O still small voice of calm.....

The Narrow Road to Deepest Norfolk

A squadron of geese flies under the radar....  It wakes my wanderlust.....

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

 

John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

From our current home to where we are going to be living at the end of January, much of the journey follows the A10, a narrow route to the north. Shrouded in the mists of Cambridgeshire we pause at Ely, on the way, an aspiring island rising from the swampy realm of Hereward the Wake, a kind of pre Brexiteer in reverse, as he resisted the Norman invasion....

How times change....  This celestial lantern is not lit by smoky reeds.....

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home

 

Matsuo Basho

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Yes, home is where the heart aches....  And, to take our minds off the miseries of modern times, we have decided to go back in time, to upsize, to live it large.... We are moving house and home, cat and all....

As some will know, Amanda is a victim of Frontotemporal Dementia (semantic variant) and last summer I made the executive decision that we needed to have room to comfortably accommodate residential carers, and for our daughters to stay and help with her care without us all tripping over each other.  This meant moving further from the London region, and, for various reasons, I found what I was looking for in Norfolk, not far from King's Lynn.

There was something appealing about this property, once the village bakery, with its locally quarried Carr stone facade, and sufficient space to park an horse and cart.... So, after several months of indecision, complications with surveyors and builders, the arcane ways of solicitors and the difficulties of Covid, we now find that we have exchanged contracts and are committed to move....

The locals seem tranquil.... (when they're not whooping that is....)

There is a gentle air about the place which makes me think that my increasingly cantankerous nature may be calmed here....

(Non, I have no egrets....)

 

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Matsuo Basho

 

 

The local residents come in all shapes and sizes.  A senior doctor in the surgery just down the road is also the Queen's personal physician.  While another old fellow regularly takes the waters at nearby Blakeney Point.....

In fact, as our deal is sealed, other seals deal with the sea.... (please don't look at me like that....)

While others bathe in the shingles of time (which can be irritating)....

And yet others display what looks suspiciously like post-natal depression (if you can pardon the anthropomorphism.....)  

Or is it just that it is Sunday afternoon and the kids won't let you sleep?

Whale.... it takes all sorts, and you can't win everything all the time....

Winter solitude-
in a world of one colour
the sound of the wind.

Basho Matsuo

 

 

It's a wintry kind of landscape, brushed by cold winds from the far north, shrouded by frets and fogs and muddy airs....

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

Matsuo Basho

But I think we may find peace here.  I hope so.  The skies are immense,

And the village glows with a kind of subtle Christmas cheer that gives me hope that, on balance, the years to come may not all entirely be a waste of breath.....

We are now committed to move in a month.  I will let friends know the address when it is all over.....

Let Me Sing And I'm Happy

Non, je n'egret rien

Every summer now for some ten years or so a friend and I have taken a couple of July days out to walk somewhere in England.  We have wandered on the Northumbrian coast, in the Yorkshire Dales, the Peak District, in Norfolk, Suffolk, the Cotswolds, along the Kent coast, around Malvern and Stratford, and, this year, in rural Essex.

This year we found ourselves alongside the thundering A120 near Colchester, attempting to appreciate the joys of Essex in the shadow of the new Caligula, Al (Mammy) Jolson [I'd walk a million miles.....complete according to taste....]

the Blue Boris Chafer

In fact, there is an Irving Berlin song that Alexander Boris Piccaninny Letterbox Kipper Caligula Jolson made famous, by the title of Let Me Sing And I'm Happy, which just about sums up the onanistic joys of these happy days in their full fretulosity.....

What care I who makes the laws of a nation

Let those who will take care of its rights and wrongs

What care I who care for the world's affairs

As long as I can sing this popular song

Let me sing a funny song with crazy words that roll along

And if my song can start you laughing I'm happy, so happy

Smile!

In the muddy estuarine tracts of Essex I lose myself in reflections on life and love that are far, very very far, from Westminster or Brussels.  It is quiet here, and lovely.  A few oysters and a glass of stout and the soul develops resistance to the glib emptiness of daily politics.  Ancient toil and tidal wash provide an impression of things that matter more than greed and gain.

Godwits, rather than fuckwits, sift the silt here.....

And in the Stour Valley, where John Constable created the two dimensions that England has become (no offence, JC, you meant no harm: Ed.) the Common Darter does what a Common Darter does, not what some self-important hyper-ambitious ill-informed cabaret minstrel would decree.....

And the people of this world attempt to live their lives as well as they can, by the skiff.....

Or by the spray can.....

The haves, the have-nots.....

The ducks, raising their young....

The swans, loving their families.....

And the Drakes [pirateering, as some do]....

Let's be honest, Essex is no Shangri-La, but it's worth the detour.  It still surprises, and delights, me how one can find solace on the banks of a muddy creek, with the fluffy clatters and screeches of birds tempering the rotting reeks of the slimes, while gleaming insects sparkle over the shiny weeds.....

Yup, Essex is neither Magaluf nor the Maldives, but it saves air miles and carbon footprints, or exchange rates (and commission).  Maldon has a sweet gold and a tart salt, Mersey has all the oysters you can eat, and Clacton is 'on-sea'.....

On our way to our respective homes in the nondescript netherlands of this scabied aisle, we pause in the rain at Perry Green, to commune with some of Harry Moore's patient figures....

I admire these stoical unmoving, unmovable figures, who care nothing for rain nor dark.  It's an intriguing staging post.

In an ancient barn, tapestries tell silent stories,

While bronze casts stand impassive under the raindrops in quiet corners of the grounds, pieces of ordnance yet to be dropped on the innocent by the bombasts who preen to rule....

Let me sing a sad refrain of broken hearts that love in vain

And if my song can start you crying I'm happy

And thence to home, where peace comes dropping slow (if I am lucky). 

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait

Ni le mal

Tout ça m'est bien égal

Non, rien de rien 

Non, je ne regrette rien

C'est payé, balayé, oublié

Je me fous du passé

Avec mes souvenirs 

J'ai allumé le feu

Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs

Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux

Balayé les amours 

Avec leurs trémolos

Balayé pour toujours

Je repars à zéro

Non, rien de rien

Non, je ne regrette rien

Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait

Ni le mal

Tout ça m'est bien égal

Non, rien de rien 

Non, je ne regrette rien

Car ma vie

Car mes joies

Aujourd'hui 

Ça commence avec toi

Songwriters: Charles Dumont / Michel Vaucaire