Ain't talkin', just walkin'

I could have been someone....

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Through this weary world of woe

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

No one on earth would ever know

If I'd had the time

My garden would shine with roses

My house would freshly sparkle

My books would be read

I might have been content

If I'd had the time

I would be fluent in every tongue

Well almost every (at least some)

I would remember jokes, and history,

You could ask me anything

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song

Yes, so it goes.

If I'd had the time

It would not have been squandered

I would have studied, practised,

I could have been good at things

I might have got beyond Prelude IX

If I'd had the time

I'd have been better

As a friend, a father and a lover

I might even have earned respect

Perhaps people might have listened

Time would have been my friend, my brother,

Entwined in loved embracing

The days passing without regrets

Like migrating fieldfare, 

Ever to return

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song

Yes, so it goes

But, I did have the time

But I used it all up

Well, almost all of it,

Now I just ask for a little more,

Where did it go?

I could have been someone

Well, so could anyone

So goes the song.

So, it goes.

Ain't talkin', just walkin'
Up the road, around the bend
Heart burnin', still yearnin'
In the last outback at the world's end

Bob Dylan

Ain't Talkin'

With thanks to Jem Finer and Shame MacGowan

I Spy

Leaf Litter

Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus )

I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with A......

Yes, Autumn is gently slipping in the back door, sneaking up on the last days of summer.  Greens are fading into yellows,

English Oak (Quercus robur)

And into the vibrant colours of shorter, cooler days. As Andrew Smith (Forestry Commission Director at Westonbirt Arboretum) explains: once the tree shuts down as it prepares for winter, the chlorophyll breaks down and other coloured chemicals take over. Carotene (which give carrots their colour), anthocyanin’s and tannins give the instantly recognisable colours of autumn, making leaves appear yellow, red, and gold....

Guelder rose (Viburnum opulus)

 

'Shrooms appear, tempting omelettes in spacious kitchens......

Parasol (Macrolepiota procera)

And families of birds cluster the hedges by farms, the young about to go their own ways, the parents about to face another winter....

Female House Sparrow (Passer domesticus )

And by the roadside, on this particularly fine day, when walking back from Lemsford to Piggotshill, enjoying the gentle Chiltern scenery, the quiet lanes and byways....  by the roadside, within sight of John Bunyan's chimney, between Brocket Hall and Symondshyde Great Wood, I come across this....

At first I wonder whether it isn't a late arising homeless one, snuggled on the verge.  But clearly this is not a living thing, it's the debris of some lazy, anti-social materialist who cares nothing for the environment or for the consequences of their actions (will it just stay there, or will the public purse take money from our pockets to find someone to clear it up?)  

It could be worse.  At least this doesn't block the entire lane, as some fly tippers are wont to do round here.  At least it is wrapped!  Not just a vile agglomeration of shit from some bathroom refurb or garage clearance.

But now my sensibility is awakened, and instead of admiring the beauties around me, I am drawn to the detritus of my fellows.  Here some students have pitched camp and burned their practice papers, leaving forensic evidence of their crime....  though no one will hunt them down.

And here the supermarket alkies have crushed their waste as if it will then just melt into the natural surroundings, devoured by microbes and fungi as leaf litter.....

And, as I near my own untidy destination, I note this little message in the undergrowth.  Why, oh why, do people think that having bagged up their pooch's crap it then becomes acceptable to fling it, or hang it, or leave it somewhere for the delectation of every other passer-by?  What is the point?  Even if the bag is bio-degradable, surely even if you are a bone-idle thoughtless dick-head it would be better just to nudge your doggie's excreta into the long grass without first wrapping it in plastic to draw attention to it?

The world is too much with us.  But dull is he of soul who can pass by a thing of beauty (which probably could be a joy forever) without preferring it in its natural state to that of one desecrated by our collective foulness?

It's not a simple thing.  When I was a child (and I spake as a child) I knew there was a £5 fine for littering, and £5 was a huge amount back then (and you were told not to spit on the lower deck of buses.... if I remember rightly?)  But now, most likely, it won't be cost-efficient to administer a £5 fine (see below).  In the last century (is it that long ago?) a dog needed a licence to shit.  Now it just needs a plastic bag and everything is OK.  

'Nuff said.

It was a lovely day.

A lovely walk.

Despite......

By the way: Leaving litter is an offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. This was extended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 under section 18. It carries a maximum penalty of £2500 upon conviction. However, many local authorities issue fixed penalty notices under section 88 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.....  

Yeah, well.....

Incidentally, for intense Autumn colour, see:

http://www.richardpgibbs.org/2012/11/merrie-england-part-one.html

Summer's lease hath all too short a date

Summertime.....

The last rose of summer

It was a good summer, wasn't it? Apart from remembering the big freeze of 1963 and being bitten by a plague of ladybirds in 1976, I find it hard to remember details from one year to the next.  Did we have a wet spring?  Was the winter mild?  

As Porgy sang to Bess (or was it the other way round?)

Summertime,

And the livin' is easy

Fish are jumpin'

And the cotton is high

The sky, sometimes blue, towers over us, the days are never-ending, and nature blooms:

Pan appears in blue - or is it Donald Trump?

I love the spring, with its fresh promise, but as the crops reach maturity it is hard to think of anywhere better than the English countryside:

It's a time for being outside, by the sea, with a bottle of chilled wine and a picnic:

Your daddy's rich

And your mamma's good lookin'

So hush little baby

Don't you cry

And speaking of rich daddies, etc, one of the trees we sat under this summer was that (as a young tree, obviously) had sheltered Princess Elizabeth when news was brought to her that her father had crumpled..... It doesn't look so youthful now, but it's still going strong in the grounds of Hatfield House.....

And so another English rose came into flower....

Though perhaps the analogy is better without the mosquito....

And maybe even better in virginal white?

This really is the season of the birds:

And the bees:

Of poppies:

And oxeye daisies in the fields:

Of honeysuckle in the hedgerows:

And purple loosestrife in my favourite part of the Chilterns:

It was a lovely summer.  The particular politics of this summer made it necessary to celebrate the best of Britain, rather than to dwell on inequalities or to cry over sour milk. We admired the roses on the stones of the National Trust property at Lacock Abbey, once home to William Henry Fox Talbot and so one of the nurseries of photography:

We walked through the landscaped park of Brocket Hall, only a few miles from home:

And, courtesy of British Gas, who, as a reward for paying astronomic prices for gas and electricity, gave us a few weeks' trial membership of English Heritage, we had a morning to wander in the gardens of Wrest Park:

And subsequently sheltered under a magnificent London plane tree at Audley End:

At Dyrham Park (from the Saxon word doerham - deer) we were bashfully examined by some of the 200 fallow deer that live there:

And elsewhere and everywhere I turned my lens on the beautiful insects that flutter busily around to make the most the sunny days. Here's a peacock butterfly on a teasel:

And here's a red admiral on bramble flowers:

And this is a comma:

And this dazzling beauty is a common blue damselfly at rest:

Living on the edge of East Anglia we can reach the coast of Suffolk in about two and a half hours.  It's good to have a change of air sometimes, and there are some very peaceful spots, like this landing stage on the River Ore at Havergate Island:

Just north of Cambridge, at Fen Drayton Lakes, reeds were being harvested from the Great Ouse:

Though it is birds that normally draw me to these RSPB reserves. This cormorant taking off is by no means a rare sight, but it's still a marvel to behold:

And the willowy, watery world at Fowlmere is always peaceful with its grey green light:

Despite being on the east coast, the evening light at Aldeburgh is captivating, and it is great to scrunch along the shingle at dusk.  Here the old lifeboat station settles with the sun behind it:

And in the top left window of this holiday house a wistful figure watches the sea at bedtime, writing a farewell to the summer holidays with a finger on the glass:

Back home in the fields in Hertfordshire the crops ripen and the poppies fade:

And Will Dickinson, whose family have farmed Cross Farm at Harpenden for six generations, brings in the harvest.  It's been a good summer, and I hope Will's yields are high this year, not just because he's a neighbour, but also because he values this country, and its place in the European Union.  As he said, in an interview with the Herts Advertiser, he believes that to remain within the union is the best way to preserve the integrity of my business and he does not believe that any new independent UK government will relinquish any control that these [EU-derived] regulations give them..... 

It has been a lovely summer.  We must celebrate what we have:

One of these mornings

You're going to rise up singing

Then you'll spread your wings

And you'll take to the sky

But till that morning

There's a'nothing can harm you

With daddy and mamma standing by

George Gershwin/DuBose Heyward

(Even if.....)

Sometimes I wonder what I’m gonna do

But there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues 

Summertime Blues

Eddie Cochran/Jerry Capehart

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

Jeremiah, 8: 20