Down Memory Lane

The Thin Blue Line

The blue bell is the sweetest flower

That waves in summer air;

Its blossoms have the mightiest power

To soothe my spirit’s care.

Emily Brontë

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child....

1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 11

King James Version

And also when I was a child I rode my bike as a child, played in the woods as a child, climbed trees as a child, and loved the world around me as a child.....

And much of that time was spent in the Chilterns, roaming free in the countryside and the woods, watching the seasons roll around with flowers, leaves, trees, birds.....   Those were carefree days; little bothered me (as far as I can remember) but they were long ago.  Time has evaporated.....

And in the passing of time, so have family and friends passed away, and life has had its excitements and its depressions. So much has changed, so much has developed...... But, If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.....

We retrace my steps.  In the gardens of Ashridge House Queen Elizabeth I had walked as a child.  I was following a thin blue line back into the past, but I am reminded that life goes on, that flowers grow again and again, that trees stand their ground, that without the interference of despots and tyrants the world can be a beautiful place.....

So, If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing....  These words, in various forms, keep coming back to me, echoing over the decades (my brother Simon read them as we gathered at the end of one school year). 

Or as Deon Jackson so gently hinted in 1963:

Without love, flowers wouldn't grow in spring

And without spring, yeah, the birdies just couldn't sing

Yeah, everybody needs love

though some might add:

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.

I wonder where the birdies is.

They say the bird is on the wing, but that’s absurd.

I always thought the wing was on the bird.

Hey....

Ho!

So, back in the Chilterns, in Ashridge, walking in Dockey Wood, the air fragrant with bluebell dust, the wind scintillating the fresh green beech leaves.... It is wonderful. I love it all.  And it is love that makes the world go round.....

The carpet so rich, so fine, so evanescent. A week or two and it will be gone, lost to the pollinators and the onlookers for another year, unless captured by an artist......

We move on. The next morning Tring Park is fresh and airy, the sap spiralling out into the new leaves as the temperature rises and the days lengthen:

Then we wind back to the Dunstable Downs and to the Whipsnade Tree Cathedral, created by Edmund Blyth to commemorate his friends who lost their lives in the First World War. This is an enchanted place, and we lie under the flowering cherries in the Easter Chapel, the sun scattering its rays through the petals:

I will not mention the unmentionable, and I am not one to quote biblical phrases lightly, but, given the unnecessary and unimaginable suffering unleashed by the ignorance and greed of certain men, the words of the damascene convert hover above me in the glorious light that (almost) blinds me:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres....

1 Corinthians chapter 13 verses 4-7

New International Version

We walk around and over Ivinghoe Beacon, the start of the Ridgeway, and a splendid viewpoint over the Vale of Aylesbury, where cowslips gloriously flourish:

Then dive back into Ashridge Forest for a last wonder at the thin blue line:

And a surprise encounter with an earnest badger, doing the housework at the sett's back door, another reminder that the world is diverse and wonderful:  

I am told that Badgers eat hedgehogs, and that therefore they are not to be loved, but please read this piece from the website Hedgehog Street:

Hedgehogs and badgers share what’s known as an asymmetric intraguild predation relationship. Badgers can affect hedgehogs in one of three ways:

Competition; the two species compete for many of the same food sources. These include soil invertebrates such as earthworms and beetle larvae.

 

Predation; badgers can predate hedgehogs.

 

Avoidance; hedgehogs will avoid areas where badgers have been active. Where there are many badgers, hedgehogs are likely to be less common.

While badgers do prey on hedgehogs, this is natural predator-prey interaction. Although badger numbers have boomed in recent years, there is little evidence that suggests they are the main reason why hedgehogs are in trouble. Indeed, hedgehogs are struggling in rural places where we know few badgers live, like East Anglia. Where conditions are favourable and invertebrate food is readily available, the two species can co-exist.

The two species have co-existed for thousands of years, which suggests that recent human activity has been a more prominent factor in the decline of hedgehogs.

Or, as the British Hedgehog Preservation Society says:

Pointing the finger at a single cause, such as predation by badgers or road casualties, likely misses the bigger, more complex picture.

Before we leave we pay our respects to Bob's Oak, a four hundred year old tree that, despite the weariness of age, is still sprouting fresh foliage from the tips of its twigs. A youth in the reign of Charles I, this veteran reminds us that peace and love can transcend the foibles of the mad and the vicissitudes of wind and weather.

This spring, and especially these last few days, has/have been glorious. Yes, I have been wandering down memory lane, but nothing is as important as the infinitely expanding present. As Alan Watts (in Become What You Are) said: Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small: before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists forever....

There is a silent eloquence

In every wild bluebell

That fills my softened heart with bliss

That words could never tell.

Anne Brontë

*********

For CJ

If you walk, just walk. If you sit, just sit. But don’t wobble.

Yunmen Wenyan

*********

Ain't Talkin'

Just Walkin'

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Through this weary world of woe

High summer, and the harvest is coming in, despite the variable weather. Warm days, and pleasant walking in the Hertfordshire countryside, on the dip side of the Chilterns, near our home.

The brightest of the flowers have faded now, but there are still traces of colour about,

The hay meadows are ready for cutting, and   some fields are splashed with hardy ox-eye daisies hanging on,

But the creeping thistles have lost their flowers, and painted ladies are now replaced by drifts of downy seeds on the wind....

Though the smooth sow-thistle still colours the wayside....

As I walked out in the mystic garden

On a hot summer day, hot summer lawn

Excuse me, ma'am I beg your pardon

There's no one here, the gardener is gone

The oaks that dot the farmland, or shade the hedgerows are still in full leaf, 

At least most of them are, though nothing lasts for ever,

And while the farmers have brought home some of their harvest,

There is still much work to be done, and our paths are sometimes the only cut the fields have seen,

We walk, often without talking, enjoying the quiet and the sights and sounds. But then sometimes Amanda will point to an aeroplane high in the sky, excitedly exclaiming 'Look, up high!  I didn't know that was available!  She's lovely!' 

Or some bird will be startled by our approach, and she will tell it, 'Oh God is giving you lots of happy times, darling.'

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

Through this weary world of woe

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

No one on earth would ever know

As the closing track on Bob Dylan's 2006 album, Modern Times, Ain't Talkin' is a powerful and haunting song, which also exists  in a slightly different version on Tell Tale Signs.  The song draws on elements of Irish and American music, nods to Merle Haggard and Ralph Stanley, and suggests that the singer is a troubled pilgrim:

They say prayer has the power to help, so pray for me, mother

In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell

I am tryin' to love my neighbor and do good unto others

But oh, mother, things ain't goin' well

We walk most every day, sometimes twice.  Me and my wife of thirty something years.  But we don't talk much.  Semantic dementia has stolen sense from her words and from her understanding. She greets strangers with, 'Oh, you're having a lovely time,' as they walk, run or cycle by, and loves seeing new things around her.  But conversation, discussion, communication is bit by bit becoming very difficult.

They say prayer has the power to help.....

Though sadly I don't see it happening.

And sometimes it rains,

As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden

The wounded flowers were danglin' from the vine

I was passin' by yon cool and crystal fountain

Someone hit me from behind

Ain't talkin', just walkin'

You ride up high and down you go

Heart burnin', still yearnin'

No one on Earth will ever know

Ain't Talkin'

Bob Dylan

All photos taken on my iPhone 

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