I can stand a little rain

Here comes the sun....

It was a warm and very dry spring here in Norfolk. According to the Met Office, it has been the sunniest spring since records began. There were no shoures soote in Aprill to perce the droghte of March ... to the roote, nor to bathe every veyne in switch licour/Of which vertu engendred is the flour [Pace Geoffrey Chaucer - Ed.]

My garden, my allotment, the fields, the woods - all dry and dusty for weeks on end.

Then, finally, the cool winds blew in some water, soaking slowly through the membrane under my shingle,

Typically this coincided with the day I had to take my car for its MOT,

 

Leaving it in the puddles, to walk home....

Like Joe Cocker, I can stand a little rain, though it may have its downsides:

Like the touch of rain she was

On a man's flesh and hair and eyes

When the joy of walking thus

Has taken him by surprise:

With the love of the storm he burns,

He sings, he laughs, well I know how,

But forgets when he returns

As I shall not forget her 'Go now'.

Edward Thomas

At the end of Common Road, for no particular reason, I am reminded of Geoffrey Willans's Nigel Molesworth, the goriller of 3b and curse of St. Custard's, and his rendition of Tennyson's The Brook, the only one piece of peotry in the English language:

i come from haunts of coot and Hern

i make a sudden sally

and-er-her-er-hem-the fern

to bicker down a valley.

 As Nigel says, when having to attempt the girly activity of reciting, quite frankly I COULDN'T CARE LESS.  What use will that be to me in the new atomic age?

Well, as an ex english master myself, I would chide Molesworth for this point of view, and say you must learn the value of spiritual things....

Though I cannot help but notice that even the fairies have firmly shut their door and windows.....

Ah well, the rain eases off, though it has stripped leaves from the trees and strewn them carelessly about and coursed down the path like the tears of a mighty god:

It has also streamed down the trees in what is known as stemflow, where precipitation funnels down from the canopy through the deep ridges of the tree bark, collecting an assortment of particulates, plant chemicals and air pollutants that have accumulated over the long dry period.

The result is a form of bubbling soap which foams as it is concentrated at the base of the trunk.

So there's magic in the woods, and not just in the splash of colour that denotes the presence of digitalis, noted for its effect on the heart:

There is a magic in the cool silence, where it is almost possible to hear the plants sigh in gratitude for the life-giving water that has fallen from the sky. I can almost hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore.  I shall have some peace..... [Thank you William Butler - Ed.]

Oak leaves are refreshed:

In time of silver rain

The earth puts forth new life again,

Green grasses grow

And flowers lift their heads,

And over all the plain

The wonder spreads

Of Life,

Of Life,

Of life!

Langston Hughes

 

As are the sweet chestnuts:

And I can almost taste the freshness of beech leaves against the light:

While the aroma of bracken and damp leaf mould rises from the ground to wrap me in a natural shawl: 

I look out across the fields towards the clouds, louring over the Wash, dreaming lightly of possible futures:

I walk the beautiful beech avenue where once Amanda walked with me:

I pause by the seat - too wet to sit - where she liked to rest on a Sunday morning:

I pass by the roofless ruin where someone once lived, and maybe died:

I hear leaves drinking rain; 

I hear rich leaves on top 

Giving the poor beneath 

Drop after drop; 

'Tis a sweet noise to hear 

These green leaves drinking near.

And when the Sun comes out, 

After this Rain shall stop, 

A wondrous Light will fill 

Each dark, round drop; 

I hope the Sun shines bright; 

'Twill be a lovely sight.

W H Davies

And then the sun surfaces through the clouds and scatters diamonds of light across my path, cheering my way forward, towards a refreshed life, perhaps.....  A lovely sight indeed.....

Here comes the sun

And I say, It's all right.....

George Harrison

Dance on, buttercup jackdaws

For Hannah May Blacknell Gibbs 

35 today

xx

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

Across the Borderline

But hope remains when pride is gone 

There's a place where I've been told 

Every street is paved with gold 

And it's just across the borderline 

I cruise west, the concrete and steel towering over me as I pass through the shiny gateway to heaven.

And when it's time to take your turn

Here's a lesson that you must learn

You could lose more than you'll ever hope to find

The price is £6.70 to enter these Elysian fields these days, but wtf? With the way the world is spinning we need to treat ourselves. All we really need is the band from the Titanic to play us out, and we can sink happily.

When you reach the broken promised land

And every dream slips through your hands

Then you'll know that it's too late to change your mind

But then it is always too late to change your mind….. There is never a going back. I still believe in the England of Yore (whoever he/she was) where Postman Pat (and his black and white cat) delivers simnel cake and Private Godfrey’s sister Dolly makes the sandwiches. Come to that I even sometimes live in a world where Betsy Trotwood chases donkeys out of her front garden, Justices Shallow and Silence preside over the magistrature, and The Pardoner’s Tale passes the time in the traffic between Sittingbourne and Faversham.

But that is fantasy.  There is no going back,

'Cause you've paid the price to come so far

Just to wind up where you are

And you're still just across the borderline

So I pursue my first intent, to be a pilgrim for the day on Offa’s Dyke, up the hills near Abergavenny, in Monmouthshire. This is border territory, sometimes known as the Anglo-Welsh Border. The England-Wales border runs for 160 miles, from the Dee to the Severn estuary. It has followed much the same line since the 8th century, and for part of the way it is marked by Offa's Dyke. Offa was Trump of Mercia from 757 to 796, and his walled ditch was constructed (at his own expense?) to keep the immigrants from Powys out. The modern boundary was fixed in 1536, when Henry VIII melted the lead off the roof of Tintern Abbey and simultaneously created both the Romantic Poets and Secular Tourism.

Now the only signs of Welsh independence are signs on the road instructing you to go ARAF and a charge of £6.70 to cross the Severn in a westerly direction, where:

A thousand footprints in the sand

Reveal a secret no one can define

The river flows on like a breath

In between our life and death

Tell me who's the next to cross the borderline

En la triste oscuridad (In the sad darkness)

Hoy tenemos que cruzar (today we have to cross)

Este rio que nos llama mas alla (this river which calls us further away)

But hope remains when pride is gone

And it keeps you moving on

Calling you across the borderline

Up on these beautiful hills, with views across England’s green and pleasant (?) land to the East, the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons to the west,

and the flatiron top of Ysgyryd Fawr (Skirrid) between me and the Mouth of the Severn to the south,

it feels good. I am away, temporarily, from it all – or so it seems. The corrugated end of a farm building carries verses from Edward Thomas’s The Lofty Sky:

Today I want the sky,

The tops of the high hills,

Above the last man’s house…

…where naught deters

The desire of the eye

For sky, nothing but sky.

The skylarks agree.

The ponies agree.

I am alone with my thoughts, where once border patrols might have shot me on sight.

And other borders, other boundaries, come to mind. What is this United Kingdom if full of care? Will Gretna be Greener when Scotland detaches itself? What about Ireland? In Sunday’s Observer Sean O’Hagan asks Will Brexit reopen old wounds with a new hard border? 

A recent Irish government survey noted that there are now around 200 border crossing points and an estimated 177,000 lorries, 208,000 vans and 1.85m cars travel to and from Northern Ireland every month. In spite of this progress, the prevailing question now occupying people either side of the Irish border, particularly those that live in its hinterland, is: does Brexit mean that checkpoints of some kind could reappear, to prevent the movement of goods and people from European Ireland into British Northern Ireland?

The border is 310 miles long, and, as we soon find out, can be difficult to follow even with the help of an Ordnance Survey map. It skirts five of the six counties of Northern Ireland – Down, Armagh, Tyrone, Fermanagh and Derry – as well as five Irish border counties – Louth, Monaghan, Cavan, Leitrim and Donegal. Along the way, it bisects mountains, towns, townlands, fields, rivers, bridges, farms and even a few houses wherein the occupants sit down to supper in Ireland before going to sleep across the hall in Britain. [Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd]

And O’Hagan reminds us of Seamus Heaney’s chilling poem From the Frontier of Writing:

and everything is pure interrogation

until a rifle motions you to move

with guarded unconcerned acceleration – 

a little emptier, little spent

as always by that quiver in the self,

subjugated, yes, and obedient. 

Do we need these borderlines? Will the ponies be safer? Will the larks fly higher? As Robert Frost, in Mending Wall, said:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall…

…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 offence.

Though he recognises, and challenges, the opposition from his neighbour, but:

I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.

The received wisdom of ages: the black, the white, the binary choice. What are we doing with these enclosures, these barriers? In due course they will all be reduced to dust and ashes as the world warms, and meteorites gather speed in the vacuum, teeming towards our fragile planet, mindlessly careering through our futures. Why make things worse?

However, despite this life of care I enjoy a beautifully unfettered walk over Hatterall Hill in Crucorney, with a steep descent in to the Vale of Ewyas, with a stop at the wonky Cymyoy church,

which was built on slippage from the cracked old red sandstone of the surrounding hills (cf Matthew chapter 16, verses 18 & 19, And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it…. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven…. I feel reassured?)

and end up in the Queen’s Head, which isn’t really a very Welsh name for a pub, is it? In fact neither the lady of the house, nor any of the clientele switch to Welsh when I enter….

In fact, none of them are Welsh…. A sandwich and a pint, and a few clues in the communally shared giant crossword (The Ghost of Thomas... five letters beginning in K?), and then it’s back across the borderline to Bristol….

Though, as Ry Cooder, Jim Dickinson and John Hiatt wrote:

When you reach the broken promised land

Every dream slips through your hands

And you'll know it's too late to change your mind

'Cause you pay the price to come so far

Just to wind up where you are

And you're still just across the borderline

Now you're still just across the borderline

And you're still just across the borderline

There is no going back…… There is only hope!


Please sponsor my 100 mile hike in support of research into Dementia through Alzheimer's Society by donating online at http://www.justgiving.com/Richard-GIBBS5

For Bob Dylan's Farm Aid rendition of the song, please see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0iTXU8bSpk


For one throb of the artery,
While on that old grey stone I sat
Under the old wind-broken tree,
I knew that One is animate
Mankind inanimate fantasy.

W B Yeats
A Meditation in Time of War