dovegreyreader scribbles

Wainwright Prize 2016 ~ Longlist Round Up

The Wainwright Prize long list has been the focus of my reading for a while now and with short list day tomorrow I am squeezing in a round-up.

So far I have shared thoughts on...

Rain - Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

Landskipping by Anna Pavord

The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

But I have been tramping my way through more in recent weeks and have now finished reading...

Weatherland by Alexandra Harris

The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy

The Fish Ladder by Katharine Norbury

This before running out of steam for the natural world and taking a bit of a break with the War of the Roses.

I wonder if this happens to you?

Too much of the same, mind suddenly sated and the need to shift to another genre.

The respite genre in question quite took me by surprise. Toby Clements Kingmaker trilogy. Book Three Divided Souls arrived with this on the cover...

'An enthralling, honest and powerful re-imagining of the Wars of the Roses.' said Hilary Mantel.

I had never heard of Toby Clements, or this trilogy so I quickly Kindled Book One Winter Pilgrims, had read the first hundred pages in quick order and have now moved onto the audio version....engrossing and dare I say a welcome distraction right now.

But I digress, back to The Wainwright list and as it's a prize list here are my honest thoughts on those read so far...

The Fish Ladder is an account of Katharine Norbury's intention to walk to the source of a river. Initially any river until settling on the river in Dunbeath in Scotland. The journey becomes a quest for identity as Katharine Norbury traces her own beginnings...the mother who gave her up for adoption at birth and along the way other life traumas intervene to make this a voyage of personal discovery.

On finding the convent, also a private nursing home, where she had been born, and finding nuns who remembered her birth and her naming, Katharine is furnished with new information about herself that those those of us not in her position might always have taken for granted...

'It was as if I had been given a coat that turned out to be a perfect fit without ever having realising I was cold.'

If I had one worry about the whole venture it was Katherine Norbury's seeming lack of planning involved in the final expedition. It all seemed a bit blasé...driving up to Scotland, buying the map the day before and the rescue sack (we never set foot on Dartmoor without one so I was slightly relieved)  and then walking out alone across unknown territory with no prior knowledge and seemingly no permission, a night's sleep in an unknown place. I can't help it, I'm the mother of a gamekeeper...supposing someone is out night shooting, deer-stalking maybe and assumes the land, if private, is empty. I know how careful they are and I'm sure it was all ticketyboo behind the scenes, we just weren't told, but it all worried me no end so I was glad when the expedition was over, no harm befell and I could carry on to the end of the book which I enjoyed. The analogies with Atlantic salmon finding their way back up to the head of the same river year after year, returning to their origins and the search for a birth identity weren't lost on this reader who lives in a fishing household.

 

The Moth Snowstorm by Michael McCarthy had me a little worried from the start, then was constantly winning me over and losing me again  I know we need to know that it isn't all 'primroses and otters' out there and it can only be a good thing that people are writing about the ecological disaster that is happening under our noses, but the veil between my capacity to embrace it, or to be worried sick about it seems to be getting thinner and more porous as I get older, books like this can make me feel miserable and pessimistic so I tend to avoid them.

It can be uncomfortable difficult reading that leaves me feeling powerless, others might call it burying my head in the sand, but I suspect many of you will understand the dilemma.

Either way I don't want to detract from the fact that The Moth Snowstorm might just be the book that is the base block on which all other nature writing can stand. It almost explains the existence, the plethora and popularity of it all at the moment, the rush to preserve on paper what is being lost.

Interspersed with the present is a wonderful ode to the joy of nature encouraging the return of an intense and un-self-conscious delight in it all, an urging towards awe and wonder. There was also a look-back on a 1950's boyhood which, when I read bits out to Bookhound he recognised instantly. Collecting birds' eggs and butterflies for starters and what about the cards in Brooke Bond PG Tips. We collected them avidly and I still have the albums to prove it. If you are better than I am at dealing with the harsh realities then this will be an important book to lay your hands on.

 

I'm not sure there is much more to say in praise of Weatherlands - Writers and Artists Under English Skies by Alexandra Harris that hasn't already been said.

Weatherlands is a massive literary achievement presented in a very beautifully designed and printed book. Production values are always high with Thames & Hudson, good quality paper and a layout that incorporates matte pictures with the relevant text, rather than as a glossy chunk in the middle and providing me with a good solid month of reading. By the detailed examination of references to the weather in the work of a plethora of English writers and artists, Alexandra Harris has created a fantastic resource, a book which, having read cover to cover I would refer to again and again in the future when any given writer or artist's name arises, because they all had something to say about the weather and they are all in here. It is a literary focus to which I had never really given much thought, but once someone else does I couldn't fail to see how obvious it was and how fascinating it was.

I also loved the sections, printed on grey paper, which elaborated on some aspect of the weather itself; the account of big freeze of the Thames in 1683 was particularly intriguing. Overnight the river stopped flowing and the painting by Abraham Hondius reveals just how dramatic this must have been...

Amongst the artists I have emerged feeling I feel I must explore more...Turner and Constable, among the poets Coleridge. Yes, altogether Weatherlands a truly inspirational book.

So by my reckoning four more books on the long list to go and I have three of them lined up ready to read and will get to them whether they make the short list or not...

Common Ground - Rob Cowen

Being a Beast - Charles Foster

Coastlines - Patrick Barkham

If you have read any of these please do share thoughts and also any short list predictions.

 

 

 

Rena Gardiner redux

Having devoured every word and illustration in Julian Francis and Martin Andrews's sumptuous book about the life and work of Rena Gardiner, and engaged in a very un-pretty tog-of-war over it, Bookhound and I immediately set off to visit some of our usual bric-a-brac and second-hand book haunts to see if we might come across any of her books.

Rena published forty-five books in her lifetime and once we had seen the pictures we were kicking ourselves. Racking our brains...had we bought any for the children when we used to visit National Trust properties around us here back in the day because Rena wrote, illustrated, printed and published a series of child-oriented guides to both Cotehele and Lanhydrock locally, and don't ask how many others we have passed over in second hand shops and on market stalls without realising their provenance.

We did quite well on Foray No 1 taking in Topsham and Lyme Regis and coming home with some bargains found at the bottom of boxes and lying forgotten at the back of shelves.

This was good news the books are still out there. Francis and Andrews' book does much to increase Rena Gardiner's profile and I agree with them, she most certainly deserves to be better known, so get out there and get looking everyone, rummage around those bins of old National Trust guidebooks in the charity shops and start to enjoy the exuberance and sheer cleverness of this brilliant artist.

Rena Gardiner cited Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and John Piper as major influences; John Piper also born in her home town of Epsom and with whom it is clear she felt that sense of local and artistic affinity. On leaving school (I still haven't discovered which school but it must have been very near to mine in Cheam) in 1946 Rena attended Kingston School of Art where she studied graphic art on a course which also included book binding and calligraphy, as well as printing and lithographic processes, all skills that would serve her well as she developed into a one-woman cottage industry and producing her own books from start to finish in later life.

A young Rena also met Joan Hassall and an elderly Gwen Raverat at an exhibition given by the Society of Wood Engravers on one of her many youthful excursions to London. Gwen Raverat, the revered woodcut engraver and likewise Joan Hassall, talented and in-demand and Joan the first woman to be admitted to the renowned Art Workers Guild founded by William Morris, later becoming its first female Master. Whilst Rena Gardiner, as her career progressed, had little interest in self-promotion or fame it must have been a meeting for her to savour. Interestingly, I thought... Joan Hassall was a perfectionist, 'often re-cutting blocks that did not entirely please her' (this according to an article I came across by coincidence in an old edition of This England magazine on the Tinker's shelves,) Rena Gardiner though loved and embraced the happy accident.

Looking at her work Bookhound and I have been deeply impressed by Rena's precision and accuracy, especially evident in the lino cuts created in the last years of her life and we saw those and great deal more thanks to a chance conversation followed by a phone call to Rachel Hunt, the House and Collections Manager at Cotehele. The archive was packed up and days away from being moved to the Dorset History Centre but if we wanted to go and look through it and promised to put it all back in the right boxes, we would be most welcome.

We booked a day and were very grateful to Rachel who showed us to an little upstairs room in the old house, introduced us to the boxes and left us to it...

Faced with a phalanx of carefully labelled brown boxes it was a case of where on earth to start, but to open a box and find the original lino cuts was like discovering the map of Rena's amazing life...

Back to the beginning and all the sources of her inspiration... notes, scrap books, albums of photographs, sketches, mock ups of books, calligraphy, it was all here...

Here the sketch for Mullion Cove in Cornwall followed by the lino cut..

Rena revived her interest in lino cutting later in her life and the originals were fine examples of what an artist on our Drawn to the Valley Open Studios adventure last year called 'suicide' plates. A layer printed and then successive parts cut away from the lino, more layers of paint added to the print run and never to be repeated. It's a wonderful (and to my mind brave) technique ensuring and guaranteeing that only a limited number are produced...


We could have stared at them all day and, apart from a brief sojourn in the restaurant for coffee and cake, we did. Box after box of treasures.

Little mock-ups for the books that Rena would eventually draw up, print and bind herself..

If it stops raining (rubbish about that oak before ash thing) we are going to take this book out and do a Rena Gardiner trail around the Cornish coast before the holidaymakers arrive, so hopefully much more about it soon

There were boxes of original prints too and a few for sale.

In the end we couldn't stop ourselves, it seemed right to take home a wonderful reminder of an inspirational discovery, though we were torn between this one of the Cornish engine house...



Or maybe this one of the dovecot at Cotehele...

But settling in the end for this one...

Sycamore Shadows : The South Front (1998 12 x 16 ½ ins) Cotehele on a spring day. It is a place we go to often, this a walk we do each time and one that fills me with that sense of anticipation about the house through the archway and the orchards and gardens beyond.

We skipped back to the car with a spring in our step, the sort that you have after a really special day and with everything we had seen in the Rena Gardiner archive buzzing around in our heads. Who knew that the chance purchase of one book would lead to so much enjoyment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pleasings...

It isn't that I haven't been pleased about anything, more that I had forgotten to think about things as Pleasings, so a catch up on a couple of mine and hopefully you will share yours in comments.

The Kayaker has reached the end of the second year of his degree in Commercial Photography and so we pitched up for the end of year show and did much admiring of the entire work of the art college but of course the Kayaker's exhibits.

I couldn't understand how everyone seemed to know me until I remembered that my portrait had been on the college staircase in gigantic form for half the year as part of a display of students' work until apparently I 'fell' off the wall one day, nearly killed the person walking by and haven't been seen since.

And then, last Saturday, while Bookhound went on a Father's Day fishing trip with the Gamekeeper, I took myself off to the Church fete in town. The weather held and the church green was a mass of stalls and face painting, bouncy castles and musical ensembles and I had a lovely browse, picked up a few bargains and then remembered that the church tower was open for the day. I duly booked myself in, next summit attempt would be at twelve midday, only three of us this time and with the clock chiming overhead I set off leading the way at which point the guide said 'If you're quick you'll see the carillon working.'

The carillon is one of those intermittent aural delights of Tavistock. Often not in working order, or switched off because apparently the bell ringers 'don't like it' (so I was told) the tower cleverly plays a tune on the bells at 9am, noon, 6pm and 9pm and a different tune each day. It is magical if you happen to hear it and I always stop and listen, so the thought of seeing how it all worked had me up those stairs like a rat up a drainpipe (as Bookhound said when I told him about it later.)

Built in 1318 the tower and the staircase were clearly designed for slender little medieval people, 166 tiny steps and a spiral twist so tight that it seemed as if my top half was heading off one way and my lower half was trying to keep up. Anyway I made it...

The carillon, installed in 1849, is a rotating drum and a complex array of wires that stretch upwards to the peal of ten bells...


First mentioned in 1385 (when twenty pence was spent on them) the bells were once the town's clock and calendar system, rung at 6am and 7pm in winter and 5am and 9pm in summer followed by a number of chimes on the tenor bell to indicate the day of the month.

I love a good belfry and can't wait to check out Bells of Devon on the library reference shelves which will reveal any donors and inscriptions along with the musical notes they sound.

Obviously the views from the top were spectacular and I have been sending friends various pictures of their houses ever since.

I love this view of the Town Square, the Town Hall, the main street and Dartmoor beyond. Seen from Dartmoor looking back the town nestles snugly in the Tavy valley and you can see exactly why it grew and expanded where it was. But as someone so rightly suggested, wouldn't it be a good idea if the town planners were brought up here before they made any key decisions about new building. We spotted a few travesties...

And here, a splendid view of the old railway viaduct in the days when we had trains...

The old Tavistock North station (we even had two stations) clearly visible in the centre of this picture and now called Beechings Folly.

West Street and the Tinker's apartment block home on the left towards the top of the street. He had a wonderful view of the church and the moors beyond from his sitting room window...


Having dashed up I took my time going down and could have made myself very cosy in the bell-ringers' chamber..

So for anyone who loves a good peal here are those very bells in action. In fact Grandsire Caters...it's like another language isn't it and if you look VERY carefully at about forty seconds in you will see the building that is now Cafe Liaison but which, for twenty-five years was Dartmoor Interiors, Bookhound's design business (converted from a stable/garage) and 'twas upstairs in there that I had my little quilt shop, The Quilt Loft, back in the 1980s.

This is a very special corner of town for us full of busy times and happy memories...

You will also now understand why I never taught quilting classes on a Tuesday evening (bell ringing practice night).

My trip up the tower last Saturday the best £2 I've spent in ages.

Anyway that's enough of me, time for your pleasings of late.

 

 

 

The School on North Barrule ~ M.E.Allan

I was in the mood for some unashamed nostalgic reading a while ago. I had been unashamedly over-indulging in Game of Thrones and I think a person needs some respite now and again. Wars and treachery seemed unlikely in a boarding school on the Isle of Man in 1952. Mind you go back a thousand years or more and I reckon life was possibly more like Game of Thrones than we care to imagine.

Scouring the shelves I came across a little collection of books bought some years ago from Fidra, a publisher of children's fiction and I had always had a soft spot for The School on North Barrule because of the cover. What's not to like about the idea of a boarding school on an island where the girls wear shorts for their uniform and you are sent out riding on your bicycle, but nor had I read anything by Mabel Esther Allan...except I think I must have done as a child. Mabel was in her writing prime during the 1950s and I feel sure I would have borrowed these from the library.

Born in 1911 in Wallasey in Cheshire, a Mersey-side town opposite Liverpool, and blighted by sight issues, Mabel seems to have had a miserable childhood which might have been partially ameliorated by reading boarding school stories, and with it came the determination to write her own. Autobiographical writing including in this edition reveals that on June 5th 1944, the day before D Day, Mabel was suddenly blessed with perfect vision, and having feared blindness all her life she was not going to waste this gift. By the end of the war she had sold her first book and proceeded to write 160 more between then and 1994, including several under various pen names ( Jean Estoril, Anne Pilgrim, Priscilla Hagon)

Mabel Esther Allan was surely impossible to miss in a 1950's children's library

And so to North Barrule...

Voirrey and Andreas Quilliam set sail from Liverpool for boarding school on the Isle of Man thanks to a gift from an aunt. Their father, a Manx man has died and the family have fallen on hard times, so the paying of school fees is a generous gesture for which Voirrey is extremely grateful whilst Andreas sulks for England, is a complete pain and promises trouble.

North Barrule is a disciplined but self-regulating school where snobbery is 'almost unknown', the atmosphere is relentlessly happy and the freedoms granted the children are extensive. Responsibility breeds trust and with it comes the fun...and I almost wanted to go too.

Does anyone else remember going to Brownie Revels or Guide Camp in the back of a lorry?

We did didn't we...I haven't imagined that because I thought of it as all the pupils hopped into the lorry for a school trip across the island.

The book is surprisingly well written. So often there are the jarring over-prosaic moments to contend with in children's literature of the past that can lead to huge disappointments as an adult reader. I'm thinking of The Young Detectives by R.J.Macgregor, possibly my favourite read of all time as a child, and now wholly unreadable for its pedantic insistence on never using an apostrophe when two words would be more correct. Who knew I was being groomed in the correct usage at such a young age.

There is of course the brightest cleverest girl in the school at North Barrule, Christian Brent to whom Voirrey is drawn. Misunderstandings will be resolved, mischief will be forgiven, there will be resolution, reform, relocation and ultimately the sense of belonging that Voirrey especially yearns for. Desperately proud of her Manx descent, and possibly more knowledgeable about the island than the locals, Voirrey strives hard to live up to the ideals and be accepted.

I on the other hand just about know where the Isle of Man is, but beyond that my knowledge is sorely lacking. The Tinker loved it there and it was one of his holiday destinations with two friends (brothers) both of whom had, like him, been widowed, so he would have known all the locations in the book very well whilst me, I have had to source a map.

So the book was a wonderful wallow, highly recommended if you are in need of one too.

Meanwhile does anyone else recall reading Mabel Esther Allan...

Or are there other boarding school books you favoured...

Chalet School and Malory Towers fans...on your marks...get set...go, we have not had an indulge for a while now and I think we deserve one...it is time.(with a nod to RJ McGregor on that final sentence.)

 

 

Related articles

A Return to St Bride's...

Pseudonyms...

We had the most excellent evening at the Endsleigh Salon Book Group last week. The hotel have very kindly been making us welcome for almost ten years now (party frock evening soon) and truth be told, we always have an excellent time. We choose a theme and everyone reads accordingly, any book of their choosing, connections can be as tenuous as we like and, witness last week and the theme of Pseudonyms ...you can even bring a book along having forgotten the theme, or been enjoying a book so much you can talk about nothing else, and somehow we will make it fit.

I had been a bit Last Minute so chose Heartstones, a novella by Ruth Rendall. It wasn't exactly her nom de plume but there was a smattering of Barbara Vines too ( Grasshopper and Asta's Book) so we had a good old dissection of Ruth and how differently she wrote. Heartstones, a horror story of sorts and described as

'cunning and shocking...an absolute cracker... undertones of dread and suppressed sensuality,'

...had really impressed me when I first read it in 1987ish. But then that might have been because I had three children under the age of five and was really just impressed with myself for getting to the end of any book, even if it did only have seventy-seven pages. This second reading left me slightly underwhelmed and slightly confused by the ending which I remember had seemed as clear as day in 1987.

Oh well never mind because the best was yet to come.

Happy Camper Angela had read Seal Morning by Rowena Farre.

'Oooooh,' we all chorused at the moment of reveal having read it in our youth.

The moment of reveal I should add is a wonderful one. We all sit on our books until it is our turn and go for the Big Surprise announcement. We love it.

Published in 1957, Seal Morning was lauded at the time as an autobiographical account of Rowena Farre's childhood spent living on a remote Scottish coastal croft surrounded by seals which did clever things like play the xylophone. I was sucker for all of it back in the day and completely stunned when Angela proceeded to tell us that it was actually fiction and that Rowena Farre had been exposed as a something of a fraud, had gone to ground after publication, fallen out with her family, emigrated to Sydney Australia living out her life under her real name of Daphne Macready before eventually returning to England where she died of cancer in Canterbury in 1979.

Angela had done her background research and the conversation turned to journalist Dan Boothby who has been on the trail of Rowena Farre for some time.

'Hang on, Dan Boothby, didn't he write that book about Gavin Maxwell and the otters?'

'Yes he did,' said Angela, ' Island of Dreams, he was given the chance to live in Maxwell's former home and wrote about it.'

I have Island of Dreams - A Personal History of a Remarkable Place waiting to be read and had thought it might make good Orkney reading in September.

Then someone, not me, mentioned Terry Nutkins and that was it, we were off on a tangent.

Book evenings can go a bit tennis-elbow-foot in this way. We often assess the extent of our wanderings at the end of an evening and realise we've been half way round the world to the houses, the foot of the stairs and back, but had the most amazing journey along the way.

Terry Nutkins had been one of the young boys who had lived with Gavin Maxwell but I remembered him being an acquaintance of my student nursing room mate at Gt Ormond Street and that we had gone to meet him at the dolphinarium in Oxford Street in about 1972. I've mentioned it on here before, but there was incredulity in the salon room as to how dolphins could possibly survive in central London, so thank goodness for iPads and google to confirm what by this time I was worrying I might just have dreamt.

The conversation came back to Rowena Farre and we had the most fascinating discussion about her, not least how might critic Kenneth Allsop have felt having described the book as 'a wonderfully honest account' on the front cover.

And what did Rowena/ Daphne feel... smug, terrified, rich and not in the least bit bothered...

If you are intrigued and want to know more about Rowena Farre take a look at Dan Boothby's website... here's a tantalising snippet...

Rowena Farre. Also known as Daphne Lois Macready. Also known as Lois Parre. The writer of three books and, as far as I knew, only one other published piece of writing. The writer of Seal Morning - an autobiography of childhood. Made up. A Time From the World - an autobiography of living with gypsies. Made up. The Beckoning Land - an autobiography of living with holy men in India. Made up.

The woman was an enigma. Evasive. Lost to her family. A fantasist whose ghost I'd been pursuing in idle moments for the past five years. Ever since I decided Rowena's story needed to be pinned down. The story of a literary hoaxer, a writer of fraudulent autobiography, a woman who ran from all those who knew her. So she could become the person she wanted to be. A traveller, a seeker, a writer.

Like Magnus (home for three weeks now and paws firmly glued to the floor) Dan Boothby might have been born under a wandering star, but likewise Rowena Farre who seems to have led a mysterious and enigmatic life that I am now despereate to know more about, so I am hoping Dan can get a biography together eventually.

Other pseudonyms making an appearance were...

Cecil Day Lewis writing as Nicholas Blake

Edith Mary Pargeter writing as Ellis Peters

J.K.Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith

John Banville writing as Benjamin Black

The book that sent the discussion through the roof was Call me Elizabeth by Dawn Annandale, whilst the books that we made fit the theme were Arcadia by Iain Pears, along with Ruth Scurr's John Aubrey - My Own Life (which we all wanted to rush out and buy that minute.)

But perhaps the best thing about the June meeting is that it is Choosing Evening.

We gather ideas for themes throughout the year, into the Choosing Hat they go (this year a Foyles carrier bag) and out came..

Let's Face the Music and Dance

More Tea Vicar

Rain and Shine

Let There be Light

Body Parts

and more, oh yes indeed a fun year of reading ahead for the salonistas.

So what would you choose for those themes...

And if you have read Seal Morning what thinkest thou of Rowena Farre/Daphne Macreadie...

 

 

And the winners are...

23 20 36 57 33 88 26 17 54 42 41 65

Random numbers generated Jun 16 2016 at 20:15:28 by www.psychicscience.org

So doing a quick rearrange into numerical order -

17 : Jane Erskine

20 : Rebecca Kershaw

23 : Alison P

26 : Val Taylor

33 : lostinabook

36 : Kate from Cheshire

41 : Ann Swinfen

42 : Claire L

54 : Chris

57 : jenny d

65 : Joyce Workman

88 : Victoria

Congratulation everyone. Please check it is really you on the original post here and then send your address to me at dovegreyreader at gmail dot com and a lovely copy of Off the Shelf will be plopping through your letterbox.

If you could mark your email with something like I'M A WINNER and then, as there are twelve of you and to avoid any mistakes, write your name and address in cut and pastable lines like this...

Dolores Cholmondely- White
Cholmondely Towers
Cholmondely
Cholmondelyshire
CH1 1HC

...that would be really helpful for the clerical department chez dovegreyrey.

Picador are wonderful at getting the books sent out but I know they are busy with the tour right now, and also occasionally post does go astray, so please allow a couple of weeks for the book to arrive and then do contact me if nothing has appeared.

 

No words...

I had sat down to do the prize draw this evening but somehow just couldn't muster the right words.

What a terrible day. My heart goes out to the family of Member of Parliament Jo Cox, murdered on the streets of her constituency today.

Normal service will be resumed once I have recovered my equilibrium.

Off the Shelf and on the road...

Nice things to look at on my desk as I start to write today.

You all told me to add Evelyn to the dovegrey rose collection, so last year we did and this year it's a stunner....

Sheltering underneath the petals my little happy horses (a gift from Offspringette) and a dish of stones from some special places (to me) in New Zealand.

And then a copy of Off the Shelf - A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published any day now to coincide with Shore to Shore, the Poet Laureate's nationwide poetry tour of Britain which sets off from Falmouth in Cornwall this Sunday (19th).

Carol Ann Duffy's plan is to tour the country with a group of fellow poets performing in locations various whilst working in collaboration with independent bookshops and for that reason there will be a three month period of exclusivity for the book, only for sale in said bookshops, before its general release in September. Jumping on the bus (there is a real bus) will be Jackie Kay (Makar of Scotland) Imtiaz Dharker, Gillian Clarke and musician and composer John Sampson (who will be taking along his crumphorn and for that reason Carol Ann Duffy says he'll have to sit on his own) and along the way many more local guest poets joining in.

Minstrels and versifiers in the ancient tradition, it's going to be one great big party and this to my mind is what we want of a Poet Laureate. Personally I'm not worried about special poems for the big occasions, I want someone who gets out there and meets and entertains the people.

And goodness me couldn't we all do with some minstreling and versifying now that the Queen's Birthday is over, the football madness is all going to hell in a basket and ...well I'm not mentioning anything else.

So how lovely to think about independent bookshops instead, because, as Carol Ann Duffy says,

'Shore to Shore will celebrate both our national art form and our wonderful independent bookshops, so often the cultural heartbeat of their local communities.'

And elaborating on why and how...

'Independent local bookshops are here as long as continue to treasure and support them. It is my belief that there is not a writer nor a reader in the land who is not passionate about independent local bookshops... They are rooted in their immediate geography and in turn offer us the chance to travel to endless other worlds of our choosing through the books they hold. Run with boundless passion, deep knowledge, local expertise and the independent spirit, independent bookshops offer readers in their communities a service akin to pastoral care.'

The book is an absolute treasure, beautifully bound (with ribbon bookmark, you know how partial I am to those) and with poems commissioned by Carol Ann Duffy from a wide selection of poets. Inside you will find, among others...

Sean Borodale musing on a visit to the Bookbarn and if you have been there you will know of what he writes...

Michael Symmons Roberts, on the future of books, examines an imaginary core sample of our age, 'our slice has its own distinctive shade and scent...

Gillian Clarke talks of old books 'with leathery breath and freckled leaves'...

Jean Sprackland's The Girl Who Ate Books brings new meaning for those of us oft finding ourselves 'devouring' them..

Don Patterson just does something very clever with a single word..

Jackie Kay's Silver Moon will resonate with anyone (like me) who has a copy of Court and Spark or Dark Side of the Moon in their record collection and 'how you grew up reading nights to dawn.'

And the inestimable Clive James turns his poetic and humorous eye towards the rigors of the signing table, imagining himself slumping exhausted on the floor of the bookshop, his final resting place...the last lines of Apotheosis at the Signing Table are a fitting climax... wonderful. I won't spoil it.

Whilst Carol Ann Duffy herself writes In the Drowned Bookshop and I was reminded of those sorrowful pictures (maybe it was Cockermouth) of the books floating around in the flooded shop.

From Falmouth to Bath and thence on to Oxford, Chipping Norton, Monmouth, Crickhowell, Bridgnorth, Oswestry, Caernarfon, Bramhall, Carlisle, Corbridge, St Boswell's, Biggar and rolling into St Andrews for the final gig on July 2nd you can find all the information about dates and venues and ticket sales here.

This promises to be a wonderful celebration of poetry and of books and the passion we all have for buying them, so please do scroll down for Magnus and gifts (LOTS OF THEM) and enjoy more Gillian Clarke on the way..

 

'What stays is not the book alone
but where you took it down,
how it felt in your hands,
how she wrapped it in brown paper,
how you carried it home,

how it holds wild seas
that knock the earth apart,
how words burn, freeze,
to break and heal your heart.

(Extract: In a Cardiff Arcade 1952 ~ Gillian Clarke)

 

 

 

 

Prize Draw copies of Off the Shelf - A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse

Hello Chums, Magnus here (making a fuss of Bookhound after my latest three week sabbatical) and today's song is as follows (no cheating on the octaves now)

I was born under a wandrin' star
I was born under a wandrin' star
Wheels are made for rolling, mules are made to pack
I've never seen a sight that didn't look better looking back
I was born under a wandrin' star

Mud can make you prisoner and the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes, but only people make you cry
Home is made for coming from, for dreams of going to
Which with any luck will never come true
I was born under a wandrin' star
I was born under a wandrin' star

I've been back for a couple of weeks now, might be getting those ol' itchy paws again mind so 'I'm a-squeezing in this l'il favour for the Laureate afore I go.

Singing of wheels as we were, the wagons will roll out of Cornwall this weekend as the Laureate heads off on tour (what's the betting they sing Wandrin' Star on the road, John Sampson playing the crumphorn line)) so up for grabs today are TWELVE copies of Off the Shelf - A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse edited by my friend Carol Ann Duffy (still no Ode to Magnus Carol, just sayin') so it's names in comments as usual to be in with the chance of winning one and the lovely Picador people will send the books worldwide.

I'm going to turn this one around and pick the winners quite soon because I think my itchy paws might take me to my OMH (Other Mystery Home) dreckly because they'll be be serving up fresh salmon and the best on offer here is Tesco's own sardines.

OK, jump to it paint your wagons, chocks away and off you roll Chums and don't forget to catch the Laureate when she rolls into a town near you, it's going to be fantastic.

Meanwhile here's some music to singalong to...

A Case of Mistaken Identity...

We are feeling like a right pair of numpties honestly, after all this time living in splendid rural isolation you'd think we'd know a Hirundo rustica from a Delichon urbica wouldn't you.

Last year the swallows, as well as nesting on the verandah, built a nest under the eaves, right across the Tinker's bedroom window. Had he been there he wouldn't have been able to open the window all summer and he would have loved it. We locked the window and even put a note on to remind ourselves, whilst also thinking it was a bit of an odd place to nest.

Never mind, there was a brood or two...

and it was all very lovely and we decided to sacrifice that window for ever and leave the nest in place.

Sadly the winter storms took their toll and eventually the nest fell off in a miserable and soggy heap and we were a bit grief-stricken. We hoped they wouldn't hold it against us so imagine our delight when the 'swallows' returned to the exact same spot and frantically started building again.

Except they aren't swallows (Hirundo rustica) at all, they are house martins (Delichon urbica) and how we didn't spot the difference last year I really don't know. I can only put it down to that strange film of detachment that glazes your vision post-bereavement, when you maybe don't look so closely for a while. I remember thinking they must be young swallows because their tails were so short...

Anyway, no mistaking it this year and it is now a very new and exciting development in amongst our annual visitors.

The house martins are dumpier more compact birds than the sleek swallows, with an unmistakable flash of white as they fly around and by crikey have they been busy. Hoovering up the mud from the puddle on the lane, up to the nest, add a brick, off for another, day in day out and lots of chittering as they work.

I think you'll agree this is a classic house martin abode, completely enclosed with a tiny porthole, but isn't it a cosy little hutch. A work of art.

I've registered them with the British Trust for Ornithology survey too because apparently house martin numbers have been in decline, so let's hope they make it through the season, apparently much external trauma (sparrows, and they nest very nearby) can befall a house martin colony so fingers crossed.

Meanwhile our old friends the swallows are back in the verandah as usual, having turfed the squatting wrens out of their summer holiday cottage. If you'd heard the noise you would have thought the end of the world was nigh, it was like an avian Game of Thrones out there. Anyway the swallows were victorious as usual and are busy clearing out after the messy tenants and doing some much-needed refurbishments...

Are all your summer/winter visitors back and busy...

Tell me you've mistaken a house martin for a swallow...

 

 

 

Rain- Four Walks in English Weather ~ Melissa Harrison

We do go on about it a lot 'tis true, but living on an island, and living to the south west of that island and within close-enough proximity to Dartmoor to experience the effects of "nine months' winter and three months' bad weather" (as the local saying goes according to Melissa Harrison) well what else do we have to talk about here in the Shire apart from Brexit and The Archers...oh yes and the day in 2013 when the Tavy roared down...

Rain - Four Walks in English Weather by Melissa Harrison is another read from the Wainwright Prize long list. This has to be my favourite prize list of the year and I have enjoyed this little book hugely. I think it's about the way each book can relate to my life; book as personal experience and making me question how observant (or not) I might be and how to look more closely.

Living in the Tamar Valley you quickly have to accept that if you never go out in the rain you would never set foot outside the door and when you do it will be horrendously muddy, so it is all about the right gear. We have a boot room and a storm porch and hooks and places for wet things to drip and a hose to wash the boots off and please don't ask me how they coped living here in 1850, I dread to think.

I scored my latest outfit after doing that 'modelling' assignment for a local company for one of the Kayaker's photography degree projects (well actually I just sort of stood there). And Melissa Harrison agrees with me, seal yourself in some waterproof clothing and get out there in the rain and enjoy it. I've lived in this through the winter and through some hefty rain too.

Melissa Harrison togs up and take a tramp through Wicken Fen in January, Shropshire in April, Darent Valley in August and Dartmoor in October, observing along the way how rain need not be an inconvenience to be avoided but another day to be enjoyed.

Thinking back I feel sure the 'avoidance' is partly a throw-back to a 1950's childhood where we didn't play out in the rain mainly because there was no way of getting everything dry again in less than a week and also the dreaded spectre of 'chills'. I had pneumonia as a child, scaring everyone witless, and I think that sort of fear lingers in parents, but I was shocked to read that the average child's radius of play from home has diminished by 90% in recent years. It's a decline that I doubt can be remedied now.

Rain however, is a book that might somehow persuade the fair-weather reader of what else they are missing apart from a good soaking...

'And there's something else that rain gives us; something deeper and more mysterious, to do with memory and nostalgia, and a pleasurable kind of melancholy.'

I'd add a sense of self-congratulation on tipping back in the door too...as if I now deserve whatever treats I can think of, hot chocolate, the sofa, a good book. Melissa Harrison's close and detailed observations about the sights and sounds and smells, so much that perhaps I take for granted, or didn't know in the first place, has made for a really enjoyable read.

'Studies have  shown that aerial plankton, the tiny flies and spiders that float on air currents and which birds like swifts and swallows eat, are pushed along before a weather front, quickly 'scrubbed' from the air by precipitation and then begin to ascend again as soon as thermals return after a shower...'

Low flies the swallow,
Rain to follow;
But when swallows fly high
The weather will be dry.

The old adage explained perhaps.

I do think a dog helps the decision to go out or not no end.

Melissa has Scout we have Rusty and Nell. Rain or water of any variety is lifeblood to spaniels, whilst our old border collie Ben used to hate it. He'd go to the door and change his mind if it was lashing down and would never ever step in a puddle if he could skirt around it. The sight of a moorland stream would have him high-tailing in the opposite direction, unlike Nell...



But there is nothing like a dog to force the issue and I doubt either of us would be quite so keen to venture out on a sopping wet day were it not for the watchful eyes from the kennel... which is in view of the storm porch... which is outside the boot room... and they know and set off on the circle dance of anticipation the very second we start the robing ceremony. Writing a book was Melissa Harrison's motivation and I get the impression she quite enjoyed herself.

Rain - Four Walks in English Weather is published by Faber in conjunction with the National Trust (I think...the logo is there) in a really delightful little hardback edition and we are now busy wondering if this little adage shared by Melissa Harrison will ring true this year...

If the oak's before the ash
The you'll only get a splash.
If the ash is before the oak
Then you may expect a soak.

The oaks have been in leaf for weeks, the ash trees are barely green, are we in for a dry summer?

And how do the trees know anyway...

So any rain-lovers out there...

Rain loathers...

Rain-loving dogs...

Rain-avoiders...

And what about the oak and the ash trees over you way..

 

 

Surfeit of Lampreys ~ Ngaio Marsh

It would seem that crime books work best which doesn't bode too well for all that loveliness I am supposed to stitching into my quilting as I listen to my audio book, but never mind.

Next up Surfeit of Lampreys by Ngaio Marsh. Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, I was happy to spot her brass plaque on the literary trail around the city centre...

And also to go up into the Port Hills where Ngaio Marsh lived as a child. The view from the hills across to Lyttleton is stunning. I had been in the country about an hour and looking at this picture now I am smiling at the memory of trying to stay awake on arrival day and being completely overwhelmed just to be there...

Of the Port Hills and writing in her autobiography Black Beech and Honeydew, Ngaio Marsh said this...

'They would be called mountains in England. The tussock that covered them gave them a bloomy appearance as blond hair does to a living body. I was told that a long time ago they had moved gigantically and heaved themselves into their present form and then grown hard, being the overflow of a volcano....'

Ngaio continues...

'The crater of this volcano is now a deep harbour into which a hundred and fifteen years ago, sailed the First Four Ships...bringing the founders of the Canterbury Settlement....they climbed the Port Hills and reached the summit where, with a munificent gesture, their inheritance was suddenly laid out before them...There, as abruptly as if one has looked over a wall, are the Plains, spread out beyond the limit of vision, laced with early mist and great river...

'Whenever I return to New Zealand I like to come home by the hills and still think that an arrival at the pass on a clear dawn is the most astonishing entry one could make into any country.'

It is most definitely the place to stand to get some sense of the scale and beauty of New Zealand

The Lampreys meanwhile were a family taken from real life by Ngaio Marsh for her book, the Rhodes-Plunkets apparently, and who welcomed her into their world as a friend...

'Its doors opened into a life whose scale of values, casual grandeur, cockeyed gaiety and vague friendliness will bewilder and delight me for the rest of my days. If one can be said to fall in love with a family I fell in love with the Lampreys. It has been a lasting affair.'

In Ngaio Marsh's fiction, the Lampreys become a family who live in a state of unaffordable luxury second only to that of the Governor of New Zealand himself. Life on a financial wing and a prayer spent lurching from one financial crisis to the next yet seemingly impervious to the worries; jolly japes, in-jokes and pranks with none of them taking any of it particularly seriously. Until that is, having moved to London during a particularly severe cash flow problem, a body is discovered in the elevator to the family's apartment and all must come under suspicion as Inspector Roderick Alleyne investigates.The family duck and dive and weave all manner of intricate webs, not exactly practicing to deceive, more to confuse, but every member of the family comes under suspicion and it soon becomes clear that this is not one of their parlour games.

Surfeit of Lampreys was a great listen and I will certainly listen to more by Ngaio Marsh eventually, it's just that Rankin & Rebus reign supreme at the moment. Now onto number three Tooth and Nail while I work away at this...



The basic idea is from EuroJapan Links, fabrics are my own as are slight variations on the theme. Pieces are needle-turn appliqued onto the background (24" x 18") and then hand quilted and with probably far too many tiny embellishments, but you know me and over-gilding the lily etc. I had these gorgeous embroidery threads and just couldn't stop myself adding some dots of colour...

Just the border to quilt now.

It started off as the Port Hills but it was all change once I had slotted in that fabric for the lake. By the time I had finished I knew it had to be Lake Hawea and now it has wonderful memories of that wild swim stitched in.

I'll do the Port Hills next.

 

In which we discover Rena Gardiner at Cotehele...

Cotehele House, just across on the Cornish side of the Tamar Valley, is one of our go-to spring visits. If the apple blossom is out in our little orchard Devon-side...

...then the orchard at Cotehele will be looking superb, and we weren't wrong.


and there was misteltoe, I'm not sure I've noticed that before, or seen it growing anywhere else...


It was such a lovely day we by-passed a wander through the house and stayed in the grounds before heading in for lunch and the shop. It was quiet and we felt, like Barrington Court, we had a National Trust property to ourselves..

The flowers and the views stunning in equal measure...

Calstock...

I think Bookhound shudders when I go near a National Trust shop, I mean do I really need any more postcards, or recipe books for high tea or soups, or another one of those recycled wool blankets that seem to be a magnet for moulting cats.

In fact Cotehele has a wonderful craft gallery as well.

'I'll just nip upstairs to the gallery,' I whispered as Bookhound headed into the Victorian library which he loves.

I can't usually afford anything in the gallery but it is still nice to look and decide where I'd put the stunningly upholstered chair and foot stool, or that nice piece of Jenny Hale's ceramics.

But something caught my eye on the counter.

It was a pile of books and a cover I recognised, Rena Gardiner Artist and Printmaker by Julian Francis and Martin Andrews. Published by Little Toller in 2015 the book had flown onto my radar and quickly off again. At £25 it would need to be a well-researched purchase, but also I had a problem with the cover. It's not a criticism, more a series of personal observations and preferences...

It seemed wildly abstract and spoke of nothing of interest to me...

The colours were not in my favoured palette...

If it was a place I didn't recognise it...

And the name Rena Gardiner was unknown to me.

Plenty of people would have viewed it differently I am sure (I would be interested to hear your first thoughts) but I hadn't seen a copy to look at properly so now was my chance to confirm that I wouldn't want the book and walk on... until I opened it that is and well, you can guess...

This centre page spread from a son et lumiere programme for Salisbury Cathedral has me thinking swan et lumiere and I love it...

And then Rena Gardiner's connection with Cotehele and Cornwall revealed itself and surely hadn't we just looked across at this very same view...

Needless to say I walked out with a copy of Rena Gardiner Artist and Printmaker 'neath my arm. Bookhound recognised the cover as Durdle Door, a rock feature off the Dorset Coast, in an instant. His school geography trip circa 1969 had been to Lulworth Cove and Swanage, mine circa 1971 had been nowhere near (Bude).

I probably should have bought two because since the book arrived home it has barely been out of our hands; as one puts it down the other picks it up as we soak up the pictures and information about a modest yet prodigiously talented woman. So stand by for a series of posts about Rena Gardiner, because she has gone straight to our hearts and we have made some wonderful discoveries and seen some amazing things since we discovered the book barely ten days ago.

Along with it came the realisation that we had known of some of Rena's work for many years but hadn't been paying attention...

Bookhound loves her for the sheer breadth and depth of her talent, and the precision and technique, to say nothing of the superb vibrancy and quality of the end results, whilst I am enthralled for other reasons besides, not least that Rena Gardiner (1929-1999) was the school art teacher that I'll bet many of you had too. Teaching first at Leamington College for Girls and then Bournemouth Girls School in the 1950s and 60s, when I saw this picture it conjured up an image of just about every teacher I ever had..

The single women in that post-war generation who dedicated themselves to our education, and for which I doubt I for one showed much gratitude. I didn't distinguish myself in the art room at Nonsuch Girls', Cheam it has to be said (not far from Epsom where Rena was born and went to school) and can only pity the poor art teachers who tried, often women of formidable talent but with no other avenue available for their creativity beyond the school remit, except living alone Rena worked tirelessly to nurture hers and to share it. Teaching was not a vocation for Rena and eventually, to the dismay of her friends (also teachers) she took the courageous plunge and became a full-time artist..

"Her principal achievement was some 45 books, all of which she wrote, illustrated and printed herself. No two copies are the same.  Her legacy also includes paintings, pastels and linocut prints.

Rena Gardiner dedicated her life to her art, doing so alone in a thatched cottage in Tarrant Monkton, in the heart of Dorset. 

An unsung heroine of printmaking, uninterested in publicity or fame, she created an artistic legacy that is instantly recognisable for its exuberant use of colour and texture. "

Hence the Dorset significance of the book's cover and if there was ever a portal to venture through and see new (to us) things then that picture of Durdle Door is it and now I get it.

We have been lucky enough to spend a day browsing the Rena Gardiner archive at Cotehele before it leaves this week on permanent loan to the Dorset History Centre and if anyone is interested there is currently an exhibition of Rena Gardiner's work at Mompesson House in Salisbury, we have promised ourselves a day there dreckly.

Much more about Rena Gardiner, the book, her life and her work along with our joyous trawl through the archives (and news of a purchase or two) very soon.

 

 

 

 

Guess what...

...that's right, Magnus home again this morning after a three week holiday 'somewhere.'

Looking sleek, shiny and well-groomed, nil battle scars and not a flea in sight. We think he has probably found a second home where they call him Montague and offer platters of smoked salmon, we meanwhile shoved a dish of Whiskas under his nose (so far three pouches downed) and a worming tablet down his gullet.

Welcome home chum (for now).

A garden full of promise...

Sorry but I'm still going on about the garden. It is looking so pretty right now, a sudden fulfillment of a lot of hard work and I am sure a lot of you might be experiencing that same sense of pride and achievement. I open the gates to drive the car out onto the lane and just have to stand and stare at the front border. Once upon a time it was a sea of laissez-faire thuggish wild geraniums, now all lifted and scattered in corners of the garden that benefit from thugs, but one of the things I love at this time of year is the promise of what is to come.

For example, I can't believe how excited I am about the sight of this...

Yes, I know, it's only a foxglove.

But it looks like a posh one doesn't it. So maybe it's one of those peach varieties I sowed about two years ago and who knows where I planted them out. Or maybe it's one of those spotty ones that I saw at Rosemoor last year and coveted...


I'd be happy with just the one. I sowed a packet of seeds but they somehow lost their labels and got muddled in with everything else.

Or maybe it's a bog-standard foxglove, whatever I shall welcome it because foxgloves are another plant that have been surprisingly difficult to naturalise in the garden when you think it would be easy with these just a few feet away..



Then there are the roses. I sent Bookhound out with the secateurs to prune the roses this year because I really don't know what I'm doing and he looks like he does...and obviously does because just look at them...

Whilst shrub roses fail miserably in the ground here they have thrived in pots and you may remember I started a little accumulation of David Austin varieties two or three years ago beginning with Munstead Wood. We are now up to eleven and with it being Ruby anniversary year I expect we'll add in another (all suggestions welcome)  They winter along the front wall of the house and benefit from the spring warmth and sunshine along with the very expensive (but clearly worth it) David Austin rose food (pellets twice a year and that's it). They are a mass of buds already so we will soon move them to the back door, around our table and chairs, where we can enjoy them, smell them, keep an eye on them, keep them watered, dead-head them and generally love them.

Meanwhile the climbers are streaking away too..

Highgrove a gift from Susan Hill to the Tinker when he moved in and woe-betide me if anything goes wrong with this because the Tinker lavished much care on it for the two years he was here to enjoy it..

And a Vielchenblau cutting that sits next to Highgrove and which is loving its sunny wall far more than the original does in its shady veranda spot...


This has to be one of the easiest roses to propagate, chop a bit off, stick it in a pot and it is away and rooted within weeks.

And then there are the poppies..

Another nigh on impossible seeding task which seems to have taken me years and with generous supplies of seed from several of you, but I think we are winning. Plenty probably self-seed now, but just to be sure I collect and sow some seed in the autumn, then more in the spring when weeding lightly disturbs the soil and hey presto up they come...

 And not always where you plan them..

but I'm so pleased to see them I don't care.

I sowed a raft of oriental poppies four years ago under the misapprehension that they would flower the same year. Silly me, these have taken all that time to establish but now seem to be happy and settled...


Watch this space I'll be back with the flowers soon, hopefully.

Meanwhile is anything laden with promise in your garden at the moment, or if you're in the Southern Hemisphere and dormant what will wake up first...

 

Six Facets of Light ~ Ann Wroe

Having reached the halfway point in Ann Wroe's very special book of essays, Six Facets of Light, I decided to tear myself away and go and do some observing of my own.

Incidentally I love the cleverness of the cover of this book. That well-known painting by Eric Ravilious of the view from The Belle Tout Lighthouse with its six 'facets' clear to see.

Armed with her notebooks and sketchbooks Ann Wroe sets off to tramp (as they would say in New Zealand, it's a term I like) around the South Downs and coastline of East Sussex, meditating not only on her own thoughts and revelations on the subject of light but drawing in a bevvy of writers, painters and scientists to offer theirs, and I have been transfixed by my reading of this book so far. It's not been a book to dip into, or to pick up if I only have snatched moments. I have found it needs peace and quiet and prolonged concentration and have been happy to give it that without rushing to turn the page, or finish a chapter.

Anyway, so deeply impressed have I been that I set off on a drizzly spring morning to go and see what light-like things I could see.

This can't be that difficult surely...

I'd take a notebook (waterproof) and pencil in my walking bag and who knows I might even do the odd sketch.

Back in the day 'eager eyes found potential messages everywhere in nature.' My old friend Gerard Manley Hopkins was always at it. So were John Clare, Thomas Traherne, Richard Jefferies. Thoreau, Herbert just a few of the names illuminating the path for Ann Wroe as she meanders her way to an understanding of light.

Six Facets of Light is a book that is making me look and think more closely, and closer again. In its own way this feels like a hymn of praise, a thanksgiving and a celebration of something replete with mystery. And it is those days of mystery that Ann Wroe revives and makes accessible once more. The days when everything still lay waiting to be explained and understood, the right words to be found to describe the discoveries. Slowly the shackles of modern scientific thought and progress and theory slip away and I find myself observing light as if I have only just realised it existed.

How clever a book has to be to achieve that, and especially welcome for someone who flunked Physics because it was too much like Chemistry... and English Literature was much more interesting.

Peeking our heads into a nearby barn a few weeks ago, whilst on the Cat Hunt, the Kayaker and I were stopped in our tracks by this...


Like the tomb at Maes Howe on Orkney, there can be very few days in the year and times in the day when the sun is at the right height in the sky to shine in through this tiny west-facing aperture. It was light but not as we knew it, and as we scuffed up the straw and dust into the beams of light (alright, we'd done a bit more than peek heads in door by now) the beams took on a strange three-dimensional box-like perspective, like wooden beams, nigh on impossible to describe let alone capture on camera.

'Bright effluence of bright essence increate,' suggests Milton...

'The extreme brightness of everything,' says Eric Ravilious..

Lux perpetua...

Lumen de lumine...

There was a sense that the box of light could readily have contained anything I had wanted to put in it...it really was the strangest moment and one I have thought about a great deal whilst reading this book.

Perhaps our modern day equivalents of those 17th century mysteries are the genome, or maybe whatever it is the Hadron Collider is trying to discover... and did you read about the weasel who had chewed through the Hadron cables.

Good old nature.

So I had set off on this walk In Search of Light, camera in hand too, for who knows what phenomena I might miss if I didn't have it with me... and that was probably the reason I came home with over a hundred photos but no notes and no sketches. No prosaic notes on the very nature of light, its purest essence, its divine source etc because, as I should have realised from that moment of barnlight a few weeks earlier, this whole light thing is indeed very elusive, almost impossible to pin down. The sort of thing seen by chance and never forgotten, the pinning down on the page I suspect best left in the expert hands of Ann Wroe, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Goethe et al.

Nor am I sure Ann Wroe had dogs with her, she doesn't say so, but they do require some attention. Off in a reverie I suddenly wonder where they are, well where Rusty is. Nell stays close by but Rusty loves a good outrun after a pheasant or three and my reverie is broken with some hard work on the whistle.

And then there was the distraction of the bluebells.

Gerard Manley Hopkins says..

'I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at...'



And I think Gerald might have added 'and that lovely spring-sprung-sprocker sitting in their midst' had he been with me and seen Nell. Sorry, I love this picture so much it's going on here twice in less than three hours...


Though it wasn't fashionable to admit it in the Class of '72, I did have an affinity with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I still have my school edition and still read it.

Gerald features large in Six Facets of Light, where he also has something to say about bluebells, as Ann Wroe elaborates...

'He also discovered in 1873, in Hodder Wood near Stonyhurst, that bluebells seemed to lend their colours to light; that light 'beating up from so many glassy heads', became an emanation of their blue,' [floating] their deeper instress upon the mind' until it flowed above as Mary's veil. sanctifying the woods.' ...it was only in unpicked multitudes that bluebells made their holy light.'

Well it didn't happen quite that way for me I must admit, but we had a lovely two hour wander, I think John Clare would have said we 'saunered' and I did look closely, and then closer again even though my notebook remained untouched.

'An Empty Book is like an Infant's Soul. It is capable of All Things but containeth Nothing,' said Thomas Traherne of his new notebook, 'I Have a Mind to fill this with Profitable Wonders.'

Isn't that just wonderful, as is Six Facets of Light and I am looking forward to Ann Wroe's next three essays very much indeed.

And whilst my notebook may be empty of Profitable Wonders on this occasion, I did at least come home and write this to share it with all of you.

If you have read this I would love to know your thoughts...

And any memorable moments of light-noticing that come to mind... those lumen de lumine experiences..

 

 

 

 

And the winners are...

In the continued absence of Himself I have drafted in another helper...

Little Miss Bluebell Nell...



Nell can only count in tennis balls but she did her best...

 

9 49 33 60 23

Random numbers generated Jun 1 2016 at 21:12:26 by www.psychicscience.org

So the winners of a copy of Under the Tump by Oliver Balch are

9 : spade & dagger

23 : Alison M

33 : Elaine Oswald

49 : Rosie H

60 : Annie

If you could double check it is really you in comments on the original post and then email your address to dovegreyreader at gmail dot com and put something eye-catching like 'I'm a Winner' in the subject box , the next thing you know a lovely book will be plopping through your letterbox very soon.