RSPB Snettisham

11,720 Geese at Dawn

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful....

It is dark, and only a gleam on the eastern horizon heralds the day, but already small skeins of geese are beginning to take to the air. These are honking Canadas who have spent the night on the waters of the WWII gravel pits.  

A few of these explode past me barely above head height as I blunder along the access trail inland of Pit 2. Across the water a few lights flicker in the cottages along the shingle shore line where the hardiest of the Snettisham residents have their vulnerable dwellings.

I cross to the beach trail and look out into the gloom across the Wash. A dim red beacon glints at me from Lincolnshire, but I can't see much more beyond the pools that glisten in the mud.

I pass the RSPB Warden, Jim Scott, whose binoculars are trained on some activity in the distance.  That will be what I have come to see, the seasonal marvel of the pink-footed geese who have come here in their thousands to over-winter away from the Arctic freeze. 

As the light lifts I can make out the beginnings of the goose day. They are quite far out, as high tide is yet two hours off, but I can see them stirring.

I reach the grassy area beyond the Rotary hide. The sky is lightening now and the geese are coming thick and fast.  

I can make out their markings, but they have already reached quite a height as they pass overhead.    

I learn from Jim Scott later that he counted 11,720 on this morning.  I don't know what I expected to see, nor what sometimes may be seen, as every morning will be different. 

The pink-footed goose, anser brachyrhynchus, breeds in central Iceland, eastern Greenland, and western Svalbard (a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean). Around 360,000 spend the winter in the UK, with perhaps about a quarter of these nowadays coming to Norfolk to feed on the sugar-beet fields (they were first recorded on this crop in 1966, but it is now a mainstay of their winter diet).

I guess that on some mornings the sky may be filled with the birds as they beat their way inland, hungry after a night in the Wash.  On this occasion though they come in small waves, the skeins strung out across the ever changing sky.

I do not claim religion. Sadly, I lack faith.  But as the skies fill with glory I am struck by what I see. A golden sky, dotted with wonderful creatures moving across my vision in harmony, to perpetuate their lives together.

I lack faith, but at times I gain strength from reading, and the literature of religion is not entirely lost on me.

Sūra XCIII of the Koran, Dhuhā, or The Glorious Morning Light, was revealed to the prophet Muhammad at Mecca:  

By the glorious morning light

And by the night, when it is still,

Thy Guardian-Lord

Hath not forsaken thee,

Nor is He displeased,

And verily the hereafter

Will be better for thee

Than the present.

And soon will thy

Guardian-Lord give thee

(That wherewith) thou

Shalt be well-pleased.

Did He not find thee

An orphan and give thee

Shelter (and care)?

And He found thee

Wandering, and He gave

Thee guidance.

And He found thee

In need, and made

Thee independent

Therefore, treat not

The orphan with harshness,

Nor repulse the petitioner

(Unheard)

But the Bounty

Of thy Lord—

Rehearse and proclaim!

The pink-feet melt into the day, their excited chatter fading with their fleeting shapes.  As I watch the last of them go, a family of mute swans suddenly breaks across my line of sight, their whumphing wings startling me, whacking the air like bullets in the dawn....

Then, as the world turns, the sun explodes across the sky.  I look across pit 4 to the thickets beside the Loop trail.  In the foreground I see a mass of cormorants, their black shapes hooded against the light....

I lack faith.  I love literature.  the human family cannot resist images. One day, perhaps, we will return to the enjoyment of the images that were there before us all....

When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, we admired the island and wandered all over it....

Homer 

The Odyssey, Book IX

*     *     *     *     *

And then the morning is grey again. Drear day lies across the Wash and the moment has gone.....  Waders go about their business in the cold light, and the world turns.....

St Albans

Eyes Wide Shut

THE ST ALBANS FILM FESTIVAL

8th  - 10th  MARCH 2013

A Film Festival in  St Albans? But it doesn't even have a cinema!  (Well not at the moment anyway!)

Yes, but....

Stanley Kubrick lived, from 1978 until his death in 1999, just outside the city of St Albans in Hertfordshire, in Childwickbury Manor, where his widow Christiane still lives (and holds an annual Arts Fair - July 5th, 6th and 7th this year!)

And before him, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper was born here in 1874.

Who?

Well, apparently, he was a (or perhaps the) Pioneer of the British Film Industry. The son of local photographer Thomas Cooper and, although he is pretty well forgotten today, he was said to be responsible for several initiatives in film history, such as 'animation movies, the interpolated close-up, parallel action shots, cinemas with a raked floor, uniformed usherettes, and the isolated projection booth.' (I also blame him for Kiora and the choc-ice.... though I cannot be quite sure.) In 1908 he opened one of the first modern cinemas, the Alpha Picture Palace in St Albans, where free teas were offered during intervals, and the cheap seats were in the front rows!

Unfortunately this cinema burned down in 1927, but it rose again in December 1931 as The Capitol, sometime later called The Poly and later still The Regent.  In 1945 it was bought up by the Odeon group, and continued thus until its closure in 1995, when the Multiplex opened at Jarman Park, Hemel Hempstead (though Melbourne-Cooper had died in 1961).

At its peak the cinema had 1,728 seats on two levels (you entered at balcony level and went down to the stalls) a twenty-foot stage, three dressing rooms, a cafe and a 'Compton two manual six rank theatre organ.'  Wow!

James Hannaway, Odyssey Open Day September 2010 (used with permission)

After closure it slipped into dereliction and was about to be demolished for commercial "development" of the site when, in November 2009, the Odeon was purchased by James Hannaway, who restored the Rex Cinema in Berkhamsted (where I spent many a happy afternoon watching Edgar Lustgarten and Elvis Presley in my yoof.....). He managed to raise a million pounds, and work to revive the building began in 2011.  

The Odyssey - finally open, December 2014

A competition in November 2010 gave it its new name of ‘Odyssey’ with a nod to Stanley Kubrick and now it is estimated that it may open in 2014 as a splendid single screen cinema with five hundred seats, a cafe and a bar, though further funds are still needed.

"The St Albans Film Festival now aims to be an annual event for both local people and visitors.  Filmmakers will be able to display their talent and have the opportunity to win awards and to gain recognition. Film-lovers will have a chance to see some unique and fantastic films and to celebrate the superb film making history of St Albans."  [Adapted from the Film Festival website.]

Thing is, St Albans has been a centre of the visual arts since Boadicea invented the twin pigtail. Enchanted by the valley of the river Ver (and the proximity to Londinium for commuting Roman Bankers charioting down Watling Street to their clubs in town) a settlement became a city became an arts centre with the 0BC equivalent of David Lloyd and Jarman Park.  If they had had films they would most certainly have screened them!  As it was they had to content themselves with lounging on mosaics warmed by hypocausts....  But it's all much the same thing.

And then, in the fullness of time, came the medieval period.  As night follows day, the floors became the ceilings, and the Abbey Church grew tall, using roman bricks and with a painted wooden crossing not so unlike the tesserae of villa pavements.

It's not really a celebrity birthmark, but the Abbey is actually the highest cathedral above sea level in the UK.  It was also a  source of controversy in the late 19th century when William Morris and his pals became very upset by the renovation of the church roof which introduced the pitch we see today (as opposed to the medieval flat roof you experience inside.)  "Though the Committee for the restoration of St Albans Cathedral have determined to alter that church by putting a high-pitched roof on the nave in the place of the present flat one, the Committee of our Society cannot give up all hope that the public in general may yet interest itself in the matter, and refuse to support a scheme regarded by so many archaeologists as rash and destructive....."  [William Morris, unpublished letter to 'The Times,' August 26th 1878]

Later artists would embellish the space, with the North Transept Rose Window being designed by Alan Younger and given by Laporte Industries in 1989.  This is a glorious, almost cinematic, piece of work, with kaleidoscopic colours streaming through circles within circles.

Decorative was not the only watchword for the artistry of St Albans, however, as Charles Dickens also blessed the city with a powerful link when he modelled Bleak House on a  fine house which was then on the outskirts of the conurbation.  [Dickens probably visited St Albans when staying with the Bulwer Lyttons at Knebworth though he wrote the novel when staying at Broadstairs in a house that has since been named after the novel.]

Bleak House, the home of John Jarndyce and his ward Esther Summerson,
as it is today

St Albans is currently a muddle of different styles and tendencies. It is not difficult to envisage the Roman order of the settlement, as roads dissect each other and the touches of Roman walls and bricks do not seem out of place. The market place, with its thriving stalls stretching up the main street twice a week, still carries that flavour of trade that markets must always have had, with bowls of fruit or vegetables all for a pound, or three sea-bream for a tenner, and so on. It's a busy thoroughfare and is the commercial focus of a town that has seen good years and bad.

At the heart of St Albans is the Clock Tower, marking the passing of time and overseeing the busy streets below. This tower, the oldest of its kind in England, was built between 1403 and 1412, and stands 19.6m (64ft) high with walls up to 1.22m (4ft).  The original bell, cast at Aldgate by William and Robert Burford (who worked from 1371 to 1418) is still there, poised on its scissor brace oak frame, weighing in at one ton....

The shrine of St Alban

St Alban has the distinction of being the island of Britain's first martyr.  He was a resident of Verulamium who, apparently, worshipped all the prescribed Roman deities including the emperor, but who slipped up when he gave shelter to a Christan priest, by the name of Amphibalus.....

Alban was punished (by execution in 209) for his kindness, and the great Norman Abbey, of which the church is a surviving part from 1077, replacing a Saxon building, remains to honour him.

A familiar cry round here is, "What have the Romans ever done for us?" and it is quite understandable that the average St Albanite might question the benefits of the heritage of a foreign power.  But was it not fate that the Romans chose to settle in a pleasant and convenient part of Anglia?  Yes, there might have been an awkward clash with a young woman in a sprightly coupe.  And the disagreement about religious freedom was unfortunate.  But the legacy of all that creativity attracted not only school parties in their mega-cohorts, but also artists such as the unquestionably magnificent Stanley Kubrick, who, surely, held the world in the palm of his hand when he chose the gentle countryside surrounding St Albans as his place to shine.  

And don't forget Arthur Melbourne-Cooper....

It is not surprising, after all, that St Albans is a fine place to hold a film festival.....

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper's 'Matches: An Appeal' - allegedly the oldest animated film in the world (1899) - on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HD9NwzFNLY

http://www.stalbansfilmfestival.com/

http://www.childwickbury-arts-fair.com/

http://odysseypictures.co.uk/about/