Why do I walk so much?

Is it the nearest thing I can find to meditation, or my way of paying my dues to my inner nomad?  Is it for the exercise that’s in it?  Or for the easy companionship when I walk with others?  There are elements of all of these, but it comes down to the fact that I love it.  The reasons don’t matter.  It’s the time I feel most myself, most at peace, and most interested in life. When I’ve been walking I can enjoy other activities even more.

Walking in remote countryside clears my brain. Walking in cities may lead to odd encounters and discoveries.  It makes little difference if it’s somewhere I know well, or somewhere new.  Though if I had to choose I would probably go with the new. Like Baudelaire in his poem Le voyage and like many people – novelty enchants me.

But this search for something new mustn’t be too superficial – and walking gives me the chance to feel I belong to a place, and to lay hold and possess it in return.  I think it’s on the same level as learning a language, which is a way of understanding a country and feeling at home there.

I tend not to philosophise about this in my walking blog, but I have certainly put some miles under my boots this year.

Bluebells and more

We go to see the bluebells in Barnsdale woods again. The sun is sulking behind the clouds. The trees are showing shades of new green,  yet the wind blows chill.  Summer's almost here, but she's forgotten something.

In the air above the grassy slopes are the first swifts I've seen this year, diving and swooping.

Blackthorn trees, their blossoms beginning to brown, as close by the creamier pink tinged hawthorn flowers are taking over.

Over the cattle grid into the woodland. By the path a few bluebells, mixed with cowslips and pink campion, and now the blue mist and the sweet smell as we walk deeper into the wood.

On our left the ground slopes down to the water - trees stand knee deep, like mangroves out of their comfort zone - of course they're willows.   We walk past memorial benches,  fallen trees,  tepee-shaped stacks of branches.

Birds sing. People walk, talk and cycle.  In a car park fishermen are putting their gear into a van - N29 FLY.  It crawls past us as we climb the hill.

Up there is a bench I haven't seen before.  And an orchard, planted for the Diamond Jubilee and open by "HM" the Lord Lieutenant of Rutland - in honour of "HRH" Queen Elizabeth.  Is this a red plot hatched by crazy egalitarians?

We walk down the grassy slope, back to the woods.  Stop to look, take photographs, even though the sunlight is still AWOL.

Woodland turns to grass, and here the air is thick with dancing midges - I swallow one, then disguise myself as a Western outlaw, with a handkerchief round nose and mouth, tied dashingly behind my ears.
Where are the swifts?

As we begin the drive home the sky turns blue and five miles later the sun comes out.

Random thoughts on -ees from the pensive pedant

I’m gradually becoming a non-pedant on grammar and spellings, but some things grate.

When did we stop doing things like retiring or attending?  Surely some who does things is an –er, not an –ee?

So you love – you are a lover.  I drive – I am a driver.  I employ – I am an employer.  

I am employed – I am an employee.

So why, if you attend a fashion show, have you suddenly become an “attendee”?

“a bottle of which was handed to each show attendee . . .”
(from Guardian 06.03.2013)

It sounds no more elegant to me than an attender – and sounds as though you’ve been attended. Why not avoid the issue and hand a bottle to everyone who attended?

Then pensioners, or people who have retired, are referred to as retirees, as though they’ve all been retired against their will. 

Is this all a plot to normalise passivity?  (Not a serious question - yet.)

sheela-na-gig

stone carving
female with fearsome features
to drive out evil spirits

at Braunston in Rutland.


She may be a relic of a previous pagan site. Used face down as a step until rediscovered in 1920 or so.

Wed 18 April - school walk and allotments

I wake to the sound of rain on the skylight, but it soon stops. So I decide to walk the mile to school with six-year-old Isaac, rather than take the car. 

He shows me the way, and tells me which roads are busy.

As we reach the school playground he speeds up, and heads for his classroom.  No time for goodbyes.  A nod from the teacher – we both know he’s there now.

usual routine

with a different adult -

all grown up

I wander back through the wet streets – I don’t know this part of Leeds very well, but I relish the northern accents I hear around me.

I walk back past the allotment gardens, which slope down into the valley.  There are long waiting lists for allotments now, and they are all used – with carefully constructed compost heaps, raised beds, and plots prepared for the new crops.

Twenty years ago no one bothered to grow vegetables, apart from a few enthusiasts, eccentrics and old men. 

Some plots still have the ramshackle look – nothing too humble to be reused.  Others are equipped with purpose-made cloches, greenhouses and water-butts.

allotment gardens

come into their own

after the lazy years.

Curmudgeonly egalitarian speaks out . . New Year Honours - Why?

I'm quoting George Orwell here, from 1944 - and still we have the system.

"Looking through the photographs in the New Year's Honours List, I am struck (as usual) by the quite exceptional ugliness and vulgarity of the faces displayed there. It seems to be almost the rule that the kind of person who earns the right to call himself Lord Percy de Falcontowers should look at best like an overfed publican and at worst like a tax-collector with a duodenal ulcer... "...When you remember that nearly the whole of the rest of the world has dropped it, it does seem strange to see this flummery still continuing in England, a country in which the very notion of aristocracy perished hundreds of years ago. The race-difference on which aristocratic rule is usually founded had disappeared from England by the end of the Middle Ages, and the concept of "blue blood" as something valuable in itself, and independent of money, was vanishing in the age of Elizabeth. Since then we have been a plutocracy plain and simple. Yet we still make spasmodic efforts to dress ourselves in the colours of medieval feudalism. "Think of the Herald's Office solemnly faking pedigrees and inventing coats of arms with mermaids and unicorns couchant, regardant and what-not, for company directors in bowler hats and striped trousers! What I like best is the careful grading by which the honours are always dished out in direct proportion to the amount of mischief done: baronies for Big Business, baronetcies for fashionable surgeons, knighthoods for tame professors. But do these people imagine that by calling themselves lords, knights and so forth they somehow come to have something in common with the medieval aristocracy? Does Sir Walter Citrine, say, feel himself to be rather the same kind of person as Childe Roland (Childe Citrine to the dark tower came!), or is Lord Nuffield under the impression that we shall mistake him for a crusader in chain-armour? "However, this honours-list business has one severely practical aspect, and that is that a title is a first-class alias. Mr X can practically cancel his past by turning himself into Lord Y. Some of the ministerial appointments that have been made during this war would hardly have been possible without some such disguise. As Tom Paine put it: "These people change their names so often that it is as hard to know them as it is to know thieves.""

- 'As I Please', Tribune, 07/01/44.

The whole caboodle makes me cringe and I hate it when people I respect accept honours - the latest being David Hockney, who receives the Order of Merit.  OK, not a knighthood, but why does he need it - we surely know how good his work is, and he has made plenty of money.  I love his early drawings and his prints of California and Yorkshire.  And I admire his capacity for work.

I may be an egalitarian curmudgeon - well, not maybe -  I am, of course.


Well, bugger my boots, I hadn't remembered he'd refused a knighthood in 1990.
Graun article

Pendle Hill story

I'm noting this link - as a rationalist, I think one thing - as an enthusiast of dark stories . . .

Festival of Christmas lights

I spotted my first house decorated for Christmas, and illuminated, on the evening of November 30th.  At the bottom of Rockingham Hill.

Autumn

I'm a little puzzled by autumn this year.  It has a shabby feel.  Leaves aren't changing as they often do to bright flames, but seem to be shrinking into dirty green then brown.
I went out to snap some autumn this afternoon, berries are good, Virginia creeper is red, but not a lot of golden.  Maybe I should have patience and wait for autumn-yet-to-come?

Oh, I did spot my first pumpkins in a window!

berries

Virginia creeper looking a little wind-ravaged

some kind of seed pod

poppies flowering in late October

In  our local pocket park

Doggy bags - go for it.

I enjoyed this article on the Beeb website.

It brought back memories of a lunch with a friend in Brooklyn at the Trattoria Mangia, where I found two large panini a little too much and they insisted I should take one away with me.  I looked for someone hungry - and found one - my daughter, who'd spent the morning with her friends and hadn't eaten.

Edison on opportunity

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

-Thomas Edison

A bit preachy, but it amused and informed me.  Am I in 'self-improvement mode'?

Blackberry heaven

I've been promising myself for two or three weeks that I'd go and pick some blackberries.  Only a panful, but enough for a couple of crumbles, along with apple. They're bubbling gently on the stove now.  Autumn - crab apples , sloes, blackberries - all there to be enjoyed.


I passed two men with metal detectors, scoping a field, saw a couple of buzzards, and finished up walking uphill back to the village, with the chance to look back over the valley in the warm sun. 
Oh, and the crumble was delicious.

Silliness

I'm not entirely sure why, but there's something about the sky and the colours that makes me think of tall ships, instead of . . .

. . .

In the space between 
perception and reality
lies imagination

sea or sky
canvas or steel
escape or everyday

Feeding the addictions

How much coffee do they think I need? 

Well . . . I guess they know me too well. 


As for the other addiction,   last Friday the boots held out ok in the serious all-day wet weather, though some damp came in from above.  They'll get another application of wax before I go out again.  

Since last week I've had two wonderful walks in dry weather wearing the shoes - comfortable.

The rain gods - are they with me or agin me?

I go to hang some washing out . . . spots of rain . . . so I think maybe I'll make a start on clearing the shed . . .and I just heave a load of stuff on to the lawn, and it pours. . . back to old faithful computer, and lo! the skies are clearing.   Maybe it's time for a coffee and a scone?  And even better - Harry's just volunteered to make it!

At the risk of rabbiting on about nothing to a greater extent than usual - yay, I cleaned out the shed, and stuck two loads of washing out, and had scones with clotted cream at coffee time.

And I managed to take a carful of wood, plastic and metal rubbish to the recycling centre - local tip.

Another random entry:

Written as part of an article about self-editing for the aborted WD mag.

'A poem is never finished', said Paul Valéry, 'only abandoned.' This is the current abandoned version. To be fair the whole enterprise this was planned for was abandoned too!

How do you get your poem to scan?
Do you bang with a spoon on the base of a pan?
Do you count all your words or just hope that they flow
Do you edit, fuhgeddit, or let it all blow?

Do you sing words along to the tune of a song?
Do you bounce rubber balls or yourself off the walls?
Whatever you do keep it up if it works,
Make poetry fun with these physical jerks.

Do you let raw emotion roar out on the page
or force the caged tiger to swallow his rage?
Do you prune out the clichés with merciless knife
and throw out excess words that drain it of life?

Can you rhyme all the time or is rhyming too pat?
Do you scour the thesaurus, or do without that?
Sometimes you may find that a word from a book
can lead you up roads where you’d not thought to look.

March 08

The original was more fun, because the mechanism was visible.

Should we blame St Swithun?

One of those traditions my mother was so fond of passing on:

St Swithin's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithin's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain na mair

Here's some of the background from a bbc page.
St Swithun (Swithin) was a Saxon bishop of Winchester, who lived in the ninth century

Swithin died on 2 July 862. According to tradition, he had asked to be buried humbly. His grave was just outside the west door of the Old Minster, so that people would walk across it and rain fall on it in accordance with Swithin's wishes.
On 15 July 971 though, Swithin's remains were dug up and moved to a shrine in the cathedral by Bishop Ethelwold. Miraculous cures were associated with the event, and Swithin's feast day is the date of the removal of his remains, not his death day.
However, the removal was also accompanied by ferocious and violent rain storms that lasted 40 days and 40 nights and are said to indicate the saint's displeasure at being moved. This is probably the origin of the legend that if it rains on Saint Swithin's feast day, the rain will continue for 40 more days.

 Yesterday was fine and fair here - this morning it has been raining with intent. 

Of swimming, child-minding and other things

I went to the pool as Esther was doing her tri training on Monday. I swam 50 lengths in about three quarters of an hour. Mainly breast-stroke, as my crawl has become an effort again!   Memo to self - regular practice, my dear. 


I've loved spending time with not-so-little Joseph, climbing up slides or squatting on floors, taking him out to places where he can run around.  

But, touch wood, he has settled with Karen to look after him for three days per week - sleeping, eating and playing quite happily at her house.


So here I am, back home.

Travel by train

. . . and are Northerners really more talkative with strangers?. . . or are my preconceptions showing?


I travelled from Southampton to London without chatting - my fault to some extent, nose in book, sitting in those 'bus seats where you only see people's backs! 


I took the tube and managed to avoid eye contact in the regulation manner. Why doesn't Waterloo station display an obvious tube map?  If it had, I could possibly have caught a train an hour earlier, but no matter,  I wasn't in a rush this time.


Later, waiting at St Pancras, I was seated on that metal tube in the upstairs area. Why doesn't Saint Pancras have enough seats? Walking by, just off the train from Derbyshire were a couple who are friends of my brother and his wife. 


On the train heading north, lots of smiles - and towards the end of the journey, the very friendly trolley man (from Nottingham area) chatted to the family at the table opposite me, asking where they were from - Switzerland.
Ah ha, so that's why I thought they were speaking German, but couldn't understand it!  So I tried my rusty German out! 

Leicester

A new shopping mall, the old Guildhall and cathedral complete with notice 'Parking for the Bishop'.
Posh restaurants and an empty pub with soft white rolls to eat.
Watching the traffic while walking across the bridge, part of New Walk.
A pause in the park - an Oval oasis.
A trip to the Art Gallery and a tiny bit of shopping.
Photos by the man in the computer shop - nice close-ups of a moth and a frog among others.
Variety - I shoulda taken my camera too.

Misty

What a contrast - not so cold, but misty, nay foggy. Certainly until past ten o'clock, when I came back from Kettering in the third car I have driven since last Friday - including my own. Oh for the totally self-repairing car.