A Valediction

A February Morning

The late John Prine, in his song, Illegal Smile, sang:

When I woke up this morning

Things were looking bad

Seemed like total silence

Was the only friend I had.....

I feel like this, sometimes, but John is late, now, and in another song, he had this to sing:

When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand

Thank Him for more blessings than one man can stand

Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock and roll band

Check into a swell hotel; ain't the afterlife grand?

[Chorus]

And then I'm gonna get a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale,

Yeah, I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the Tilt-a-whirl

'Cause this old man is goin' to town

When I get to Heaven

Which is certainly more hopeful, though, when I woke early this morning, I had mixed feelings, to be honest. I made tea and read the paper, but pretty soon got sick of the news.

Then Phoebus-Apollo begins to rise, freckling the frosted grass and breathing day into night. I put on my boots and wander to the graveyard, as one does (I take the air in graveyards, when take the air I must ~ Beckett) where, ghost-like, a barn owl stares me down, his mask softly spooky like a konfused klansman:

The stones are still, and silent, and snowdrops are gathered to surround the dead:

It is peaceful.  Just me and the owl and some sleepy memories auf Gottes Acker (on God's acre).  The sun defrosts the snowdrops as the moss crawls across the sword.  If only there could be more such peace....

The owl has no rings, but his/her feathers, coloured from cinnamon to scallop roe, dusted with specks of black pepper above and lace white below are fine enough for me.  

I leave him to the quiet of the churchyard and walk up Eaton Drove, past Limekiln Plantation, on past Eaton Farm and the dusty barn (where the owl roosts) towards Sedgeford. Black-headed gulls, in their winter plumage, pick over the newly ploughed field toward Long Belt......

February is often a cold, grey month, and some years it just gets in the way between winter proper and spring, but today is a bright, sweet day, despite the chill.  I try to clear my head, discarding worries like empty shells, breathing daylight into my blood.  It is enough to be alive, knowing it isn't for ever. Nothing is for ever.  Trump, Putin, Starmer, Farage, Orban - and the rest - will all one day be dust, thank God.....  

It is enough to be alive, and the world around me is spinning - spinning strands of life into a fascinating web of intricacy, beautiful in this light.

I note a buzzard atop a budding tree in Sedgeford Carr. He/she sees me too and majestically lifts into the sky, then floats to heaven along the Heacham River valley, above St Mary's church.

I turn up the track towards Inmere Farm.  Two red kites scan the fields around me by Hardacre Wood, one swooping low as if to inspect me, the tail switching gently to steer the beautiful body across the drafts:

Then, down Fring Road, two hares, mistaking the bright day for March, play a mating game:

Where did she go?

Here I am!

Yes, there is love and wonder in the world, if only you can find it.....
Soon I am home again, and it's still only ten o'clock.  John Prine comes to mind again:

It's gonna be a long Monday

Sittin' all alone on a mountain

By a river that has no end

It's gonna be a long Monday

Stuck like the tick of a clock

That's come unwound - again

And again

Long Monday

But, as ever there are silver linings and there are clouds.  I walked this walk, and wrote this piece, thinking of my friend, novelist Simon Mawer, who died unexpectedly at the age of 76 a few days ago. My thoughts go out to Connie, Matthew and Julia, and to his grandchildren, who will grow without him now.  But I have to think pleasant thoughts of happy times.  Only a fortnight ago Simon contributed to the National Brain Appeal in response to my Coastal Path walk. And only last August we had a happy lunch in Ely.

And forty-five years or so ago we sat on his narrow terrace overlooking the village of Formello, north of Rome, sipping rosso from Torre in Pietra, putting the world to rights while the swifts screamed around, drinking the mosquitoes in the evening air, then mysteriously morphing into bats as the light faded, and night fell.

Now the night has really fallen.

Sleep well Simon.

Every Grain of Sand

 

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.....

The North Norfolk Coast near Holme-next-the-sea

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need

When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed

There’s a dyin’ voice within me reaching out somewhere

Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

A Dunnock

Don’t have the inclination to look back on any mistake

Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break

In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand

In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Time passes.  Whether high on Everest or low on the Dead Sea, time passes.  From ashes to ashes, dust to dust, (if the women don't get you the liquor must....)

This is not morbidity.  We come from nothing, and to nothing we go.  

Or, perhaps, at least, so I believe.....

Brent Geese

The phone rang in my car.  I was about to park but was on hands free.  He's been taken to hospital.....  He will probably be back home this afternoon.  I just thought you should know.....

You never know when the reaper will reap.  We must live this day like no other.  Every day is precious, for it won't come again.  

I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame

And every time I pass that way I always hear my name

Then onward in my journey I come to understand

That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

All Saints, Fring

I could pick bones with Mr Dylan.  Though he would indubitably better me at the game. But I was never convinced by his Christianity..... I was never really convinced by Christianity myself, and for someone to embrace it as a whole new discovery never rang true with me.

I was never convinced by his harmonica playing, either.  While Donovan may have made his mouth organ sound like someone blowing soup through a comb....  I think Bob Dylan was always a little random, a little loose - just as Larry Adler was too tight, too smart.  Sometimes it is painful to play Mr Dylan's finest pieces now just because of the harmonica breaks (Has anybody got an E harmonica?)  If you really want to hear the blues harp as it was intended to be, seek out Sonny Boy Williamson II (Alex - Rice - Miller) and his recording of Help Me.....   [Or Folk Festival of the Blues, 1963, Bring It On Home]

But I digress..... (as one is wont to do these days) and I should thank (sic) more clearly.  

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.....

When we were young, and carefree, we didn't expect life to become harder.  Being young was hard enough.  Til death us do part was a joke.  If we married we would marry for enduring love and good time, with either partner as grateful as the other.  

Plough that furrow.  Harrow that field.....

And the church was no help.  At least not to me.  If God had a place in the world, it was a place in our culture.  Informing characters and plots in fiction.  Guiding the moral decisions of law-makers and teachers.  God was not someone close to me.....

St Mary, Titchwell

But now.....  Now the  churches are empty, their shells protecting forgotten histories, holding echoes of hymns carelessly sung, or prayers vainly directed to selves long buried in the grounds around.....

All Saints, Bircham Newton

Yes, now.  Like Faustus I regret my insouciance. Forgive me my blasphemy, God?  Take me back?  Let me be untouched by the rigours of uncertainty.  Leave me untouched by the pains of death?

Let my wife alone.....

All Saints, Bircham Newton

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear

Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer

The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way

To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

And then the Church reminds us of conflict and plague.  Deaths unexpected.  Youths, of various nations, brought suddenly to the ground.....

St Mary, Great Bircham

But the sky still surrounds us, unsettled and uncertain.....

And the crowning virus appears where you  may not expect it....

So we walk the shores with the wind and the waves......

The Royal West Norfolk Golf Club, Brancaster

Disturbing the one-legged Oyster Catchers.....

And tripping over the remnants of wars long past.....

Remains of a military tracked vehicle on the beach at Titchwell

The Avocet's name is unfortunate, perhaps.  It reminds me of 'Exocet' and all that that entails.  But I marvel still at the sleek irregularity as one slips past me at Titchwell.  Such a razor sharp  outfit.  Such a confident flight.....

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night

In the violence of a summer’s dream, in the chill of a wintry light

In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space

In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

Reedbeds and Marsh at Brancaster

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea

Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand

The beach at Hunstanton

BOB DYLAN 

 © 1981 by Special Rider Music