North by North-East

Over the Hills

Bolton Castle 
where Mary, Queen of Scots, was held prisoner in 1568

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defines Belladonna (n) thus: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison.  A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.....

Which has nowt to do with owt, for the moment, but I may return to this later.....

Let me track back a bit.  We were recently having a good time in Swaledale:

A goat - [No idea why, Ed.]

And in Swaledale I wondered lovely as a clown [Stoppit, Ed.], quoting Robert Frost to no-one:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

Mending Wall

(I'll come back to this) and I passed by the hamlet (I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw. Hamlet, II.ii.312–13)  [Get on with it!  Ed.] of Muker.....  

'Nuff said.

So I retraced some steps and revisited Wensleydale.....Gromit, that's it! Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese! [Gromit is confused; looks at "Cheese Holidays" magazine] Now, where were we? Places you find cheese. Lancashire, Cheddar, Wensleydale, Philadelphia, Tesco's...

Yes, but it isn't only cheese!

Wood anemones and Common Dog Violets

I pause at Aysgarth.  Another time I was here in the rain, and, apart from my (late) friend Lindsay, there was no one else, just rushing brown waters.  Today the sun shines, there is less water, but there is space.  I relish the sound of water falling, the Ure driving down 30 metres in a kilometre, step by step, upper, middle and lower falls giving easy pleasure to visitors who, like me, have a little time and no reason to be elsewhere.....

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Leisure

William Henry Davies

Now you may find this a leap too far, but Jimi Hendrix comes to my mind.  

Waterfall

Nothing can harm me at all

My worries seem so very small

With my waterfall

I can see

My rainbow calling me

Through the misty breeze

Of my waterfall

Some people say

Daydreaming's for all the

Lazy minded fools

With nothin' else to do

So let them laugh, laugh at me

So just as long as I have you

To see me through

I've got nothing to lose

Long as I have you

Waterfall

Don't ever change your ways

Fall with me for a million days

Oh, my waterfall

May This Be Love

Jimi Hendrix

1967

[Not necessarily Nobel winning poetry but when coloured by the Experience it becomes beautifully fluid:  https://youtu.be/T4MBwvZWOQE]

Onward.....

Whoops!  

Anyway.  One has to keep on keeping on....  So I walk amongst the fields and barns of upper Wensleydale from Askrigg (whose white towered church, dedicated to St Oswald, has stood there since 1180), and my thoughts are transfigured by the upland air, the folding shoulders of the hills and the confused pleasure of being alone in the world.

Then to Hardraw, to check in again with JMW Turner and review the highest single drop waterfall in England, though a little rain would add some force.... 

Then, heading north, but barely a crow's tone from where Amanda and I lived under Ingleborough way back when, up the Mallerstang Valley (England's last wilderness - David Bellamy) following the River Eden, where freight trains hark back to times of industrial power:

And Red Scar and Mallerstang Edge rise to the East, bare and craggy, like the lives of farmers (and their sheep) hereabouts:

Then, it's over the hills again. Through Teesdale, then up, skirting Warcop Fell training ground, where I am reminded, by the red flag, of the 1966 World Cup and the excitement of Geoff Hurst and extra time (watched by 32.3 million people) in the Warcop Camp NAAFI (not all in the NAAFI) before we were driven in a three-tonner (rehearsing Hymns Ancient and Modern - amongst other songs) up onto the high moors to bivvy amongst the coughing cattle.  

Like Roman soldiers....

But I find comfort in Stanhope, with kind friends David and Sarah, whose hospitality smoothes away the emptiness of the stony hills.  We walk by the Wear and watch a pair of Dippers bobbing and splashing and frolicking in mutual affection:

And then, high across the Derwent, low across the Tyne and here is Chesters, a cavalry fort known then as Cilurnum, dating from around 124 AD, home, at that time, to around 500 men and horses.  Details from then on are unclear, though we know that the 2nd Asturians occupied (and rebuilt) the barracks around 180 AD.

{It may be of interest at this point that Ambrose Bierce defined a Barrack (n) as: A house in which soldiers enjoy a portion of that of which it is their business to deprive others.}

Anyway, onwards and upwards, over another hill, and here we are above Housesteads Roman Fort, walking the wall that Emperor Hadrian designed (AD 122: 60 miles long, four metres high, garrisoned by some 10,000 soldiers) to stop Mexicans [Some mistake? Ed.] and fentanyl [Surely you mean Woad? Ed.] from being drug into the Empire by wayward Scots and others......

It is impressive. It is imperial.  It is imperative. It is rough. [It is ruined, Ed.]  It is long and cold and windy and very up and down along the Whin Sill (I know: I have walked at least half of it).....

And it is a wonder not only that it exists, but that, in a world without mobile phones, TV, laptops, air fryers and takeaway pizzas anyone survived in these draughty roofless, unplumbed hovels.....

Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,

I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

Roman Wall Blues

W H Auden

And so, to flip back to my opening quotation, just think that at least some of these guys would have been wondering why the only Belladonna they could avail themselves of was bitterly poisonous.  They were a very long way from home.....

Still, it does give teachers the excuse to get out of the classroom......

{I know:  I've been there....}

I look up Wall in Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, but the only reference is to Wall Street, n: A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke.  That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in heaven.....

Well, it's apt I suppose.....  (I wonder whether the yellow infanta has read any of this?)

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 offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall.....

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

Before I turn south I pass another stone building, seemingly part ancient castle, part pill box.  This is Crindledykes Limekiln, one of three hundred in Northumberland that were active in the nineteenth century.  Another reminder of things that are over the hill.....

It's cold and windy up here, and I begin my return to warmer climes, pausing at Corbridge to view yet more Roman remains, then through Slaley Forest, onto Blanchland Moor, idly thinking of Hamlet and Hitchcock, as one does, glad that I am not being chased by a crop duster.  I stop the car at the top of a rocky outcrop.... 

....and find myself leaning down through yellowing grass over the waxy orange cliff of President Trump's forehead, sculpted into the mass of Mount Crushmoor, and I grasp the outstretched hand of Eve Marie Saint, and, then I ......

.... find myself staying  with more old friends, the superb wildlife sculptor Simon Griffiths and Heather and family, in Castleside, County Durham.  How I got there I haven't a clue, nor can I say where Eve went, but that's partly the point of North by Northwest, (Cary Grant didn't know what was going on either, and Hitchcock liked that - and anyway it's my prerogative to make some things up.....)

I am but mad north-north-east....

But the truth is it was great to catch up with friends who put up with me, and to roam over the hills and far away in the north of this land.  

Thank you all.... Keep looking up.....

Simon Griffiths, Wildlife Sculptor

https://www.simongriffithssculpture.co.uk/

And thus, after another convivial overnight, I drive the long way back down into the Mezzogiorno, returning, like a faithful puffin to its burrow, like an Easter bunny scampering to its warren.....

[Just sign off, Ed.]

That high sound in the air

Is nothing but the draught in cold chimneys

Drawing taut the note of longing

As I listen northwards.

Lament

David Craig

 

London

 Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire.....

In my ongoing attempts to 'improve' myself - which begs certain questions - I am on a train to London reading John Higgs's little book, William Blake Now, a book which endears itself to me on various levels - not least because it raises questions about the self-importance of Tracey Emin.

I say not least, because that really is an unimportant attraction. But not to worry. I am immersing myself in the metropolis for a day or so, 'bettering' myself as I wander (?)

In, London, published in Songs of Experience in 1794, William Blake, wrote:

 

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

Times change.  These days perhaps we see masks of weakness, masks of woe.....

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

But that doesn't stop us looking, and taking pictures.....

I am in Tate Britain.  One of the greatest monuments to slavery yet to be torn down.....

Paula Rego (with whom, incidentally, I share a birthday.... yeah, why should you care, though perhaps you will remember it now?) articulates outrage and  echoes some of Blake's concerns:

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

I know little of Blake.....  But I can, and will, learn....  In America, A Prophecy, he wrote:

The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent:

Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America's shore,

Piercing the souls of warlike men who rise in silent night.

Q: Would the world be a better place if the likes of Johnson and Raab had read/taken heed of/understood these lines?  

A: Probably not....

I am in Dulwich, trembling at the thought of Mr Farage (who with a schoolboy smirk haunts the place) and his €70K+ pension from the European Parliament to which he contributed so much:

I am here to see a bunch of flowers:

And assorted photos of plants etc.....

But what really interests me is Rembrandt van Rjin's Girl at a Window, who gazes naturalistically at us from 1645 as if the future was a dream:

And then, just by her is Titus, one of Rembrandt's sons, who died soon after this portrait was finished, in 1668, just a year before the master himself expired.  The haunted, slightly pained, expression contrasts with the girl, and reminds us that to every yin there is a yang - to every upper there is a downer.....  

Or so it seems?

 

Back on the street, I think again of Blake's words:

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls

And how, just eight years later, Wordsworth would write:

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

Though to do him justice, he did also write:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

The World Is Too Much With Us

So, Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire.......

I call this selfie, Self-immolation, and append William Blake's poem: A Divine Image

Cruelty has a Human Heart,

And Jealousy a Human Face;

Terror the Human Form Divine.

And Secrecy the Human Dress.

The Human Dress is forged Iron,

The Human Form a fiery Forge,

The Human Face a furnace seal'd,

The Human Heart its hungry Gorge.

 

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

Musée des Beaux Arts 

(1940)

W. H. Auden 

*****

There is so much to learn, and I have squandered so much time.  

(But some of it has been fun..... and I will dance with Paula Rego and sing with Blake.....)

*****

Not Dark Yet

Time will say nothing

Shadows are falling and I been here all day

It's too hot to sleep and time is running away

Feel like my soul has turned into steel

I've still got the scars that the sun didn't let me heal

There's not even room enough to be anywhere

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well, I found myself in the middle of a dark wood, mulling over the obscure paths we follow in life, and it occurred to me that my sense of humanity was going down the drain....

Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain

I saw this haunted, frightened tree, its trunk smashed by the wind, and, the thought occurred to me that,

I just don't see why I should even care

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

So, being a little footloose, and free of fantasy, I closed the heavenly door of my private and personal  dwelling, through whose leaded panes the sun was winking goodbye,

Wished the fish in my moat farewell, envying for a moment their gelid blood, their fourth degree turpitude,

And, choosing not on this occasion (that  ontological option - free choice! or is that epistemological?) to extricate my old bicycle from the clutches of the spreading bracken,

I light out for the territory, fearful that some Aunt Sally might try to sivilize (sic) me....

You know, I really can't stand it?  I been there before.....

Well I been to London and I been to gay Paree

I followed the river and I got to the sea

I've been down to the bottom of a whirlpool of lies

I ain't lookin' for nothin' in anyone's eyes

As the dusky gatherings confuse me, and  the wheels fall off and burn, (the seat covers fade and the water moccasins die),

Well, there's too many people

And they're all too hard to please

I take refuge by the fireside of a quiet inn, picking at the warp and weft that hold together our current chaos.....

I feel the spinning of the world, the careering past light and dark so blinding as to take away my inspiration, my very breath....  Outside the bric-a-brac of accumulations sits fixed upon the shelf,

The tin of 'Brasso' out of reach behind the closed glass of time.

Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear

It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Down the street the dogs are barkin'

And the day is a-gettin' dark

As the night comes in a-fallin'

The dogs'll lose their bark

The tower of St Mildred's looms above me, bells chiming in practiced peals,

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

It is night and the light is dead.  I touch the boards above my face, the claustrophobic walls of seeming gentle life, wishing for a dawn against my will.....

I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from

Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer

It's not dark yet 

but it's gettin' there.

Not Dark Yet 

Bob Dylan

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If I Could Tell You

W H Auden (1940)

*     *     *     *

Footnote:

Not Dark Yet was recorded in January 1997 and released in September that year on the album Time Out of Mind.

In the Chapter entitled Paul Smith, at the top of page 213 of my 2011 Picador edition of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel American Psycho, I read the following sentences:

Nancy asks, "How's the shad roe at Rafaeli's?" Right now, outside this store, it's not dark yet but it is getting there.