Grey Days and a Full Moon

A trip into Ludlow to see stoves and advent calendars; we bought neither.  But we managed to see many of the town's back streets, this eclectic mix of medieval and Georgian houses all jumbled together and no doubt growing over each other.  Quiet roads and chestnut trees.  Central Ludlow is very smart but the town has the usual drink and drugs problems further out.  The journey in through wintry lanes was very beautiful, the hedges shaved by recent hedgetrimming and now losing their leaves, the fields bare and empty.  The days have been grey and sunless, occasionally windy, misty.  We have had a lot of rain recently and many roads have been flooded.  

A lovely walk at dusk yesterday, down the old toll road to the tractors and the view across the valley.  A muddy lane in the fading light, the bare hedges, the day turning cold in a peach sunset with not a breath of wind; it seemed as though the land is turning towards winter.  

Beeches and Leaves

Beech trees, Wapley Hill, early November 2008

I have noticed that in recent heavy rains and strong winds the leaves generally are starting to fall from the trees. The beech in the garden has lost all but a few tufts of branches but this is down to its reaction to light. The beech trees have been spectacular this year; dull golds and fiery reds, shimmering bronzes; all on the same tree. The other dominant colour is an acid yellow from the maples; the trees look lit from within, as if each leaf generates light.

Remembrancetide

Pressed poppies, collected October/November 1998

The tenth of November this year falls halfway between Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day, making a period of Remembrance. I am deeply uneasy with the notion of remembering the war dead whilst doing nothing to prevent wars today; and especially as at the moment we as a country are still heavily involved in two illegal, immoral foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And yet remembering (especially) the Great War seems fitting at this time, perhaps because it as far back as human memory currently stretches. There are at least three British veterans still alive, old men who visit schools to tell their stories to children who are a century younger than they are. Their First World War memories are all the more precious as they have aged and others have died; but it defines a person only by one time of their lives, and that 90 years ago. Perhaps we remember because we all have a Great War family story and like a British Day of the Dead we remember family stories at this time. I don't know.

Ten years ago I wrote a play called 'Third Light' which commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the Great War and dealt with these confused themes. One of the actors, Graham Frood, was old enough to remember the war; he heard the engines of a Zeppelin flying over his house in Stoke and hid under the table with his family; he remembered the engines as they were such a rarity. He also remembered two bonfires in the November of 1918, one for Bonfire Night and one for the Armistice. Sean Halligan, who played a far younger man, helped in selecting a performance venue and we visited Birkenhead Priory with the Wirral's links with Wilfred Owen. On a new traffic island outside was a brilliant flush of blood-red poppies and we picked a handful to press. Today, ten years later, I found them.

And at this time I remember my grandfathers, who both played a part in the first war. Vincent Lewis was a teenage sea scout and spent some time coastwatching on Bolt Head in Devon, possibly the furthest he ever travelled from Liverpool. My mother's father was a corporal in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was wounded at Passchendaele. We have letters and medals and cap badges and photographs; history I suppose we can almost touch.

An Autumn Afternoon

A typical November day, misty, damp, a chill that seeps up from the ground - the tops of the trees lost in mist - a cold day in the garage with occasional views across to Shobdon Woods Hill, the mist draping across it; a soft day, a day for a long walk, the sort of day that has sudden patches of quiet, a pond of silence unruffled by anything; then a small piping of a bird, unseen, which only deepens the silence. I love days like this, cold and damp and gloomy; they make me think of the autumnal pleasures of firelight and woodsmoke and tea. It is a day for a bonfire of leaves, a day for fathers to burn leaves and wear gumboots. And at 3.30pm it is starting to get dark.

Fifteen years ago this week and next I was in Vancouver and I have been reading my journal; I recorded the same sort of light, a never-quite-bright light, as if the sun is permanently below the horizon.

Bonfire Night

A quiet day here for us.  Another dripping, cold, misty day; cars had their sidelights on all day and it never seemed to get fully light.  It was getting dark at 5pm, a thickening of the mist.  A typical November day.  I found thirty minutes this afternoon to repot the outdoor Christmas tree.  We bought it in Cooksons in Southport about three years ago, a small blue spruce in a red pot.  I love the idea of an outside tree; Christmas as a time of great darkness and tiny lights.  Cold wet hands scratched by the spruce's needles even through thick gardening gloves.  A strangely wintry job to do, a precursor of December and Christmas. Even mixing the heavy compost - made by our own worms, I am proud to say - with grit seemed like the heavy mixing of a Christmas cake.  

No bonfire tonight for us, even in celebration of Obama's victory in the American elections. We've not seen any fireworks either.   Country rituals seem sparser, less intense; more about darkness and silences at this time of year perhaps.   

Thoughts in Early November

A dank morning, cool and wet and misty and dripping. The Kinsham side of the valley is lost in mist. Good walking weather; I love walking in glooms and mists.

A huge swathe of the trees above this side of the valley has suddenly turned a peach-golden. Not deciduous trees but conifers, so I am assuming they are larches as they are (to the best of my knowledge) the only British conifer that is deciduous. A tight, neat patch of colour among the deep greens of the firs and the uncertain mottling of the trees on the wood's border.

November 4th - the Americans elect a new president today - a black president would send an astonishing message to the world and would be a huge step forward for the US; I would vote for Obama.

Tomorrow is November 5th - we won't be buying fireworks for many reasons but the blunt John Bull celebration of light and darkness - even if the origins are forgotten or at least no longer mean anything - is fascinating. The English see no poetry in what they do and look abroad for simple beauty; but they do small beauty nonetheless.

Three Northern Days

Beech tree, Coombes Moor, 30th October 2008 - view from the south; the only leaves are stubbornly clinging to the northern branches.

A journey north on Hallowe'en, pumpkins alongside the road in some places - snow on Shropshire hills and distant Welsh hills - some good river-walking along the Mersey, the light bright and hard, soft against the stones and recycled river furniture sculpture; the astonishment of rusted International Garden Festival barriers/railings, salt-bleached and weathered - the beech trees on the lane to the river still very leafy, obviously not lost the light the way the beeches here have. Some good explorations of derelict/unvisited spaces; more on the landscape writings blog I think. Amazing trees in Runcorn, seeming mile after mile of beech and maple gently golden-red-yellows, unseen, overlooked; a town planted for autumn colour. I was reminded of walks across Runcorn from the Ship Canal to Old Runcorn to the new estates and out to Daresbury; landscape and memory thoughts again better suited to the other blog.

Home this afternoon in a gentle November grey day; we only saw real sunlight once or twice. The beech on the lane has lost 75% of its leaves, because we have lost the direct sunlight and will not recover it until March. Strange and unsettling to be home; three days is sometimes a long time.