The sun was less fierce today and tempted me out for a lunchtime walk. I was only thinking of the exercise as I crossed the pig fields and entered the woodland, ready to share the path with one of the common runners that use this route. A few seconds into the shade and I heard a commotion in the shadows and saw the retreating form of a roe deer.
Out onto the glade, with its curled bracken fronds and islands of bramble I saw an orange tip. Across the stream by the bridge and over the muddy section of the Test Way I encountered four squirrels. Down to the next bridge, where the pool isn't any more, even so there was a banded damoiselle and a red damsel.
Rather than visit the cows in the following field I went along the field edge, following the stream to the remains of a fallen trunk, at least 2 feet in diameter, festooned with ferns, lichens and woodland flowers, across the stream. A rustle in the old root-ball alerted me to a quickly retreating grass-snake that had been basking. I didn't see the head but could judge the size from the disturbance it left in its wake and the width of its tail. At that corner of the stream there was the continuous song of a chiff-chaff with the usual background of pigeon, thrush and occasional bursts from nuthatches and pheasants.
Walking back I found a tick on my foot, still looking for a spot to bite. I encouraged it to learn to fly. In an impromptu glade at the broken base of a fallen tree I found my first red-admiral of the year. Under the canopy the trapped air was nearly as thick as soup, making vision misty and the atmosphere heavy in the lungs.
Forty five minutes of wild lunchtime.
Thursday 31 May 2012
Monday 28 May 2012
amazonian woes
Sailing Saturday, or I would have if it hadn't been so gusty. Rather than swim with my boat I hummed around, photographing, watching my children, enjoying the sunshine and the gentle company of the sailing club. The sun beat down, testing our defences, from a bottle of Riemann P20.
Sunday, early to the North again. Easterly on the M27, the morning sun reflected off the road patterns; lines of cats eyes back-lit and dark, shining trails of obsolescent contra-flows, mirages of distant foliage looking like flickering moss carpets that fade with proximity.
I shop severally and unsuccessfully for small portions of full-fat chocolate mouse for Mum. Service station Marks and Spencer offering me nothing I need, but plenty that would tempt me in other times. In the end, refreshed only by petrol I arrive to see Mum almost without pausing. Plenty of chairs are traversing the pavement to the nearby public house; the garden is seeing some use. Inside, quiet, except for the usual suspects and some quiet singing - the television tuned to a level which seems uncertain whether it is to be heard or not, its presence is as congruous as the inmates'.
A rushed lunch meets ten minutes of the start of the Monaco F1. I see the only interesting part of the race on my Dad's television, water the plants, set the watching alarm again and drive, to find Dad relaxed, but not sleeping. Almost back to the state of gentle medical support that he achieved just before the bypass. We while a pleasant three hours and more, only slightly aided by the Sunday papers when rising sleep catches him unawares a minute.
I reprimand myself for all the rush, after all, time is all I have today. The travel and the visits will take the whole day, so why not relax a bit more. I could have settled into a chair and helped Mum with her mouse after lunch, I could have driven less frantically. At Northampton, with no help from the traffic reports, the motorway becomes a parking lot, who knows why? I leave a junction early and, rather than the marked alternate route, decide to miss Northampton with its information-free radio channel entirely. The A5 returns me soon enough to the A43.
A Chieveley pasty and watching a young crow, already knowing in the dance of chance as he hops round me, waiting for a broken crust. I am too hungry though. The car, parked in a row to itself, seems to wink at me like a 1960's Corgi toy with those plastic light channels from roof to headlights which first introduced us to the magic and possibilities of fibre-optics. In this instance due to the occlusion of the low, orange sun by high-sided vehicles on the nearby carriageway. Further up the sky the spiral condensation trails have been pulled by wind shear into spinal xrays; vertebrae contrasted by cloudy discs.
What's good is bad, from time to time. But although we can send stuff back to Amazon, some things we just get to live with. The promised thunder has not broken yet, pressures build behind my eyes.
Sunday, early to the North again. Easterly on the M27, the morning sun reflected off the road patterns; lines of cats eyes back-lit and dark, shining trails of obsolescent contra-flows, mirages of distant foliage looking like flickering moss carpets that fade with proximity.
I shop severally and unsuccessfully for small portions of full-fat chocolate mouse for Mum. Service station Marks and Spencer offering me nothing I need, but plenty that would tempt me in other times. In the end, refreshed only by petrol I arrive to see Mum almost without pausing. Plenty of chairs are traversing the pavement to the nearby public house; the garden is seeing some use. Inside, quiet, except for the usual suspects and some quiet singing - the television tuned to a level which seems uncertain whether it is to be heard or not, its presence is as congruous as the inmates'.
A rushed lunch meets ten minutes of the start of the Monaco F1. I see the only interesting part of the race on my Dad's television, water the plants, set the watching alarm again and drive, to find Dad relaxed, but not sleeping. Almost back to the state of gentle medical support that he achieved just before the bypass. We while a pleasant three hours and more, only slightly aided by the Sunday papers when rising sleep catches him unawares a minute.
I reprimand myself for all the rush, after all, time is all I have today. The travel and the visits will take the whole day, so why not relax a bit more. I could have settled into a chair and helped Mum with her mouse after lunch, I could have driven less frantically. At Northampton, with no help from the traffic reports, the motorway becomes a parking lot, who knows why? I leave a junction early and, rather than the marked alternate route, decide to miss Northampton with its information-free radio channel entirely. The A5 returns me soon enough to the A43.
A Chieveley pasty and watching a young crow, already knowing in the dance of chance as he hops round me, waiting for a broken crust. I am too hungry though. The car, parked in a row to itself, seems to wink at me like a 1960's Corgi toy with those plastic light channels from roof to headlights which first introduced us to the magic and possibilities of fibre-optics. In this instance due to the occlusion of the low, orange sun by high-sided vehicles on the nearby carriageway. Further up the sky the spiral condensation trails have been pulled by wind shear into spinal xrays; vertebrae contrasted by cloudy discs.
What's good is bad, from time to time. But although we can send stuff back to Amazon, some things we just get to live with. The promised thunder has not broken yet, pressures build behind my eyes.
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Sinuous squirrels and flaky foals
I saw the first Forest foal on the 7th of May this year and the first donkey foal last week on the 18th. The weather has changed from the misty, wet and miserable to the hot and sunny in a single bound, which is only displaying the still spring-fresh countryside in even greater beauty. The garden is still a little heavy for comfortable weeding, but I managed to cut the lawn again, removing about half the bulk I took off with the first cut.
I was suitably poetic as I drove by the longer route to work yesterday; watching out for young animals and the thickening canopy. On quiet roads I managed to catch a truck: Central Cleansing Services' tyres tore swirling dervishes from the dry gutter dust. On the greens were strutting jackdaws and mad rabbits with, in the road, lumbering cows and hungry calves. Ant nests marked the Ornamental Drive like needle cairns; hubs of radial foraging trails, coveted by green woodpeckers.
This morning, in my village, I saw a lady trapped by cows. Big golden Highland hybrid animals - possibly the most docile cow you could ever meet. She was on a footpath by the church, hemmed between rhododendron scrub against a fence and the roadside ditch. Two cows gently tongued the foliage on either side in her way and the rest of the herd rabble foraged quietly behind. She didn't look too distressed so I left her to her wait, or maybe to finally pluck up the courage to shoo the beasts away. I drove North West across the lawn, spotting sleepy foals seeking cool shadow already, beneath their mares, or in the cool dampness of the shallow drainage ditches. They lay, idle, trying out the taste of the green stuff in parody of their mothers' steady, concentrated munch. The waterways have already shrunk back between their banks, rippling rather than rushing under the bridges.
I drove North on Saturday, watching the countryside change, the air filled first with buzzard, then red kite, then kestrels on the motorway verges. I went to visit Dad, who had his heart bypass on Friday. When I arrived he wasn't really there; off with the fairies on the pain medication. I stayed for maybe three hours, speaking to the nurses, to his fellow ward guests and their visitors in turn. He seemed to take in his surroundings, observing me carefully if I drew close enough, to see who I might be. Six and a half hours driving for two dozen reluctant and rather utilitarian words. He would do the same for me and more in the reversed position. By Monday evening he was back on the cardiac ward, away from high dependency. On Tuesday it first occurred to him that he had had his operation and he was apparently a little angry that he had had visitors (me and my sister both) and that no-one had told him. He seems to have spent the day fiddling with his phone, a select few from his phonebook received a number of empty SMS. He phoned me to talk around 8:30pm, as I was digging a wider space in the vegetable bed, ready perhaps for planting. He'll be back to himself soon, although some of the swiss-cheesing from his heart-attack will haunt him a while. The surgeons who moved sections of his leg vessels into his heart also mended a couple of ribs which must have been broken by CPR.
In a spare moment, in the North, I dropped by the shop where I bought my mandolin to say thankyou. I haven't been practising enough, but I notice improvements when I do put the time in. I play it better than any other instrument I've ever tried playing, which is not to claim very much. I've been mostly finger-picking lately, rather than attempting chords.
The early fingers of the dawn creep very effectively round the curtain edges, disturbing my sleep to give me an extra hour of lying awake and thinking about life.
I was suitably poetic as I drove by the longer route to work yesterday; watching out for young animals and the thickening canopy. On quiet roads I managed to catch a truck: Central Cleansing Services' tyres tore swirling dervishes from the dry gutter dust. On the greens were strutting jackdaws and mad rabbits with, in the road, lumbering cows and hungry calves. Ant nests marked the Ornamental Drive like needle cairns; hubs of radial foraging trails, coveted by green woodpeckers.
This morning, in my village, I saw a lady trapped by cows. Big golden Highland hybrid animals - possibly the most docile cow you could ever meet. She was on a footpath by the church, hemmed between rhododendron scrub against a fence and the roadside ditch. Two cows gently tongued the foliage on either side in her way and the rest of the herd rabble foraged quietly behind. She didn't look too distressed so I left her to her wait, or maybe to finally pluck up the courage to shoo the beasts away. I drove North West across the lawn, spotting sleepy foals seeking cool shadow already, beneath their mares, or in the cool dampness of the shallow drainage ditches. They lay, idle, trying out the taste of the green stuff in parody of their mothers' steady, concentrated munch. The waterways have already shrunk back between their banks, rippling rather than rushing under the bridges.
I drove North on Saturday, watching the countryside change, the air filled first with buzzard, then red kite, then kestrels on the motorway verges. I went to visit Dad, who had his heart bypass on Friday. When I arrived he wasn't really there; off with the fairies on the pain medication. I stayed for maybe three hours, speaking to the nurses, to his fellow ward guests and their visitors in turn. He seemed to take in his surroundings, observing me carefully if I drew close enough, to see who I might be. Six and a half hours driving for two dozen reluctant and rather utilitarian words. He would do the same for me and more in the reversed position. By Monday evening he was back on the cardiac ward, away from high dependency. On Tuesday it first occurred to him that he had had his operation and he was apparently a little angry that he had had visitors (me and my sister both) and that no-one had told him. He seems to have spent the day fiddling with his phone, a select few from his phonebook received a number of empty SMS. He phoned me to talk around 8:30pm, as I was digging a wider space in the vegetable bed, ready perhaps for planting. He'll be back to himself soon, although some of the swiss-cheesing from his heart-attack will haunt him a while. The surgeons who moved sections of his leg vessels into his heart also mended a couple of ribs which must have been broken by CPR.
In a spare moment, in the North, I dropped by the shop where I bought my mandolin to say thankyou. I haven't been practising enough, but I notice improvements when I do put the time in. I play it better than any other instrument I've ever tried playing, which is not to claim very much. I've been mostly finger-picking lately, rather than attempting chords.
The early fingers of the dawn creep very effectively round the curtain edges, disturbing my sleep to give me an extra hour of lying awake and thinking about life.
Sunday 6 May 2012
Young robin bobs
Memory, like a summers' day with fluffy clouds obscuring random detail. A dizziness that accepts an arm to walk by. An angiogram strongly suggesting a touch of bypass and, maybe, some automated help with rhythmic security too. Hardly a compensation to have a bed by the sunny Southerly window.
With life however, hope. Already there are plans for long distance electric buggy trips into town (the driving license will likely be on six months furlough). My father remains a man of dignity and ambition. Always careful to pay his way and be independent, he accepts pocket money from me to buy his newspapers for the first time (So it seems to me).
My sister has a turn in the distraction seat today, no doubt hearing the same stories I heard yesterday. I have returned home, to younger family.
A beautiful Sunday. Warm in the sun, the slightest of showers thrown in just for form. The morning I spend filing ancient paperwork until lunch time, when I am distracted by the number of birds feeding on the lawn. Blackbirds, starlings, sparrows and dunnocks, pidgeons and, washing thoroughly in the bird-bath, a young robin - probably hatched in secret next to our conservatory and then fed under the right-hand border shrubs a couple of weeks ago. Short of tail and long on the speckles, some time yet from the salmon pink first breast feather that will mark coming maturity.
The birds on the lawn keep vanishing in the sward reminding me it is time to cut, the second cut of the year and, after four weeks (or so), I take 9 boxes of heavy wet grass off. The sod is wet underfoot, just past the stage of holding prints, but the dirt borders are too wet to stand on; weeds can only be pulled from firm-standing, the backs will have to wait.
With life however, hope. Already there are plans for long distance electric buggy trips into town (the driving license will likely be on six months furlough). My father remains a man of dignity and ambition. Always careful to pay his way and be independent, he accepts pocket money from me to buy his newspapers for the first time (So it seems to me).
My sister has a turn in the distraction seat today, no doubt hearing the same stories I heard yesterday. I have returned home, to younger family.
A beautiful Sunday. Warm in the sun, the slightest of showers thrown in just for form. The morning I spend filing ancient paperwork until lunch time, when I am distracted by the number of birds feeding on the lawn. Blackbirds, starlings, sparrows and dunnocks, pidgeons and, washing thoroughly in the bird-bath, a young robin - probably hatched in secret next to our conservatory and then fed under the right-hand border shrubs a couple of weeks ago. Short of tail and long on the speckles, some time yet from the salmon pink first breast feather that will mark coming maturity.
The birds on the lawn keep vanishing in the sward reminding me it is time to cut, the second cut of the year and, after four weeks (or so), I take 9 boxes of heavy wet grass off. The sod is wet underfoot, just past the stage of holding prints, but the dirt borders are too wet to stand on; weeds can only be pulled from firm-standing, the backs will have to wait.
Tuesday 1 May 2012
inundated April
Last week seemed primed to awaken my senses and drag me out of the mild torpor induced by a shortage of engaging and profitable work. After a little more funding trickled in on Tuesday for a project that had been largely completed before Easter I felt I had at least earned my keep for a day. I think my wife had gone out to play violin in the evening and so I had settled down at the end of the evening to find something soothing to watch on television, when I came across a broadcast of "Apocalypse Now". This is not a film I have to watch the whole way through (I have it in any case in my private DVD collection - i.e. not one I share with my sons yet) and so I sat and enjoyed the theater of the "Ride of the Valkyries" scene while my wife came home, warmed a cup of milk each and went to bed, leaving me to my incomprehensible explosions/surfing. I enjoyed the balletic carnage until the surfing was done, overlaying another choreographed combat scene from "The Fifth Element" in my mind. The trick that both of these scenes use is to create a tempo and grace in an otherwise chaotic and repugnant reportage, touched too by humour - though blacker in "Apocalypse". I slept well.
Wednesday dawned windy and wet; atmospheric. I drove out across the forest roads to look at the trees and was blessed with a close encounter with a cuckoo - or so I believe; it had the sharp wings and direct flight, but the view was too brief to be sure. It may have been a diving thrush of some sort. Radio 3 was playing and without the usual ante-listening pause, after an announcement that simply declared Bach, they played one of my very favourite pieces - the Allegro Moderato from the Musical Offering. The absence of any silent space and the unfamiliar recording left me confused for the first bar, but speechless for the few minutes of the work. And in the morning some more work arrived for me, stretching my load out towards September. I was quite contented and busy when I took the phonecall to say that my Dad had had a heart attack.
It was my sister who had heard the news first and it was she who went rushing round to see what she could do to help. With a dearth of new information I waited until Thursday morning before my instincts took me away from my work and onto the motorways.
In such circumstances it is always easier to be close to the root of the uncertainty than far away. Operating at a phone's length, trying perhaps to interact with real life when someone you love is being faced with real death, is hard. On Thursday we watched a sedated man, not moving. We heard the pessimistic (but realistic) talk about waiting a couple of days and then making hard decision, twice. We sat and willed whatever agency was left to hang around a while, to look after his wife and watch his grandchildren growing. We sat in intensive care, our eyes stung by the atmosphere, thinking (mostly) our own thoughts. This part had not been in the script. We had both, independently, anticipated a sudden loss, or an illness with a predictable outcome, but neither of us had expected the uncertainty of a life, hypothermically suspended in a medicated coma.
There were heavy showers.
On Friday, warmed and with the stupifying drugs removed, we watched and willed harder. The consultants had stretched their period of watchfulness before hope could be abandoned by a couple of days, based on the degree of body self-regulation indicated on the charting instruments.
The showers ganged up on each other and fought across the sky.
On Saturday there was some movement, but no sign of cognition. Expert opinion was becoming grudgingly less pessimistic. What reactions could be envoked were good ones (e.g. with some underlying intent to address the cause of attention, rather than being simply reflexes).
It was unrelenting rain that redoubled in the afternoon. The queue for the sole working car park ticket machine was miserable and, after paddling across the car park to the hospital, I considered whether getting my foot stuck in the Dyson Airblade was a worthwhile risk to take to dry off my sandals.
On Sunday the movement spread from left arm, right shoulder and hips, to lifting the left arm, moving the right, legs twisting and back arching. When asked firmly to open eyes, there was some evident attempt to comply. Eyes, were glimpsed, but still sightless. Breathing was entirely under self control, the machine just boosting oxygen.
It was glorious sunshine from an almost cloudless sky (although it did threaten to become showery again in the afternoon, the clouds just couldn't agree, so they dissipated again). On the way home it began to rain at about 10pm, around the M4.
On Monday, after removing the tube that had been used to support breathing since the sedation, Dad breathed through his throat and his mouth was freed for talking, and he did. Eyes open and thankful for the glasses which had been waiting patiently all week. Limbs moving but weak. Self rebooted, and although mildly confused (as can happen after 5 days slide by unnoticed), common sense largely restored.
Today, with stuff to do and somewhat happier, my return to work. On a work day I carry the briefcase that my Dad carried to work from some time in the mid-70s until he replaced it with a lighter bag. It is an old Custom case with plastic moulded sides and bright catches clamping an aluminium, hinged maw. For its age (older than many of my colleagues) it is in good condition, still with the Dymo label stickers in red/green for port and starboard that my Dad attached to remind him to open the case the right way up. Transfering keys and phones from hand to hand as I left the parked car this morning it slipped from my hand and accumulated another small dent on one bottom corner; a metaphor I thought for its first owner.
Out walking at lunch time I saw an orange tip butterfly, and the sun shining.
Wednesday dawned windy and wet; atmospheric. I drove out across the forest roads to look at the trees and was blessed with a close encounter with a cuckoo - or so I believe; it had the sharp wings and direct flight, but the view was too brief to be sure. It may have been a diving thrush of some sort. Radio 3 was playing and without the usual ante-listening pause, after an announcement that simply declared Bach, they played one of my very favourite pieces - the Allegro Moderato from the Musical Offering. The absence of any silent space and the unfamiliar recording left me confused for the first bar, but speechless for the few minutes of the work. And in the morning some more work arrived for me, stretching my load out towards September. I was quite contented and busy when I took the phonecall to say that my Dad had had a heart attack.
It was my sister who had heard the news first and it was she who went rushing round to see what she could do to help. With a dearth of new information I waited until Thursday morning before my instincts took me away from my work and onto the motorways.
In such circumstances it is always easier to be close to the root of the uncertainty than far away. Operating at a phone's length, trying perhaps to interact with real life when someone you love is being faced with real death, is hard. On Thursday we watched a sedated man, not moving. We heard the pessimistic (but realistic) talk about waiting a couple of days and then making hard decision, twice. We sat and willed whatever agency was left to hang around a while, to look after his wife and watch his grandchildren growing. We sat in intensive care, our eyes stung by the atmosphere, thinking (mostly) our own thoughts. This part had not been in the script. We had both, independently, anticipated a sudden loss, or an illness with a predictable outcome, but neither of us had expected the uncertainty of a life, hypothermically suspended in a medicated coma.
There were heavy showers.
On Friday, warmed and with the stupifying drugs removed, we watched and willed harder. The consultants had stretched their period of watchfulness before hope could be abandoned by a couple of days, based on the degree of body self-regulation indicated on the charting instruments.
The showers ganged up on each other and fought across the sky.
On Saturday there was some movement, but no sign of cognition. Expert opinion was becoming grudgingly less pessimistic. What reactions could be envoked were good ones (e.g. with some underlying intent to address the cause of attention, rather than being simply reflexes).
It was unrelenting rain that redoubled in the afternoon. The queue for the sole working car park ticket machine was miserable and, after paddling across the car park to the hospital, I considered whether getting my foot stuck in the Dyson Airblade was a worthwhile risk to take to dry off my sandals.
On Sunday the movement spread from left arm, right shoulder and hips, to lifting the left arm, moving the right, legs twisting and back arching. When asked firmly to open eyes, there was some evident attempt to comply. Eyes, were glimpsed, but still sightless. Breathing was entirely under self control, the machine just boosting oxygen.
It was glorious sunshine from an almost cloudless sky (although it did threaten to become showery again in the afternoon, the clouds just couldn't agree, so they dissipated again). On the way home it began to rain at about 10pm, around the M4.
On Monday, after removing the tube that had been used to support breathing since the sedation, Dad breathed through his throat and his mouth was freed for talking, and he did. Eyes open and thankful for the glasses which had been waiting patiently all week. Limbs moving but weak. Self rebooted, and although mildly confused (as can happen after 5 days slide by unnoticed), common sense largely restored.
Today, with stuff to do and somewhat happier, my return to work. On a work day I carry the briefcase that my Dad carried to work from some time in the mid-70s until he replaced it with a lighter bag. It is an old Custom case with plastic moulded sides and bright catches clamping an aluminium, hinged maw. For its age (older than many of my colleagues) it is in good condition, still with the Dymo label stickers in red/green for port and starboard that my Dad attached to remind him to open the case the right way up. Transfering keys and phones from hand to hand as I left the parked car this morning it slipped from my hand and accumulated another small dent on one bottom corner; a metaphor I thought for its first owner.
Out walking at lunch time I saw an orange tip butterfly, and the sun shining.
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