Art and Wildlife

The Massingham Heath Project

The sky is bubble wrap grey and a Norfolk lazy wind (one that goes through you not round you!) ruffles the anoraks. It is a dry May day and a group of 18 members of the Society of Wildlife Artists (https://swla.co.uk/ ) have gathered at Olly Birkbeck's Wedding Barn, 

off Church Lane, Little Massingham, in Norfolk for a week's residency, though the project will involve over thirty artists who will follow the seasons for a whole year.

Nick Acheson, naturalist and conservationist https://themarshtit.com/) is here, adding his expertise to the wealth of knowledge already in the air, but also as he is to write the text of a book to celebrate the changing flora, fauna and landscape of the heath throughout the year.

Landowner Olly Birkbeck inherited the estate some eight years ago, and is intent on restoring former heathland and establishing species rich meadows which he hopes will link up with a number of neighbouring farms to provide a nature corridor through this part of Norfolk. 

The artists at this residency include: Carry Akroyd, Richard Allen, Marco Brodde, Dan Cole, Brin Edwards, Johnnie Foker, Federico Gemma, Simon Griffiths, Amie Haslen, Kittie Jones, Wynona Legg, Melanie Mascarenhas, Harriet Mead, Bruce Pearson, Dafila Scott, Jane Smith, Chris Wallbank and Darren Woodhead.

I am here as my friend, sculptor Simon Griffiths (https://www.simongriffithssculpture.co.uk/ ), is one of the resident artists this week, and he will be giving a demonstration of his work (sculpting a tawny owl in clay) on Sunday 11th May from 10.00 to 12.00 (if you are interested in seeing this, please book a - free - place via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/creating-a-wildlife-sculpture-in-clay-tickets-1321537256509?aff=ebdssbdestsearch)

But if you cannot get there for that, there will be an exhibition at the Wedding Barn on Wednesday 14th May from 16.00 to 20.00 and all of the work from the week will be on display and there will be opportunities to meet the artists.  There will also be other happenings as the year develops, particularly in mid-August (16th/17th) when there will be events both at Little Massingham Village Hall and on the Heath.

Despite the dry spring (which has hindered much of the flora) there is plenty to see on the Estate, and I am privileged to join the group for a tour.  SWLA Friend and Project Committee Member Tim Baldwin lives locally and is with us to explain some of the geology, for example where the acid heath turns to chalk heath, and both Olly and he talk about biodiversity and regenerative practice.

On the tour we encounter the herd of Dexter cattle (a hardy breed that originated in County Kerry in the eighteenth century), 

Konik ponies (a very hardy mouse-grey breed of small horses from Poland), Bagot goats (a rare breed of goat possibly originating in the Rhone Valley and brought to England in 1380 as a gift for John Bagot of Blithfield Hall by returning Crusaders with Richard II)  and a very friendly Tamworth pig (the only red-coloured British pig, of origins unknown, but developed in Tamworth).

The air is full of skylarks (cleverly disguised as clouds); a crow spars with a kite overhead,

though the kite survives to check us out. 

We hear birdsong everywhere, with both Whitethroats and Lesser Whitethroats being in evidence, as well as Thrushes, Wrens and Robins.  There are Stone Curlews on the land, though we don't see one today, and high above us, too high to photograph, two Goshawks are briefly seen in display.  There are also a variety of butterflies and insects to be seen, some of them quite difficult to find, 

such as this Click Beetle:

The tour ends with a sumptuous picnic (kindly provided by Olly's wife) in a sheltered spot, and the sun comes out to warm the strawberries.  

Then, with a quick viewing of an ancient stone pit (a massive quarry, partly chalk but probably also a source of flint) 

hard by the Peddars Way, a track used by itinerant traders in the Middle Ages but dating back to at least Roman times, we return to base and, the artists get to work on their individual approaches to the project.

If you are interested in this project, please follow this link  (Projects | SWLA News | Announcements | Exhibitions Massingham Heath Project Public Events in May The SWLA Heath Project launches in May with the first group of artists spending a week working on site. Learn more about the opportunities to visit and see the work that has been created at the very start of this year long project. Published 21 April 2025)

With many thanks for this great Field Day in particular to Olly Birkbeck for his hospitality, and to Harriet Mead, Tim Baldwin, Jane Smith, Nick Acheson, Simon Griffiths and all the others who made me welcome and didn't mind my camera.

Private Passions

Dreaming of Private Passions
 

The composer and broadcaster Michael Berkeley has presented Private Passions on BBC Radio 3 for thirty years, inviting celebrities to choose and discuss various pieces of music.  The guests are all distinguished in their respective fields.  I will never be invited to take part, but it is fun to play the game, so here are my choices, with the proviso that, with the infinitude of music to draw on, any set could be influenced by any number of factors, ranging from the weather to the season to the vagaries of relationships.
 
Mozart was one of the first names I learned in music.  His Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was on one of the 78s we had when I was a child, with those chords ringing out from a teak wind-up gramophone that sat on the floor of our front room.  Later, when trying to learn the piano, I accompanied someone on the clarinet in a version of the second movement from his Clarinet Quintet.  I am not a pianist, but there is one opus I can just about manage, and there is a certain pleasure in making the notes that were composed so long ago come to life.
 
Mozart – Fantasia in D Minor, K 397 – Angela Hewitt
 
I wish I had progressed further with the piano, but with the excitement of the sixties I was drawn to the guitar.  And this perhaps is why my next choice is Bob Dylan.  I still have the Freewheelin’ LP which I bought on September 16^th, 1965.  And I still play Don’t think twice, it’s all right.....  Bruce Langhorne’s guitar adds to the effect, but it is Dylan’s confident and articulate farewell to a relationship that is so memorable.  It isn’t his greatest song, perhaps, but then given the breadth (and depth!) or his production over more than sixty years, which is?
 
Bob Dylan – Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
 
So, I played and sang through my teens, and I was in Dublin when the Dubliners were at their height, and I spent a memorable evening at the Old Triangle folk club where I met Luke Kelly. He had a wonderfully clear, controlled voice and as he closed his eyes, tilted back his head and let flow streams of perfectly balanced ballad history the place fell silent.  This is a beautiful song, written by Phil Coulter, which, despite being steeped in Ireland’s contemporary history, touches my own past in my imagination.  
 
The Dubliners featuring Luke Kelly – The Town I Loved So Well
 
I grew up to the Beatles, and they were absolutely a part of everyone’s life in the sixties. I sat though A Hard Day’s Night twice when it came out and hung on their every appearance on TV.  John Lennon had the edge, for me, and on the day he died, some friends and I were involved in a car crash (in Italy) and it seemed that the lights had gone out.  This song is an early one and is perhaps typical of the sixties where many pop songs were about holding hands or dancing or falling in love.  It is perhaps significant, however, that one of his last recorded songs was entitled Woman – I guess some of us grow up?
 
The Beatles – Girl: Rubber Soul
 
On April 28, 1973, Bob Marley and the Wailers came to play in the Great Hall at Lancaster University.  I was living and working in Manchester at the time, but went back up to Lancaster (where I had a toehold) for weekends and this was a great night.  There was something quite new about this music.....
 
Bob Marley and The Wailers – No Woman, No Cry
 
Later I moved to Sheffield and would drink in the pubs down West Street on a Saturday night, and one had a juke box with Rod Stewart’s version of What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made A Loser Out Of Me), and the song touched something within me, (though I didn’t listen).  My wife Amanda loved him too, and this recording of Have I told You Lately that I Love You? played her out at her funeral.
 
Rod Stewart – Have I told You Lately That I love You?
 
In 1976 I was appointed to teach at St George’s English School Rome, where my adult life took shape.  And as time went by, I picked up the guitar again and formed a folk group with a friend and some of the students and we performed concerts for Amnesty International, involving my guests Adrian Mitchell, Roger McGough and then Adrian Henri, and with others at the Folk Studio and The Fiddler’s Elbow.  They were good days, but I also became interested in Italian music, and history and I visited many churches and monasteries throughout Italy and learned about Palestrina. 

 

 
Palestrina - Missa Papae Marcelli – Sistine Chapel Choir, Massimo Palombella
 
I also went to the Opera in Rome and ‘discovered’ the joys of Verdi and Puccini. And somehow this led back to Mozart. I had a journalist friend who insisted we went to see Joseph Losey’s film of Don Giovanni, in which Kiri te Kanawa played Donna Elvira.  Later on, when we had moved back to the UK, I ran a school boarding house and Kiri’s son Tom was one of my charges.  On Friday, 20^th June, 1997, Amanda and I were invited to see Kiri at a gala performance at Hampton Court, a wonderful evening, with champagne in the dressing room after the show.  
 
Mozart – Cosi Fan Tutte - Soave sia il vento – Kiri te Kanawa.
 
The supporting artist that night was Andrea Bocelli, and as Amanda was particularly taken with him, the music we played to introduce her funeral was La Voce del Silenzio.
 
Andrea Bocelli – La Voce del Silenzio
 

E chi ho tanto amato

Dal mare del silenzio

Ritorna come un'onda

Nei miei occhi

E quello che mi manca

Nel mare del silenzio

Mi manca sai molto di più…

 
When I lived in Italy, I learned the language, and loved the life, and music was all around.  I particularly liked Francesco de Gregori and his friend Lucio Dalla, and more recently got hooked on a version of Alice, with Ligabue.
 
Francesco de Gregori, featuring Ligabue – Alice
 
As a counterpoint to this romanticism (which I acknowledge is a weakness) J S Bach is another of the masters to whom I listen again and again.  But......  How does one choose?  ‘Cello suites (as my brother Simon played at our mother’s funeral)? Organ works (my father and grandfather sometimes played these)?  Piano works (as I still try to play)?  

That is the difficulty.  And while I don’t really understand it, I can immerse myself in St John Passion and let it wash right through me.  The Matthew Passion, the Cantatas, etc, they all fill my mind with temporary glory, but I think St John is the best.

 
J S Bach – St John Passion – BWV 245 - Ruht Wohl, Ihr Heiligen Gebeine: The Choir of New College Oxford, Collegium Novum, Edward Higginbottom 
 
And now, in a different vein, I include a song by John Prine, about whose sharply witty and humanely warm lyrics I knew nothing before his untimely death in 2020 during the Coronavirus pandemic.  But his last song, written and recorded only shortly before his death helps me whenever I think back over all the private passions of my life.  And it is also one I have learned to play, perhaps as a counterpart to the earlier Dylan track.
 
John Prine - I Remember Everything
 
And another song which is quite a different thing, though also strongly emotional.  Elton John was not an artist I ever felt close to, but he is music, and some of his songs are inevitably a part of the backing tracks of our lives.  Your Song is a sweet example of how he, and his associates, captivated us in the ‘70s.  Pop music has an enormous reach, and in certain ways it is the twentieth century’s answer to all the opera house excitement in the days of Mozart and Puccini et al....
 
Elton John – Your Song
 
In closure, I would have chosen either Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia, an extraordinarily enduring work which a friend introduced to me when we were first at Lancaster University, or for The Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World, Op. 95, B. 178, composed by Antonín Dvořák in 1893, partly because it was one of the first LPs my brother Simon bought to play on our ‘modern’ record player, and also because, a year or more since the death of my wife, I am now entering a new world, and that sense of entering fresh territory excites me and gives me hope.

 

However, the music which I would like to fade away with, is that of Chopin.  Having visited the rooms in Vallombrosa, in Mallorca, where Chopin and Georges Sand spent an uncomfortable winter in 1839, I continue to wonder at the extraordinary melodic creativity that these pieces offer us.  And at the profound melancholy that sometimes settles upon me.  I just wish I could play it!
 
Chopin - Nocturne in G Major, Op. 37 No. 2 – played by Maurizio Pollini
 
 
All these pieces could be anyone’s choices, though anyone could choose infinite varieties of others. It’s a game.  I feel bad about leaving out so many artists and songs (where are Joe Cocker - You Are So Beautiful; Dolly Parton - I Will Always Love You;  Merle Haggard - That's The Way Love Goes;  or Sandy Denny - Who Knows Where The Time Goes.... just for examples?)  

It's just a game.  

But ask for me tomorrow and you will find me a grave man......

 

Richard Gibbs

May 3rd 2025

 
 
 

North by North-East

Over the Hills

Bolton Castle 
where Mary, Queen of Scots, was held prisoner in 1568

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defines Belladonna (n) thus: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.....

Which has nowt to do with owt, for the moment, but I may return to this later.....

Let me track back a bit.  We were recently having a good time in Swaledale:

A goat - [No idea why, Ed.]

And in Swaledale I wondered lovely as a clown [Stoppit, Ed.], quoting Robert Frost to no-one:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

Mending Wall

(I'll come back to this) and I passed by the hamlet (I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. Hamlet, II.ii.312–13)  [Get on with it!  Ed.] of Muker.....  

'Nuff said.

So I retraced some steps and revisited Wensleydale.....Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese! [Gromit is confused; looks at "Cheese Holidays" magazine] Now, where were we? Places you find cheese. Lancashire, Cheddar, Wensleydale, Philadelphia, Tesco's...

Yes, but it isn't only cheese!

Wood anemones and Common Dog Violets

I pause at Aysgarth.  Another time I was here in the rain, and, apart from my (late) friend Lindsay, there was no one else, just rushing brown waters.  Today the sun shines, there is less water, but there is space.  I relish the sound of water falling, the Ure driving down 30 metres in a kilometre, step by step, upper, middle and lower falls giving easy pleasure to visitors who, like me, have a little time and no reason to be elsewhere.....

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Leisure

William Henry Davies

Now you may find this a leap too far, but Jimi Hendrix comes to my mind.  

Waterfall

Nothing can harm me at all

My worries seem so very small

With my waterfall

I can see

My rainbow calling me

Through the misty breeze

Of my waterfall

Some people say

Daydreaming's for all the

Lazy minded fools

With nothin' else to do

So let them laugh, laugh at me

So just as long as I have you

To see me through

I've got nothing to lose

Long as I have you

Waterfall

Don't ever change your ways

Fall with me for a million days

Oh, my waterfall

May This Be Love

Jimi Hendrix

1967

[Not necessarily Nobel winning poetry but when coloured by the Experience it becomes beautifully fluid:  https://youtu.be/T4MBwvZWOQE]

Onward.....

Whoops!  

Anyway.  One has to keep on keeping on....  So I walk amongst the fields and barns of upper Wensleydale from Askrigg (whose white towered church, dedicated to St Oswald, has stood there since 1180), and my thoughts are transfigured by the upland air, the folding shoulders of the hills and the confused pleasure of being alone in the world.

Then to Hardraw, to check in again with JMW Turner and review the highest single drop waterfall in England, though a little rain would add some force.... 

Then, heading north, but barely a crow's tone from where Amanda and I lived under Ingleborough way back when, up the Mallerstang Valley (England's last wilderness - David Bellamy) following the River Eden, where freight trains hark back to times of industrial power:

And Red Scar and Mallerstang Edge rise to the East, bare and craggy, like the lives of farmers (and their sheep) hereabouts:

Then, it's over the hills again. Through Teesdale, then up, skirting Warcop Fell training ground, where I am reminded, by the red flag, of the 1966 World Cup and the excitement of Geoff Hurst and extra time (watched by 32.3 million people) in the Warcop Camp NAAFI (not all in the NAAFI) before we were driven in a three-tonner (rehearsing Hymns Ancient and Modern - amongst other songs) up onto the high moors to bivvy amongst the coughing cattle.  

Like Roman soldiers....

But I find comfort in Stanhope, with kind friends David and Sarah, whose hospitality smoothes away the emptiness of the stony hills.  We walk by the Wear and watch a pair of Dippers bobbing and splashing and frolicking in mutual affection:

And then, high across the Derwent, low across the Tyne and here is Chesters, a cavalry fort known then as Cilurnum, dating from around 124 AD, home, at that time, to around 500 men and horses.  Details from then on are unclear, though we know that the 2nd Asturians occupied (and rebuilt) the barracks around 180 AD.

{It may be of interest at this point that Ambrose Bierce defined a Barrack (n) as: A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.}

Anyway, onwards and upwards, over another hill, and here we are above Housesteads Roman Fort, walking the wall that Emperor Hadrian designed (AD 122: 60 miles long, four metres high, garrisoned by some 10,000 soldiers) to stop Mexicans [Some mistake? Ed.] and fentanyl [Surely you mean Woad? Ed.] from being drug into the Empire by wayward Scots and others......

It is impressive. It is imperial.  It is imperative. It is rough. [It is ruined, Ed.]  It is long and cold and windy and very up and down along the Whin Sill (I know: I have walked at least half of it).....

And it is a wonder not only that it exists, but that, in a world without mobile phones, TV, laptops, air fryers and takeaway pizzas anyone survived in these draughty roofless, unplumbed hovels.....

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

Roman Wall Blues

W H Auden

And so, to flip back to my opening quotation, just think that at least some of these guys would have been wondering why the only Belladonna they could avail themselves of was bitterly poisonous.  They were a very long way from home.....

Still, it does give teachers the excuse to get out of the classroom......

{I know:  I've been there....}

I look up Wall in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but the only reference is to Wall Street, n: A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in heaven.....

Well, it's apt I suppose.....  (I wonder whether the yellow infanta has read any of this?)

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.....

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Before I turn south I pass another stone building, seemingly part ancient castle, part pill box.  This is Crindledykes Limekiln, one of three hundred in Northumberland that were active in the nineteenth century.  Another reminder of things that are over the hill.....

It's cold and windy up here, and I begin my return to warmer climes, pausing at Corbridge to view yet more Roman remains, then through Slaley Forest, onto Blanchland Moor, idly thinking of Hamlet and Hitchcock, as one does, glad that I am not being chased by a crop duster.  I stop the car at the top of a rocky outcrop.... 

....and find myself leaning down through yellowing grass over the waxy orange cliff of President Trump's forehead, sculpted into the mass of Mount Crushmoor, and I grasp the outstretched hand of Eve Marie Saint, and, then I ......

.... find myself staying  with more old friends, the superb wildlife sculptor Simon Griffiths and Heather and family, in Castleside, County Durham.  How I got there I haven't a clue, nor can I say where Eve went, but that's partly the point of North by Northwest, (Cary Grant didn't know what was going on either, and Hitchcock liked that - and anyway it's my prerogative to make some things up.....)

I am but mad north-north-east....

But the truth is it was great to catch up with friends who put up with me, and to roam over the hills and far away in the north of this land.  

Thank you all.... Keep looking up.....

Simon Griffiths, Wildlife Sculptor

https://www.simongriffithssculpture.co.uk/

And thus, after another convivial overnight, I drive the long way back down into the Mezzogiorno, returning, like a faithful puffin to its burrow, like an Easter bunny scampering to its warren.....

[Just sign off, Ed.]

That high sound in the air

Is nothing but the draught in cold chimneys

Drawing taut the note of longing

As I listen northwards.

Lament

David Craig

 

North

Under the Bridge

                                       The stream

Runs softly yet drowns the Past,

The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past.

Edward Thomas

The Bridge 

I am in 'The North,' which means a handful of things...... Geographically it's up the hill, leaning toward where the lines of longitude converge.  Psychologically it's where the crowds in your head thin out and you begin to hear your own thoughts.  Historically it is where I was at home some time ago.  

But the waters have flooded under the bridge and washed most of that away.

And so, with my bro, we spend a sunny morning near Wakefield in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park [founded in 1977 by Sir Peter Murray CBE and since 2022 led by Clare Lilley, YSP is the largest sculpture park of its kind in Europe. It is the only place in Europe to see Barbara Hepworth’s The Family of Man in its entirety, alongside a significant collection of sculpture, including bronzes by Henry Moore, important pieces by Roger Hiorns, Studio Morison and Hemali Bhuta, and site-related works by Katrina Palmer, Andy Goldsworthy, Alfredo Jaar, David Nash, Sean Scully and James Turrell....]

And, by virtue of an overactive emotional imagination, I am back in Hannover, with the Nanas:

Niki de Saint Phalle: Buddha, 2000

And then, on the hill exposed to the wind,  I am back at Ely Cathedral, with my friends Simon and Connie, last summer, when we were all alive.... 

Sean Henry: Seated Figure 2016 

(3m x 1.6m x 1.9m Painted bronze)

And then again I am transported back to Hertfordshire, at Perry Green, Much Hadham, with Amanda, at Henry Moore Studios & Gardens (Seventy acres of Hertfordshire sky above seventy acres of studios, workshops and art at the artist’s former home and sculpture gardens).  Amanda loved to place her hands on those vast, smooth bronze shapes......

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure: Arch Leg (1969 - 70)

Though there is always someone photo-bombing.....

Henry Moore, Large Two Forms (1966 - 69)

And then there is this piece I photographed some time ago in London, at the Tate Modern, I think.  As with most sculptures I am innocent as to their significance.  But I like the colours of this one.  

Then what else?

Apparently, this iconic LOVE image is now recognised as one of the key images of 20th century art.....  The slanted 'O' and the square format was, in Indiana's view, the most dynamic way to use four letters.

{I can think of other dynamic ways to use four letters, but that may not be helpful.}  

Suffice it to say, perhaps, that I have always loved love...... [So what's new?  Ed]

Robert Indiana, Love (Red Blue Green) 1966 - 98

And so, like weasels and rabbits, I move on.  To Reeth, in Swaledale.  To meet up with a friend (by arrangement).  We haven't seen each other for the worst part of a half century, but it is as if time was immaterial, despite a little wear and tear of ageing (on my part at least), perhaps.  

Recognition doesn't enter into it, it is almost as though there was no past, that it has been drowned by the dark-lit stream.  The bridge has shadowed all those waters.

We walk and talk in the sunshine, by the sparkling river.  It is spring - the season of renewal - and for a moment the lambs aren't sure where to look.  

Then they scamper off to their maas while a curlew veers haphazardly over a disused barn, as confused as me:

Daffodils do their brief best to cheer the world, while the trees are just unfurling their sap-fused buds to the sky:

Then the magic fades to shadows on the hill, where the spoil from the old lead mines has become a part of the landscape:

The writing is on the road.  Don't rush.  Take the corner carefully.  Easy now:

And then my friend disappears again.  Another half century until the next time.  But I know nothing is forever, though memories may brim over and flood across the stones, in and out of the streams under the bridge.

Darkness falls on Reeth, and local lads enjoy their own company outside The Buck:

I drink the soft night air, the stars sprinkling my glass with light years of shattered diamonds. But the world seems inside out, or upside down:

And all that is left, for now, are the embers of a dying fire, the ashes of the past piling on the heartstones (sic):

But, I protest, it's all grate!

Single File Please!

And I wander back to my room, singing my favourite song to myself:

I've been down this road before

I remember every tree

Every single blade of grass

Holds a special place for me

And I remember every town

And every hotel room

And every song I ever sang

On a guitar out of tune

I remember everything

Things I can't forget

The way you turned and smiled on me

On the night that we first met

And I remember every night

Your ocean eyes of blue

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

I've been down this road before

Alone as I can be

Careful not to let my past

Go sneaking up on me

Got no future in my happiness

Though, regrets are very few

Sometimes a little tenderness

Was the best that I could do

I remember everything

Things I can't forget

Swimming pools of butterflies

That slipped right through the net

And I remember every night

Your ocean eyes of blue

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

How I miss you in the morning light

Like roses miss the dew

I Remember Everything

John Prine and Pat McLaughlin