alike and indeed it hadn't gone unnoticed by the Dowagers. But no sign of the kitten's mother now, no sign of any other kittens and just this little tiny bedraggled waif sitting under a leaf shivering and wet and scared. Nor would it run off, it just looked all beseeching and helpless at Bookhound having decided he was the one, and by this time Bookhound had morphed into Pet Rescuer Extraordinaire anyway so it was never in doubt..

So in came this little tiny shivering bundle, no bigger than the palm of your hand and out went the Dowagers in high dudgeon, and we sat and stared as it clung onto whichever of us was holding it as we deliberated what to do.

Should we have left it there??

If it is feral what chance of socialising it??

How old is it...it is eighteen years since we had a kitten...what do we feed it on??

Will the Dowagers ever come back??

In the end we rang the vet who said don't whatever you do think about putting it back where you found it hoping the mother might come back for it because she won't and a fox will get it, or it will die of exposure. The most likely scenario seems to be that the mother had now spread her kittens around to fend for themselves... if it's young enough not to run off and for you to be able to pick it up then it's not gone feral yet, so you can either bring it into us and we will pass it on to the Cat's Protection League... or you can keep it.

'We'll keep it' said Bookhound, in a flash.... I must remember this moment when it starts laying into the sofa with its claws and dragging headless rabbits in through the cat flap to share with us.

By this time it is 6pm. Bookhound hunts out the litter tray and brings in the dog crate so we can keep it safely in the kitchen for a few weeks and I head off to source emergency supplies of kitten food, kitten milk and cat litter.

We decide it is a boy. In fact we think he is so young, perhaps four to five weeks, that we may have found him in the nick of time. He is very docile, loves being handled, knows what food is and eats it and can lap efficiently, is manfully coping with a litter tray instantly and can just about walk but is not a runner yet, so we are doing lots of holding and stroking and pretending to be mother cats. The Dowagers meanwhile are giving it all a wide berth with some added sound effects.

Then we have several hours of 'Choosing the Name' and we wonder whether it is a sign that the book I wrote about on Monday was by Otto de Kat. Except he doesn't look like an Otto so we go through everything else until we decide there must be something Orkney-ish we can call on.

And then we remembered that lovely day we had in Kirkwall wandering around St Magnus Cathedral a few weeks ago.

And we look at this tiny little bundle curled up in his blanket and we say 'Magnus' in that sing-song kitten way you do and see if it sounds better than the previous 634 suggestions, which it undoubtedly does, and his big ears, which he needs to grow into, perk up and he looks just the ticket.

So we are agreed.

Meet Magnus...

Who admittedly has a way to go before he fills the Rocky space but he's trying hard...

He has had a much-needed bath without protest which is a first.

We have 'swum' kittens before to deal with fleas and always been worsted in the process because they obviously think you are trying to drown them. This little chap just floated happily in the water while we lathered him with baby shampoo and lemon juice, which the fleas hate apparently, and fully expecting the flea rush to his ears but to our surprise we saw no sign of any.

Next it was off to the vet who does free Kitten Checks.

Little Magnus is basically a set of fur-covered ribs with a toothpick at each corner, very underweight at 1lb 2ozs, malnourished and would probably not have survived much longer out in the open, but he passed muster so we have to keep him safe and warm, feed him up, handle him as much as we can which thus far he seems to love, and just hope for the best. 

 Bless the little Magpuss.

And please scroll down for Official Birthday gifts.

Magnus's Official Birthday Prize Draw

So while Magnus is busy watching a butterfly...

...I am high-jacking his prize draw slot.

One of the books I am very much looking forward to reading is The Mighty Dead - Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson, and in preparation I thought it might be an idea to at least try and read some Homer.

I am a complete Homer novice I think. Maybe someone shoved some in front of me at school but if they did I don't remember, Virgil yes but Homer no, so I have been reading The Odyssey. Just a few pages each day to see what all the fuss is about, and to my surprise I am really enjoying it. Telemachus has sailed off to find his father Odysseus who has yet to return from the Trojan wars. Meanwhile Telemachus's mother Penelope is busy weaving and unravelling to avoid the attentions of the queue of suitors who, assuming Odysseus is dead, wish to marry her.

Clearly it would seem it is impossible to go through life without learning much of this plot by osmosis, but it's all still quite a revelation.

Now I know several of you mentioned the Lattimore translation. Well, I downloaded a sample onto my Kindle and immediately came unstuck with the verse layout so reverted to my Oxford World Classics edition which reads like a story, and suits my tentative steps, so finally we get to the point..

Six copies of The Odyssey by Homer, in the very readable Oxford World Classics edition, can go worldwide in honour of Magnus's journey to find us (maybe we should have called him Telemachus...or Homer). All that early handling and holding has made for a very loving, home-loving cat who will leap onto a lap and nuzzle a chin at every opportunity when he is not asleep in the greenhouse that is...


I'm not sure there will be any cats in The Odyssey, but if like me you might have wondered and dithered and procrastinated about reading Homer then now's your chance. Leave a comment to nab your prize draw number and we will draw the winners eventually. 

 

Cabinet of Curiosities

Does this happen to you..

You have an idea for something and the enthusiasm for said idea takes over your imagination so completely that the world and life cannot possibly go on until you have sorted it.

So it was with my Cabinet of Curiosities back in March. Maybe it was something about memories and preserving them safely, I'm not sure. Anyway it was out with the books and in with the stones...

It had all happened and was done and dusted before our trip to Arlington Court, where it is clear the spinster chatelaine Rosalie Chichester was a woman after my own heart with a house full of Cabinets of Curiosities...more about Rosalie to follow.

Meanwhile I am very happy with one cabinet.

We long ago agreed that rather than bring back gifts from their travels our children would bring back a stone unless it was illegal or disrespectful to do so (no Uluru in our house) They would fossick around for a memento that would create a memory just as Robert Macfarlane suggests in Landmarks...

'performing a humdrum rite of happiness and memory-making....a kind of karmic kleptomania.'

As a consequence our cabinet contains the world and, as Robert Macfarlane elaborates, they serve as a trigger for those memories...

'a means of summoning back memories of a landscape at the instant of finding (the scents and temperatures of the air, the nature of the light, the ambient sounds). Each stone is a souvenir in the old sense of the word; collection spurs recollection.'

Robert Macfarlane's grandparents kept stones in a glass bowl filled with water to keep them shining.

And whenever we look at these with the Kayaker we always think of water too because a lot of them came from rivers he had negotiated..

And we always think of this picture and he remembers Africa, and actually, really, doing this at the top of Victoria Falls...


and his white-water river-guiding days spent doing this in the Zambezi  below...

And we agree it is little wonder we are grey of hair.

From far and wide the stones have travelled home...Africa, Norway, Canada, Morocco, the Antipodes, Asia, rivers that the Kayaker has paddled, places Offspringette has travelled, even sand from Copocabana beach... 

and nearer to home too, the Gamekeeper's territory, these from the fields around us here...

I started young...these were collected on the beach at Merlin's Cove in Tintagel and carried home in my duffle bag (remember those) by an eight-year old me who couldn't bear to leave them behind. The large one used by my mum and dad as a doorstop ever since, whilst I always thought the other one always looked good enough to eat...

We have some from Orkney too, collected on our last visit and approved by customs as long as no bigger than your hand and checked by them before we left...they were more concerned about me boarding a flight with knitting needles. This forever to be known as the Bowl of Brodgar.

And bless Six Go Mad in Norfolk for choosing me a stone each in my absence.

I thought about doing that Kettle's Yard (a house and gallery in Cambridge) arrangement...

But could see a cat making short work of that...or what about this, except I suspect if I tried it would just look like stones in a bowl rather than an art installation...

No I'm happy with my Cabinet of Curiosities as it is and all the wonderful memories and adventures contained therein, but in searching my Kettle's Yard pictures I did find this...


It's true they are a special gallery of memories and recollections, a little Louvre of mine own.

Are you a collector too...

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The Speaker's Coach...

Father's Day...

Happy Father's Day to all fathers everywhere, and if like me you are missing yours then I'm sending kind thoughts and I hope some happy memories your way too. Please do share anything you want to in comments.

After my mum died Mothering Sunday ambushed me big time, so I have been ready for today and will not be looking on it as a sad day (because we do have another father in the house after all) but rather seeing it as a wonderful celebration of all the lovely memories my dad has left with me.

Candlestick Press also do a wonderful pamphlet Ten Poems About Fathers which they very kindly included in their package to me, and Di Slaney explains in her introduction that, though there are plenty of poems that define so many aspects of their subject, sometimes anger and hatred too, they particularly wanted this one to be a celebration of fathers and fatherhood and so chose the poems accordingly.

It opens with Digging by Seamus Heaney...could there be a better starter for ten??

This one readily available online so I am posting it here...

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

 

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down.

 

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

 

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

 

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

 

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

 

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

 

I'll think of dahlias and chrysanthemums rather than potatoes, and the care the Tinker lavished on them. 

We have inherited the dahlias and so far so good...


If we end up with anything remotely like this I will be delirious...

He was a real lover of the traditional card was the Tinker, the one with the nice verse and the nice picture, and I think he would have loved Ten Poems About Fathers.

Meanwhile this has become one of my most favourite pictures of the two of us, doing what we did a lot of...laughing.

 

Candlestick Press

If there has been one thing I have been pleased to fall back on this year it is poetry, so I was delighted to hear from Candlestick Press who asked whether I would be interested in seeing some of their pamphlets again, I think I had written about them some years ago and may even have posted them off to some of you.

And as an aside, pamphlet suddenly strikes me as a fine word whose origins I immediately need to know...

Middle English pamflet, from Medieval Latin pamfletus, from Pamphiletus, diminutive of Pamphilus, amatory Latin poem of the 1100s, from Greek pamphilos, beloved by all : pan-, pan- + philos, beloved.

Beloved by all, and these most certainly will be.

For those who may not have seen or heard of them, Candlestick Press produce a wonderful range of themed collections of ten poems sold here in the UK as an alternative to sending someone a card, and given the cost of greeting cards these days I think the £4ish price tag on these is well worth the investment. 

We have received so many lovely cards in recent months that I have kept them all in a special box, just like I now discover my mum did when to my surprise I came across all their Silver Wedding anniversary cards, and an album of all her childhood birthday cards. It never seems quite right to throw away something that someone has chosen and written in and thought especially of you when they have sent it. Others of mine are made into bookmarks, or used as patchwork templates, or pinned on the notice board, or propped up on a bookcase. I really am hopeless, chances are if you have ever sent me a card it will be here, in some form, somewhere.

The range of Candlestick Press themes is growing and in amongst this batch Tea, Puddings, Knitting, Fathers and Bereavement.

Ten Poems About Knitting, is, to be honest, one to buy and post to yourself if no one sends it your way, as Di Slaney says in her introduction...

'I like the idea of yarn representing the tale - the poems - in this pamphlet, words knitted together by expert craftspeople.'

A beautiful poem by Sue Dymoke entitled 'Janet's' which perfectly evokes the wool shop of old where the wool was put by and could be collected a few balls at a time, as finances allowed, and was kept in that very unique crinkly cellophane, whilst her observation about the pattern room was spot on...

'In the pattern room knitters flicked
through strange family albums : children
knelt awkwardly, always smiling,
women's shoulders at jaunty angles,
real men, purposeful and rugged.'

It didn't take me long to find a few...



Ten Poems About Tea and this delight from Carol Ann Duffy...

'I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup.'

Or this from Lessons in Teamaking by Kenny Knight..

When I first learned to
pour tea in Honicknowle

in those dark old days 
before central heating..

You would need to have lived in Plymouth to know of Honicknowle, I was a health visitor there for a while back in the day, many's the cup of tea.

In Memoriam, Poems of Bereavement was obviously going to get a good test run and I can safely say that this selection, chosen by Carol Ann Duffy, could be sent to anyone. Some of you have so very kindly sent me some really comforting and consoling words, and poems amongst them, which have been greatly appreciated, and as I read through this selection one poem stopped me in my tracks and I will own up, there were tears at the kitchen table.

Staring Out the Window Three Weeks After His Death by Paul Durcan has been my introduction to an Irish poet I may not even have heard of, but on the strength of this one poem I ordered a collection, just to see, and that has to be another advantage of pamphlets like these.

Sitting by the bed of his dying father the poet likens his father's soul to a hare..

I saw that his soul was a hare which was poised
In the long grass of his body, ears pricked...

Given that copyrights have had to be acquired for all these poems I'm not sure I can post it all without some infringement, but as the poem progresses, and his father's life draws to its close, that hare first approaches, then turns and bounds away disappearing out of sight. Convinced he will never see his father again there are tears, until suddenly the hare reappears...

'Springing out of the wood into a beach cove of sunlight
And I thought - yes, that's how it's going to be from now on:
The hare of his soul always there, when I least expect it;
Popping up out of nowhere, sitting still.'

Hares have always been a love of mine, and as I read this, there was the bronze hare that my dad had bought me for my birthday sitting on the bookcase alongside...


This one has a really beseeching air about him, I love it.

And then, a few days later we were walking round a craft fair in a tiny Cornish church...and there was another one. My little Jugged Hare, made by local potter Zane Hazeldine, now sitting happily on the kitchen shelf...


Incidentally, a new potter discovered too, some very beautiful pieces.

But Paul Durcan is right..

'.....that's how it's going to be from now on:
The hare of his soul always there, when I least expect it;
Popping up out of nowhere, sitting still.'

I have often seen Candlestick Press pamphlets and wondered whether I should send one, but now I definitely will because these have brought me enormous pleasure since they arrived, and I feel sure would bring pleasure to others too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beating the Bounds ~ The Making of the English Landscape - W.G.Hoskins

I have been reading (well, last October, wrote this in February but tempus fugit a mite fast since then) The Making of the English Landscape by W.G.Hoskins because I thought, with so many excellent nature books on my shelves, it might be a good idea to go back to the beginning and read one of the definitive ones first.

Published in 1955 my edition is an old hardback, but The Making of the English Landscape also makes a welcome and essential addition to the Little Toller Books list of nature classics, offering as it does such a definitive historical route through this land as we know it. I love the Fay Godwin picture on the cover too, her work graces several of Ted Hughes' books and I always feel it has that real sense of a brooding and secretive past just waiting to give up its treasures if I look hard enough.

Professor Hoskins sets off across Anglo-Saxon and Medieval England, traversing the devastation of the Black Death before heading into Tudor and Georgian enclosure, the Industrial Revolution, the roads, canals and railways and the establishment of towns.

It all sounds a bit dry and dusty doesn't it, but I was surprised to find a compelling and interesting book that really sorted out my homeland historical muddle. It's all so long ago... me learning it that is... and, well... it actually happening too. It was good to get everything back in the right order and feel some relief that I recognised the details of the Industrial Revolution, which for some reason was done to death at school; flying shuttles and spinning jennies imprinted and embedded when so much else was glossed over...or maybe I wasn't paying attention for a couple of years.

Professor Hoskins was eventually a dweller in the Shire so the South West receives many honourable and justified mentions, and with references to places very near to us here.

Incidentally the Shire is looking very well-dressed at the moment, finest raiment etc

Quintessential Hoskins...

One reference in particular that could (might...maybe) suggest that our green lane is the old boundary between one parcel of land and another, as each landowner dug out a ditch and threw the earth into a continuous bank on his own side. A double ditch emerges creating a track several feet wide and sunk several feet below  the level of the fields...that would describe our green lane perfectly.

..as well as perhaps explaining the origins of the Devon bank hedges that we know so well. 

For reasons that can only be speculated upon, apparently Devon was enclosed into smaller fields much sooner than elsewhere (1300s v 1700s) . The theory is that there was such an excess of pasture land no one really objected to a bit of hedging, but I was fascinated to read more about the creation of the hedgerows around us here...

'a trench is dug to mark the limits of the holders land, and the soil removed from it is thrown up into a mound on the inner side of the ditch...a lease in 1398 specifies that the ditch shall be four feet wide and four feet deep. The mound is planted with a quickset hedge, and grows in course of time by the addition of soil thrown up whenever the ditch is cleared. No feature of the Devon landscape is more characteristic than these vast banks crowned with oak, ash, hazel or other coppice wood growing to a height of twenty feet or more and forming an impenetrable screen.'

I can't tell you the difference when the 'impenetrable screen' to the front of the house has its spring and autumn cut, or how neat and tidy the lane looks (for a while) after it has been done...

and how quickly it reverts in summer...

Nor had it really occurred to me that there were two hundred years of tree-clearing slog before the emergence of the green and pleasant agricultural land that we take for granted. We have just watched them cut the grass in the field behind the house, hard to envisage it as forest...

'From rising ground England must have seemed one great forest before the fifteenth century, an almost unbroken sea of treetops with a thin blue spiral of smoke rising here and there at long intervals...'

The peasants set too and  imagine the extent of the destruction as Professor Hoskins defines it in human terms...

'Timber alone served the purposes of coal, steel and concrete today...we read that one Durham man alone was said in 1629 to have felled more than thirty thousand oaks in his lifetime...'

Imagine that destruction going on across the country, little wonder that by 1664 diarist John Eveyln was pleading with landowners to plant many millions more trees, which apparently all saved our bacon when ships were needed about a hundred years later in the great naval struggle with France.

The Making of the English Landscape is a book chock-full of Did You Knows...

Imagine this country with only twenty thousand people living in it...

Only twenty-five people to the square mile at the end of the eleventh century...

Imagine that population growing and then being reduced by half thanks to the plague when it arrived in 1348...

And so much more. Definitely one to read if, like me, you are enjoying the modern flurry of nature and landscape writing, Professor Hoskins certainly set the genre in very firm foundations.

Has anyone else read this one...

Are there any other 'early' books in this genre that I should add to the reading list...

 

Sir Van the Man...Lit up Inside

'You can take all the tea in China
Put it in a big brown bag for me
Sail right around all the seven oceans
Drop it straight into the deep blue sea...'

Name that song...

You got it...

'She's as sweet as Tupelo honey
She's an angel of the first degree
She's as sweet as Tupelo honey
Just like honey, baby, from the bee

And now, thanks to the Queen's Birthday Honours, it's Sir Van Morrison, who'd have thought it.

Tupelo Honey apparently written when Van Morrison was 'living in domestic bliss in Woodstock with his first wife Janet "Planet" Rigsbee.' 

We adored Van in our corner of the sixth form common room. One poor soul, who owned the Tupelo Honey LP gamely lending it to the rest of us for one night each. Long enough to set it up next to the microphone on the reel-to-reel tape recorder and then insist that the whole house stayed silent for the next hour. 

It would seem I eventually bought my own copy, still in the cupboard full of obsolete 1970's vinyl that we can't decide what to do with..

No matter that Van the Man now has a reputation for being Mr Grumpy...am I bothered?

Not in the slightest and the news of his knighthood had me spinning the Van CD's yet again (The Best of Van Morrison and Back on Top) alongside a book of his lyrics published by Faber in 2014.

I'm not sure song lyrics always translate that well onto the page, but Lit Up Inside might be one of the exceptions because I have been dipping into it for months now, and if you are a Van fan then like me you might find yourself humming the song in your head the minute you read the words..

Well it's a marvellous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
'Neath the cover of October skies...

Or how about...

Out on the highways and the byways all alone
I'm still searching for my home
Up in the morning, up in the morning and out on the road
And my head is aching and my hands are cold
And I'm looking for the silver lining, silver lining in the
    clouds
And I'm searching for the philosopher's stone.

In his introduction to the book novelist Ian Rankin recounts his own first encounter with the music of Van Morrison, a veritable latecomer to the club in 1989. With a writing career that wasn't happening and suffering from panic attacks, Ian Rankin was advised by his doctor to get out of London for a while which he did, armed with his Walkman (ah remember those, didn't we all feel clever with our tiny music machines) and a stack of Van Morrison cassettes. Plumping for a train to Scarborough off he went...

'There were stories in the music, and characters and commentary. There was a search for the spiritual in the commonplace, the personal straining towards the universal... amidst the poetry there was room for disenchantment and anger too...This was music filled with beautiful visions, sung with passion and immaculate phrasing by a singer who was both of the world and rooted in a particular upbringing and landscape.'

In Van Morrison's case that was Belfast in Northern Ireland.

As Ian Rankin agrees, 'not every songwriter's lyrics cast a spell when stripped of the accompanying music,' also suggesting that to read the lyrics is to be led back into the music and that is exactly what happened to me when I first opened the book last autumn. 'Music to warm the soul' says Ian Rankin and I have to agree, but music that also reminds me of that seventeen-year old me...we were all searching for something and not a clue what it was I'm sure.

Plenty of melancholy Van tunes, but how about this one for a nice jolly foot-tapping jig of a moment, and if you were or still are a Van Fan please do own up...

'Let's enjoy it while we can
Won't you help me share my load
From the dark end of the street
To the bright side of the road...'

Poppies...

It was one of the best,most striking book jackets I have ever seen...do you remember it, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh and I really enjoyed the book too...


And all I have wanted, and it doesn't seem too much to ask, is a sea of poppies in our garden.

'Oh they are really easy,' everyone says.

The last person to say this to me was standing with nonchalance next to the biggest, most massive, most beautiful crop of bright red annual poppies that I had ever seen (not even yours Fran H-B...way bigger) and really I have to confess to a bout of the greenest envy.

'I just ignore them and they come up every year...never water them, never go near them...'

Don't ask me how many poppy seeds I have sown in this garden, year after year and not a sausage. Year after year Fran H-B sends me yet more seeds from hers and maybe one or two appear but that's it.

Last year a few of these appeared, Papaver rhoeas (I think) hardly a sea and then only because, seeing nothing yet again, I found two tiny seeds left in the envelope and nurtured them in a pot before planting them out. Completely against the rules of benign neglect where annual poppies are concerned I am sure.. far too much care and attention.

...and then there was the odd one up in our little orchard...

and then in late July just the one of these Papaver somniferum, an opium poppy of unknown variety appeared from thousands of seeds sent by Sabina who reads here sometimes I think...

I was that overjoyed you'd have thought I had won the football pools.

But the opium poppies also scared me ever so slightly.

Papaveretum also known by its drug trade name Omnopon and doubtless etched on every student nurse's brain from doing the controlled drugs checks. The weekly ritual, every last ampoule had to be accounted for, counted and double checked by two people, put back in the box and then locked away again, the drugs book signed and dated. The keys to the drugs cupboard held by the most senior nurse on duty, and at Great Ormond Street kept in place in your pocket or behind the bib of your apron with that securest of things, a nappy pin. When it was finally my turn to be that nurse it felt like a massive responsibility. 

Checking the poppy heads one day last last summer, just out of interest to see if they were actually going to seed, and out oozed the white liquid. Is it the same stuff... I almost wanted Sister to come and stand next to me and check it, surely this couldn't be legal. It was a strange portent because nor was I to know that within months we were going to have enough opiates in the house to flatten an army, and no one seemed in the least bit bothered about where we kept them or what we did with them. I was doubly terrified, hated giving them and was very relieved to ship the stash back to the pharmacy eventually.

As the poppies went to seed last summer (and I now know you obviously wait for the seed head to rattle) I just scattered them around in the vain hope they might winter over and reappear this year. I collected more seeds for this spring, found them again by chance and then decided to play it very cool.

I'd take the devil-may-care approach...

In fact I really couldn't care less about them...

Not in the least bit bothered if they didn't come up...

Who wants poppies anyway...

I flung the seeds around and then genuinely forgot about them.

And now look...

These a fraction of the poppies on a long strip of soil beneath a hedge favoured by weeds and little else no matter how hard we tried.

It might not be quite a sea, more a river, but suddenly they are poppying up (sorry, had to) all over the place.

Expect more poppy adulation later in the summer.

And now you are all going to tell me how easily they grow in your garden too...

Quae legis...

It's a bit high risk using an online English to Latin translator isn't it, but 'What are you reading' just sounded a bit mundane. Someone will correct it if the internet is a dunce but it is time for me to ask on a regular basis what you are all reading. I have fallen into that trap of reading far too many books at once than can be good for me, and I would love to know that others are dealing with the same happy dilemma, as well as hearing your thoughts about your reading.

Right...own up...who told me to read The Quincunx by Charles Palliser...hands up all culprits, I know you're out there...

Would it be fair to call it laboriously compelling..

Or addictively tedious...

475 pages in and I still can't quite get my head around what I think as wicked little Johnnie Mellamphy and his mother slip deeper and deeper into poverty and with this codicil hanging around that could/should/might make their fortunes one day...and his mother will tell Johnnie everything when he is old enough but in the meantime he is very naughty to ask, except I get the feeling Johnnie must be about fifty-four already because the book seems to have been going on forever.

And yet, every so often I can't wait to sit and read some more because it is one of those all-enveloping books.

The Quincunx is definitely not a dribs and drabs book, and good lord how I wish it was available on Kindle, I need a trolley for it and also a good long run per session to really pick up the gist and the mood again, before trudging onward into the depths of more misery and increasing poverty. There haven't been many laughs (maybe not even one) but somehow that doesn't worry me because by now I just have to keep the faith and stay with it.

And I have a feeling too that I might be missing clues. I am trying to take note of the little incidentals that could add up to the mysterious whole, but I suspect it will be a multitude of things I have missed by the time I reach p1221. 

With no literary festivals on the horizon to prepare for I am certainly enjoying having the time to tackle a chunkster and think my next mighty tome could be A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel through this summer. Forgive me, I don't want to commit to an organised year long month-by-month read on here for the moment, but the book has been calling me for ages and I think its time might have come. Keep an eye on the 'Challenging' sidebar list over here on the right >>>> If I make a good and promising start that's where you will know about it, and if I do I feel sure there will be the occasional interim progress report.

I am also still Running for the Hills with Horatio Clare and now quite delighted to have reached the part where Horatio, his mother and his brother move to the sheep farm in the Welsh mountains for good. The book is beautifully written and not in the least self-indulgent, which always finds favour with me in the memoir department.

Charles Rangely-Wilson's Silt Road - The Story of a Lost River ran dry for a few weeks whilst I dealt with other bookish distractions (Simon Armitage) but I am back on it, enjoying the journey and will finish it dreckly.

And finally I am still reading Peter James 'Roy Grace' series on my Kindle and I am still coping with them. Now onto Book Three, I can't remember the title...they are all Something or Other Dead but Book Two Looking Good Dead held together and probably because I am capable of suspending disbelief when required in order to find out what happens next.

Talking of crime...is anyone else watching No Offence, the Manchester-based police procedural drama series on a Tuesday evening on Channel Four. Written by Paul Abbot it is by turns funny, outrageous, dramatic and emotional, quite the best series we have watched since the last 'best' one. Inspector Vivienne Deering (Joanna Scanlan) described as being 'dizzyingly capable but unquestionably unhinged.' and the polar opposite to The Fall's Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson). It's a series we don't want to end because there are moments when we laugh out loud so we can only hope for another one.

But enough of me, how about you...

What are you reading...please do share your current book(s) and thoughts about it (them) in comments...

And many of you will be far more disciplined than me but I bet everyone has a book(s) waiting in the wings that they just can't wait to start, we need to know that too...

Also any good TV viewing to report...

 

Threads - The Delicate Life of John Craske ~ Julia Blackburn

Such a beautiful read as Threads - The Delicate Life of John Craske, the latest book from Julia Blackburn, deserves nothing but the highest standards of presentation, and it is the quality of this book in my hand that stood out before I had even opened the first page. A weighty book suggesting good quality paper, and the dimensions that all Julia's books are published in, slightly squarer than the average with stitch-bound smooth matte pages that offer a photograph in the clearest possible form. Follow the links for my thoughts on The Three of Us and Thin Paths, excellent books to have, to hold and to read both, and these things do still matter and were duly noted because it all makes the book a pleasure to pick up and despite loving my Kindle I still need that feel of a treasure of a book in my hands.

Very few facts are known about the life of John Craske, a Norfolk fisherman born in 1881 who became seriously ill during the First World War and for the rest of his life (he died in 1943) fell in an out of what are described as stupours. Known to have diabetes there is still some uncertainty about the real cause of John Craske's stupours, but what becomes very clear is that he had an angel of a wife in Laura who cared for him for better and definitely for worse if not worst. The stupour that lasted three years would certainly have tested lesser saints. During the more lucid phases of his illness John Craske took up both painting and embroidery of the sea, boats and coastline and it is this work that forms the main focus of the book.

'The stitches are words on a page that cannot be read, the notations of a silent song...'

And Threads is a book that is as much about the back of those stitches as the front; the unseen and its intention to remain so often the more revealing.

I was taught needlework at school that was supposed to be as neat on the back as it was on the front which was all enough for me to rebel hopelessly ever thereafter...the reverse of anything I make would probably reveal a shocking story of knots, frayed edges, mis-pressed seams and heaven knows what.

But how to invest a seemingly ordinary life, about which so little is known, with sufficient interest to sustain the reader...

As I read I was thinking about the title. It takes the notion of threads and stretches it very cleverly along the entire length of its meaning, and so many occurred to me along the way...

a filament..

a group of filaments twisted together

a slender stream...

something continuous, drawn out...

a line of reasoning, a train of thought...

a tenuous or feeble support...

losing the thread...

hanging on to life by a thread...

It's almost impossible not to use every metaphor going...about weaving and stitching and patching lives together into a whole, because delicately spun into the pages of Threads are the strands of Julia Blackburn's own life as she is writing. This is biography with a difference, and it is a difference that works because with so little known of the original story invisible threads must be used...probably, maybe, unsure, impression...all words that Julia Blackburn uses to qualify before she imagines what may have been happening to John Craske, whilst knowing what is happening to Herman, the love of her own life.

'There is something so mysterious about life going on about its business on the other side of our sight under the surface of the sea. And then you pull it through the dividing line that separates one world from the other...'

Julia's husband Herman dies before the the book is finished adding another layer of meditation on the 'nature of time and the fact of mortality.' It became, for me, a deeply moving read not only because of circumstances this year but because I met Herman some years ago and will never forget it...


The world that also comes alive is that of Norfolk. Cromer, Sheringham, Blakeney (where I was supposed to be but couldn't be this spring, but have now visited vicariously) as Julia Blackburn follows all the tantalising loose ends in the hope they will lead her to more insights into John Craske's life. Julia meets someone who knew someone who knew the Craskes, tracks down old letters and documents and along the way picks up other threads...Einstein staying in Norfolk, the discovery of the latter-day charity Fine Cell Work to name but two as she explores the whole idea of men and needlework.

John Craske was less of a planner, more a sew-as-you-go man, often struggling to afford the materials he needed, and though largely unknown in his day Sylvia Townsend Warner and her partner Valentine Ackland were huge fans, bought some of his work and endeavoured to spread the word. Julia Blackburn has curated an exhibition of John Craske's work to coincide with the publication of Threads which is now about to move to the Aldeburgh Festival until June 28th, and I can only imagine, having read the book, really worth a visit...

This rare exhibition of his work has been co-curated by Aldeburgh Music and Norwich University of the Arts, and will show our own substantial collection alongside other pieces loaned from across the UK, including four recently discovered miniature paintings and his masterpiece, the tapestry The Evacuation of Dunkirk, on loan from Norfolk Museums Service. One patch of sky within this tapestry remained unfinished when Craske died in 1943. The display of this work falls on the 75th anniversary of the evacuation.

There aren't many books on my shelf that I know for sure I will read again, and I want that before I invest these days, but each of Julia Blackburn's book are keepers and re-readers. Threads is one of those books wherein the last page somehow led me back to the first, and with a real urge to start the journey over again and anew.

 

 

 

 

On Geraniums and other flowers...

The Tinker was an absolute expert, doted on them lovingly and could keep his geraniums and pelargoniums flowering all year round. I have inherited the plants, brought them into the Book Room with its triple aspect sun-filled windowsills, and so I am now taking geraniums a bit more seriously.

They suffered a little from January to March but I have taken them in hand, done some pruning, some dead-heading and a lot of feeding and I think they are on the mend, so feeling I can be trusted not to kill them I have added in a few new ones. 

This Regal was one of our shared favourites and I am thrilled to see it flowering again. There's something about the eternal round of flowering isn't there...


That windowsill faces west and gets glorious afternoon and evening sunshine.

This one faces east and bakes from sunrise until lunchtime, the scented geraniums love it...

The Last Dowager, now into her twenty-second year, favours sun-puddling on this spot too for obvious reasons.

and of course we now have the best view of the greenhouse and Magnus in his preferred location...

I used to be very precious about this room, Bookhound-designed and built with large windows on three sides and French windows leading onto the garden, and intended to be what we rather grandly termed a Garden Room. Heaven know what we thought we would use it for so thankfully it quickly morphed into a Book Room. I wouldn't bring any plants in for fear of damp, the blinds stayed down and slanted the sun away from everything, but this year I have thought hang it all...Let There be Sunlight. The sofas are already old and faded (but uber-comfortable for reclining) and the windowsills were suddenly begging for geraniums in clay pots...

That third window faces north and gets no sun but plenty of light and so far these two Regals seem to be thriving. This one is called Adele...


And any day now the Daisy Show will explode outside that window and every time I walk in the room I will think it is snowing.

I love the way a plant can get a grip on my imagination and my heart and take hold. It's happened with lavender, so many varieties grown from seed and now streaking away...

and the aquilegias, flowering for the first time have been stunning and are giving us so much pleasure...

and now, finally, after three years of waiting...here come the ornamental poppies...

That might be Checkers or it might be Royal Wedding...only I could be so daft as to grow two that are almost identical, but this next one is definitely Allegra...

So how's your garden growing...it's always good to hear what's happening around the world, and all tips and advice for geraniums gratefully received...for example do the things really never rest??

If they don't go dormant, which apparently is the case, do you ever stop feeding them, or prune them back...if so when??

And I am being very good about not watering them too often...apparently they like it on the dry side...is that right??

Heavens I am so glad you are all there to ask.

 

Coxless Crew...One Boat - One Ocean - FO4R Women

I have one of my oldest friends (as in years known) Wiz, my student nursing flatmate, bridesmaid, sculler and rowing cox extraordinaire and all round always-there-for-me person (even when we don't see each other for ages) to thank for news of this amazing endeavour by a team called the Coxless Crew.

Four women are rowing 8446 miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Australia in a boat called Doris and here's their plan...

We aim to set WRs for:

First all female team to row the Pacific Ocean.

First ever fours boat to row the Pacific Ocean.

Fastest ever Pacific Ocean row.

MISSION

A group of women, rowing the South Pacific Ocean in April 2015, from America to Australia 8,446 miles, to support women that have had to face adversity and overcome life changing events.

CHARITIES

We aim to raise over a quarter of a million pounds for our 2 charities, to support those who show true resilience; Walking With the Wounded and Breast Cancer Care survivors.

The money we raise for Walking With the Wounded will be setting up the first ever fund for injured servicewomen and supporting their re-education and re-training pathway to create a new journey and focus for them after injury.

Breast Cancer Care is our second charity, where the money we raise will continue to support the carers and services that BCC provide to those fighting breast cancer and their families.

VISION

After the row, the Coxless Crew will share the story of their journey and will continue the legacy to provide a platform to help women that have overcome adversity, to explore their new life journey and reach their true potential.

It's a courageous and ambitious endeavour given that about thirty eight years ago I once did a few seasons of competitive rowing and was always done in for days after racing less than a mile. I have been following Laura, Emma, Natalia and Isabel via their blog and website since their journey began several weeks ago, and almost feeling the pain as they had to turn back to California when water took out their batteries.

But they are on their way again and here's the journey...

The Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest ocean, bounded by Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At sixty-four million square miles, it covers one-third of Earth’s total surface area.

Our row across the Pacific will be an unsupported three-stage row starting in San Francisco, California and finishing in Cairns, Australia. Stops will be made in Hawaii and Samoa and the entire expedition will cover 8,446 miles and take 5 to 6 months (weather dependent)!

Stops will last for approximately seven days at a time to restock the boat, repair and replenish supplies and for the team to share their story with the local, national and international media.

This route has only ever been completed by solo and pairs teams, never has it been done by a team of four and never has it been done as a continuous three stage row.

Every day I check the map to see where their boat Doris is...

And then I check the blog because they are writing regular updates in between their two hours on / two hours off rowing shifts in pairs....so no more than two hours sleep at any one time for any of them. You too can write encouraging comments because it must feel like the slog of a lifetime and you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter too.

There are good days and tough days, and then there are Sound of Music singalong days... I can only think it was The Lonely Boatherd or something but I'd be up for that too if I was mid-Pacific. I've just bought a mile which means my name will be in tiny letters on board somewhere I think so I'm tagging along with the team. I'm going to volunteer to do the ironing or something and hope that the next singalong is MammaMia and there will have to be some South Pacific eventually.

Next stop Hawaii, can't wait, always wanted to go there.

 

 

 

 

Walking Away ~ Simon Armitage

I am so off the pace with Simon Armitage, the probation officer turned poet and writer, that it is almost a crime (sorry)

I watched an engaging and moving programme that he made about the centenary of the First World War last November but couldn't remember the details so had to look it up...

In a major new BBC commission, acclaimed poet Simon Armitage has written seven new poems about World War I that form the centre of his latest television documentary.

Armitage visits French beaches, German prison camps, so-called 'thankful' villages and remote corners of the Scottish Highlands as he considers the death of over 700,000 British soldiers in the conflict and tells seven real-life war stories. He learns of those who lived and died through it, those who worked and grieved and cried through it, and even those who tunnelled to freedom beneath its very soil. Each story culminates in a poem inspired by Armitage's research.

Featuring readings by both the poet himself and the surviving relatives of those whose stories he tells, this film offers an opportunity to reflect again on that catastrophic loss of life, and to think about how we commemorate the dead for the next 100 years.

Does anyone else remember this??

Maybe I even mentioned it on here but it was lost in the mists of ensuing events, as was my pledge to really get to know the writing of Simon Armitage. I think it was his quiet sincerity that impressed me most, along with a real sensitivity to his subject as he sought out some lesser known aspects of remembrance. As the programme ended I recall saying 'Surely there's our next Poet Laureate.' 

And so a copy of Walking Away by Simon Armitage appeared on NetGalley, which is a source of digital books from publishers, pre-publication, that I can read on my Kindle. I made a bit of an idle start because Simon Armitage's previous book, Walking Home, had unfortunately arrived a few years ago alongside something new and bright and sparkly from Robert Macfarlane and somehow the poet's walk was forgotten in the excitement.

The premise and action of both books is that Simon Armitage assumes the role of the troubadour poet, undertaking a three-week-long walk, endeavouring to live off his poetry, meeting people, cadging free beds for the night and giving readings along the way at which a sock (clean...maybe) is passed around for donations. In Walking Away he embarks on the South-West coast path starting in North Devon, at the Butlin's Holiday Camp in Minehead and heading for Land's End and thence the Isles of Scilly.

Some of you must have gone to Butlin's for a childhood holiday... Simon Armitage did, one with the perimeter wire which his dad said was to stop people escaping, and he relives the experience a la 2014 for one night at the start of his journey. If I am honest Butlin's was my dream destination as a child, and obviously my parents' worst nightmare to say nothing of the cost, which is why we stayed with family friends and built sandcastles on those deserted Cornish beaches at places like Tintagel with no shops and no people (the olden days).

Look at that slide. A very young Bookhound broke his front tooth on one of those, shooting down head first and colliding with the child who always had to try and climb up. Or maybe he was the one climbing up, but parents would have to sign consent and children would have to wear hard hats these days.

There are plenty of poetic connections to be found en route, this will soon be Betjeman country after all, but especially with the death of Seamus Heaney soon after Simon Armitage has set off. He is deeply saddened and shares some wonderful memories and anecdotes. Then he has tea with Margaret Drabble who has a home along the way and though he is clearly desperate to ask about the sisterly feud with A.S.Byatt  he politely doesn't.

One of the reasons for following a poet's journey in this way has to be their innate ability to see and pin down what the rest of us might not be able to....the poetry in a sandy beach for example, the light, the colours, the patterns, the depth, the gradations.

And the strand ...

'the upper limit of the moon's advances against the earth's reluctance...'

This is not a good advert but I'll share it anyway. The tide line at Woolacombe Sands sadly freighted with its cargo of the unexpected, the unwanted, the discarded...

'Striding along it's impossible not to see it as an inventory of environmental complacency and a catalogue of shame. Plastic netting, cassette tape, oil drums, dollops of tar, a golf tee, dozens of plastic lollipop sticks, hundreds of plastic bottles, milk cartons, a burst balloon, tons of insoluble and indivisible and un-biodegradable waste dumped in the dustbin of the sea and duly returned.'

Recovering from the honest stark reality of that mess, and then reading it aloud and I find the words have a poetic rhythm to them.

On the subject of the unexpected moment...

'a form of immersion, a few moments of particular self-consciousness, a sensory awareness, a recognition of the future memory of this location already developing like a photograph, a scene that will stay in the mind...'

When I thought about that I could scroll through my 'photographs' of childhood Cornwall like a slideshow. For all I might rather have been at Butlin's I think I know which mental album I am most grateful for now.

Forced to take a detour from the coast path it would seem Simon Armitage is also confronted by that bizarre roundabout in Barnstaple (not Bideford) that led to us buying a SatNav out of despair, the Ring of Brodgar one with the chunks of granite in metal crates...

'the roundabout groaning with the strain of a municipal art installation.'

The more I think about it the more I think I would prefer the predictable Welcome to Barnstaple writ large in begonias; there are certain expectations not for subverting, and some things the Shire does particularly well, municipal planting being one of them, installations maybe less so.

Witness Verity at Ilfracombe, the Damian Hurst sculpture on loan to the town for twenty years...the South West jury is still out and likely to stay out.

But Simon Armitage is pragmatic and generous to a fault about Verity...

'It might lack subtlety or seem a touch petulant in its efforts to shock, and at certain angles it does look like the cover image from a teen-oriented graphic novel in which zombie robots stalk the planet. But desperate measures call for daring actions; tourist numbers are up, and a pound is a pound...'

Poets often need to be alone and Simon Armitage occasionally pulls his expensive hat down over his head and sneaks off out the back way in order to hear 'the nuances of the sea and the language of the coast,' to compute the colours... turquoise, jade, teal, petrol, indigo, but then the novelty wears off being Billy No Mates and he is glad of company again. Except, for all its kindness, the company is frequently very keen to tell him how dreadful the next bit of the walk will be, and his spine is already objecting, whilst his boots are in tatters. That glue doesn't work, I've tried it too.

But the walk goes on and the readings continue, sometimes to a few, sometimes many, with Simon Armitage wondering about the life of the words after they are spoken...whether perhaps occasionally they 'find a hitching post in someone's memory' or do they 'pop against an eardrum' and are lost forever. And throughout the journey the walking poet is never afraid to shine a light on his own weaknesses and foibles, more than willing to confess when he looks or feels a complete numpty. I do like a bit of humility in a poet don't you...

The suitcase akin to the size, weight and shape of a 'Galapagos tortoise', is transported ahead each day on a journey of its own, people drop in and along and then out again until the destination is finally reached.

Land's End.

Frankly I was dreading the poet's eye seeing the shame that is Land's End, the tackiest tourist attraction ever, and then taking his pen to it. In the end, with his eyes on the journey's final stage over on the Isles of Scilly, Simon Armitage was quite restrained, turning only partial vision on the mess, and I have to admit the rocks themselves are really nice.

So what an excellent read Walking Away has been, an astute and intuitive look at the landscape with the quirks of the English understood, spotted and mixed in but in the best possible way, by someone who clearly sees himself as belonging...as one of them. Though I still have Walking Home, the earlier book to read, if there is a sadness it is that Simon Armitage declares this to be his last long walk. Maybe he could do a series of short forays or something, just to keep his eye on us all and keep up the commentary, because he has an invaluable and very special eye.

I'm now into the poetry collections and still with this in mind...

Except here's a thing though... Simon Armitage may be the only person known to mankind who is able to pass this...

...Doyden's Folly (as we know it in these parts) near Port Quin and not say the words, Poldark, First Series and Dwight Ennis's House in the same sentence. In fact not say the words at all, any of them in any order, the rest of us wouldn't have been able to stop ourselves. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Joys of Hay

Well, SerenaSatNav did the biz....except we prefer to call her Connie (as in Constance)

We set her a-talking as we left home, just to get the hang of  'in 400 yards, bear left' and then 'bear left,' when in fact you are only going around a normal bend in the road, but also to get an idea of how much warning you are given, and just so that we could cope with it all in the middle of Abergavenny. 

Abergavenny was where Bookhound finally surrendered all vestiges of control having done his usual Google Earth route plan which fixes a satellite image of where he's going in his head (never of any use to me as navigator). He had quite thought we would go to the east of the mountains whilst Serena took us to the west.

'No, no, no...she's got it wrong, we're going the long way round...get the map out...'

There was a minor exchange in which I sided with Connie who kept dishing out the perfect directions...

'Let's just do as she says,' suggest I, having spent the last hundred and something miles in a state of advanced nirvana at not having to pore over the map every five minutes, and in no mood to start now.

Of course Connie was right and we pulled into Hay-on Wye in record time singing her praises before tucking her away out of sight.

Now it must be ten years since we have been to Hay for the festival, if not longer, so I was pleasantly surprised with a great deal.

The ease of parking for one.

The Macmillan charity car park, adjacent to the festival site, £6 for the day, seemed like an appropriate charity for us to support this year, and from there the shuttle bus into Hay for lunch and a browse around the bookshops...twenty or more of them.

Faced with more books than even I knew existed can you believe I didn't buy a single one??

I'm in book-clearing rather than book-buying mode at the moment, trying not to add needlessly to shelves that already hold enough reading for three lifetimes, but if there was one I was looking for it was a new one. Fran H-B had just that morning told me she was engrossed in The Mighty Dead - Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicholson. I know next to nothing about Homer and I am intrigued to know there is something enjoyable and accessible out there. I did find two copies both new but with pages creased and with spines already cracked...if I'm going to pay full whack for a new book it had better be exactly that.

I also had to stop and stare because there seemed to be Ross Poldark strumming away in the town...

Back to the Festival site and another Good Thing...it is very spacious, well-laid out and sign-posted like a small village, and mostly under cover. I seem to recall muddy walkways and a festival atmosphere I couldn't quite fathom many years ago, but on Saturday it felt both relaxed yet vibrant.

We slotted into the airport-like queuing system along with 1200 others, in a hangar-sized space outside a 'tent' that was more like a stadium, to hear Helen Macdonald talk with passion and humour about her best-selling and prize-winning memoir H is for Hawk. Fortunately Carol found us in the queue (as did Sheelagh who comments here and popped across to say hello) and Carol is well-versed in what happens next, so she led the way and we tipped into seats a few rows from the front.

It was good to hear Helen Macdonald's story first-hand and to hear how her book has been so well-received by many people who are grieving themselves. Helen has given voice to something we are still not very good at and that is talking about loss and mourning, as well as giving people the time and space to do it, and to do it in whichever ways feel right for them. No one can tell anyone else exactly how to grieve and if it involves training a goshawk so be it.

Robert Macfarlane in conversation with Horatio Clare was the next event in the same venue but of course everyone has to file out and then queue up again, so there we were right at the front this time, no messing..

..and with Bookhound prepping himself for the role of seat-seeker while Carol and I had a good old yarn. It could all have gone horribly wrong...one trip and the thousand people behind you would pile in on top but no, safely into almost the same seats...except...

The tallest man in the country was now sitting in front of me directly blocking my view of the lectern, and though events are relayed to a big screen if I'm only five rows from the platform I really want to see these people for real.

Then there was the woman who absolutely HAD to send text messages all the way through sat next to Bookhound; thumbs all a-twiddle and the mobile phone screen flashing, a little beacon of addiction in the midst of the hushed darkness.

Except it wasn't quite hushed because the only woman in the whole tent with a very irritating cough (about every three minutes) was immediately behind us. It wasn't her fault I know, cough reflexes have a will of their own, but if I'm going to any event with a cough I take water and dry tickly cough sweets with me don't you?

Too late to move, we were surrounded, locked in place on oddly uncomfortable (to me) seats which somehow sloped a little too far backwards.

No matter Horatio Clare gave a wonderful introduction and of course Robert Macfarlane was... well Robert and we hung on his every word. I didn't take notes so it's all a wonderful mixed-up-memory of words and landscapes and meanings interspersed with some good questions from Horatio Clare who presented Robert with this year's Hay Medal for Prose, an annual award from the Festival committee. Having done this whole interviewing thing, and vowed not to do it again for the foreseeable future if ever, I now have the utmost respect for the role. But I also thought how lucky I was to have had the chance to interview Robert Macfarlane a few years ago at Port Eliot, it was one of the most memorable moments.

By this time it was 6.30pm, so we floated out on a real high making for the food tent and more chat before wending our way home.

Except I still hadn't bought a book.

How on earth could I go to Hay and not buy a book.

Granted one more sniff of the Festival Book Shop, off I trotted at about 7.30pm and there he was, Robert Macfarlane with his signing queue still snaking out of the door. I watched for a while... he was talking interestedly and at length to each person and it was clear plenty of people were prepared to wait for the opportunity. Plenty too seemed to be offering suggestions about more words for the glossaries in Landmarks, laying out books in front of him with carefully marked pages, turning to each one and pointing something out while Robert looked on and listened with patient attention. In the rarified microcosm that is a literary festival this all seemed to be signalling a heightened awareness and a genuine revival of respect for these disappearing words before it is too late, and it can only be hoped that the interest and enthusiasm spreads beyond the confines. As well as taking an interest in schools' projects, Robert Macfarlane revealed that he will be collaborating on a children's book in the near future, one that brings back the words lost from this year's Oxford Junior Dictionary, words like catkin and acorn, buttercup and bluebell (replaced by blog, broadband, cut-and-paste and voice-mail.) so it is clear that he has a commendable vision for this that goes far beyond the pages of his book.

Something interesting has begun.

I ambled around browsing the books. I already have every word written by Robert Macfarlane... but then there was the interviewer Horatio Clare, I don't know his writing at all but Carol and I both agreed he has the most beguiling voice, if he's a singer he's going to be rocking it over with the basses. A Single Swallow has been sitting on the shelf, the Tinker loved it and I hadn't got round to it, but Carol had mentioned the two volumes of memoir, Running for the Hills and Truant as excellent reads; I needed little encouragement.

As I turned to leave the bookshop, there he was, Robert Macfarlane still signing and chatting and the queue seemed no shorter, still snaking to the door, people still joining the back. Maybe this wasn't as tiring as climbing a mountain...or maybe it was. As Connie guided us home and delivered us to our gateway at about 11.30pm (our postcode is our house, the other two homes who share it have to make do and find their own way) I spared Robert Macfarlane and authors like him a thought...

And thought too about the demands of the whole LitFest circuit feeding as it does the reader's need to have much more than the written word. Now the need is for events, and books signed and tweets and Facebook pages, and yes please another book asap as part of the 21st century deal. Charles Dickens would have loved it all, any author needs their public and owes it to them to pay attention and occasionally be available and visible (many authors would kill for the mile-long signing queue) but popularity can also be exhausting and distracting from the next work in hand, and there is little doubt that Robert Macfarlane is much-loved and extremely popular (heads up...he will be on BBC Springwatch at 9pm this Wednesday). Hilary Mantel has talked in the past about the impossibilities of 'doing the circuit' and coping with distractions when she is engrossed in the sixteenth century. In Robert's case the next book will be Underlands, about what lies beneath (and don't expect it before 2020 he told us) so perhaps sometimes we can offer our favourite authors the chance to go to ground for a while and just 'be' and think and write, and in Robert Macfarlane's case cope with a day job and a young family too, all whilst reassuring them that their audience isn't so fickle as to have forgotten them. How fortunate we are to have them writing in our time.

So at 11.30pm I do hope he wasn't still sitting there.

Footnote : Extracts from both talks are now available on the BBC Hay Festival website so I have added the links below

Robert Macfarlane

Helen Macdonald

 

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