cryptical autumn

Thrushes catch my eye, and the starlings star in their own speckle-show. Pecking and probing, collared with grass; on a green sea, afloat with lost apple leaves.

I reach for my slippers

 ... and a squall came. Lancing rain like splayed fiber-optic bundles dance to the moan of the wind and the trees seem to wrap themselves with their boughs. Shrubs self flagellate and show their secret under-leaves while dripping window panes instead run in carunculated sheets. Gutter rivulettes swell and the private noises of the house are played in a noisy percussion of splashing and rattling.

Went to see the sea

Went to see the sea.
Watched the orange sun sink till it was paint on floating shards;
the moon rise over the island, till I was cold.
Saw the fireflies lit on silhouetted shores.
Waited until the arc of sky above was drained of all its blue;
the candyfloss clouds dimmed past dusty cotton wool.
Came home.

olfactory codepoint

After thirty years in a cupboard, Angostura Bitters smells exactly the way the Soda Syphon Cola refill smelled forty five years ago.

Chaos indicators

 The wind shooshes, with an occasional moan; recruits rain to tippy-tap the panes. I stand and watch leaves circulate the garden. Above these dripping canopies, village jackdaws tumble, fight to smooth the chaos with their wings, reflect the dances of the leaves. Focussing between, fine drops swirl and dance like wind-tunnel smoke, like extinguished fireflies in rapture.

The old ways

 On impulse, an unfamiliar word takes me from lap-top to office to consult the Collin's. It's an old usage, not one I trust to the Internet where spellings get casually Americanised. The much thumbed volume buzzes as I pick a point to crack it; I strike five pages past my word. A familiar book, a friend in my hands; present from a near forgotten aunt who had an eye, one anniversary, for what I needed, rather than what I wanted. I take the opportunity of the break to freshen tea, watching down the garden, smelling her carpet, warmed by a sun fifty years younger.

Up my nose

My evening of food and online gambling promotions was interrupted last night by an advert for scent; bloody Christmas is coming. First though we have to climb over the festering corpse of "present or pathogen" evening.

Third season blues, and whites, and reds, yellows, orange...

 I force myself still.

Spin slowly, watching clouds form,

To the trill of birds.

Faux pas

Fresh, across the heath; the sun slanting down, or, more commonly, lighting the long mackerel cloud ribbons from behind, like the chest X-rays of uncoiled pythons.

Only out to loosen cobwebs, I cut corners, making a diagonal to the path’s triangle. Here, wartime cultivation has left a landscape of narrow ridge and furrow; spongy underfoot, now the hot, dry weather has moved on, tending to puddle in the dips.

I took to leaping these linear lakes across my way and, as they grew wider, I picked up speed into a loping run, carrying me from crest to crest. I was just considering the interesting juxtaposition of the ridged ground and the lenticular sky, when I found myself half propped on an elbow, gazing upwards, feeling water gently seeping into my trousers. I soon got up.

I skulked and dripped home, squeezing muddy streams from my cuffs, feeling more water drip from my back down my legs. The clouds were losing their keen edged definition, morphing from bones to the end of the cheddar, after the grater has passed.

I took my jumper into the shower, still smiling at my foolishness.

Inundation

The puddles never really go away. All through the desiccating summer’s sun, they wait patiently for a sea-change, for the slow turn of the season, or a fortuitous sudden torrent, to brim them, even briefly. Their stock in trade is patience and versatility; in drought they make collections: dusty dirt, cigarette ends, sweet wrappers, the disarticulated bird bones of roadkill, ironic plastic drink containers. Stoically, they persist, always there.

I walked out yesterday, finding a lull in the rain, which lasted until I reached the shops. Puddles full; puddles shore to shore with battling concentric rings from fellow drops, late to the scene. Roadside puddles edging towards their kin, striving against the press of passing tyres to link rivulets across the central lines. Lawn puddles, forming mini lakes, grass stems pushing round their rims like mangrove in miniature.

Across the green they link their limbs; become seeps that beget trickles, trickles forming streams, overflowing the beck. Water plays its own game outside the puddles; tumbling down to seas where sun and wind begin their play anew.

Water reveals all the old puddles, like friends forgotten in fair weather. A monstrous on-road, off-road carbon oxidiser visits the long puddle by a local hotel and its waves wash my feet. “Muppet” I cry to his oblivious, receding tailgate. I look down to watch the waters refold, reflow back into their temporary sanctuary, wet fingers grasping into cracked pavement, washing back to await the next car, or the tide.

Spit, but careful of the direction

No respite from the North Westerly blowing down Hurst Spit this morning. At the end of a warm September though, it’s hardly keen; not yet cutting; just inclined to rifle through your pockets if you stand too still. Walking back, into the head-wind, the sun reflects off the white cliffs of Old Harry Rocks, off the white reefs of P&O’s redundant fleet. Out where the tide is rippling over the Shingles Bank, streaks of white topped waves show where shallows lurk, but on the shore, the surf is barely up, with the gentle rocking motions of a sea unstirred.

Small pools of birds ripple away at my approach, knot, plovers, dunlin. On the lake side, a small raptor rides the slope lift, keeping low; my mind says ‘hobby’, but I’m unsure. More certain of the pair of ravens that watch me intelligently, wondering if taking flight is worth all the trouble, before flapping lazily, pretending not to care.

There’s negotiation at the bridge now. Anti-viral concern gives us pause, like the sudden introduction of mini-roundabouts. I cross, swiftly, aware of the ticking probing beaks of more plovers, unaware of our concerns, thinking only of the next stone turned. My hands, my face, are cool, but a warmth suffuses me.

IANABW

 I am not a bird watcher; I do not twitch. I look at birds (how can one not). I’d cross the road to see a beautiful example, but I would not list bird-watching amongst my hobbies.

Having stated that I don’t go twitching, I do acknowledge that my appreciation of a species of bird is perhaps a little in step with its rarity. My heart beats a little faster for the green woodpecker in my garden, than it does for the blackbird. I will willingly watch either, or any of a variety of their cousins if I am not occupied. One of the pleasures of my house is a kitchen sink that gazes down the back garden, affording a moving nature spectacle while I stand and my hands do the washing up and my mind drifts to contemplate the wilderness - I am not a gardener - but that is another story.

Unkempt garden notwithstanding, I live in a park; a National one. My environment then is rich with a diversity of birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, mites, flowers, shrubs, trees, fungi… I walk this precious zone, mentally ticking off the things that make it special, excited to find the few rarities that define its uniqueness: the wild gladioli, the rare orchids and butterflies.

There are species here I am yet to see. I have not, as an example, yet seen a purple emperor butterfly, though they fly in the North of The Forest, in well documented locations. There are uncommon birds: the shrike, the nightjar, the Dartford Warbler. I’ve never knowingly seen a shrike, nor a nightjar, though this year I heard the chirring of a nightjar and found it as strange and beautiful as the recordings suggest. In all my years here, until this one, I imagined I had seen a Dartford Warbler on, maybe, three occasions. I could not be sure, identifying unknown birds is frequently just a matter of eliminating all of the known alternatives and plugging for the least likely remainder.

Out on one of my frequent walks, a month ago, I was just exiting a patch of dense, tall gorse, into a more open area, not of heath, but heather and light scrub, when I saw a bird that could only be a Dartford Warbler. I had no optics on me; no binoculars, and of course, no camera. Only twenty feet away, furtive, dark, prominent eye-ring, slight crest; its most obvious feature: a long dark tail, cocked like a wren’s. I stood, I watched, noting its patterns of foraging, its four-dimensional motif. Amongst the young gorse stems and birch seedlings, I saw four matching birds, all feeding, occasionally making contact sounds. They moved away after ten minutes, leaving me… ? Thrilled, exhilarated? I tried to commit the sounds to memory, store the images, savour the moment.

Over the following four days I returned to the same spot, at various times of the day, carrying a camera. I didn’t manage to repeat the experience of course. I arrived one day to the heavy flapping of a buzzard I disturbed from a sapling within the scrub, no birds that day, except the laughing overflight of goldfinches. I approached another day, with the sun behind me, through the closed car-park, to find a couple on the cider, shouting about their social media, waving phones at each other. I tried an early morning, dew still on the spiderwebs, musty smell of warming bracken. Nothing.

Nothing, around here though, is very rich. On these sorties I saw plenty: a damp discarded snakeskin, deer, parasitoidal wasps, butterflies (do not befriend the butterflies), the secretive herbs that flower on browsed heathlands and, while we’re on the subject of birds: a young cuckoo. I enjoyed these walks, even the silent stands, scanning for barely familiar wings.

A week later, I was beginning to feel like the drunk in the story, who is looking for his keys under a lamppost, because he cannot see to find them anywhere else. Finally, standing near that same spot, across the width of the area of scrub, and occasionally visiting the taller gorse there, I saw a pair of warblers. This time I had a camera, though the range was too far for successful photography. As I did the first time, I stood and watched, drinking in impressions, learning what real bird-watchers endearingly call the bird’s jizz.

Eventually, after the birds moved on, so did I, crossing into the next valley, a popular spot with horse riders and dog walkers. Again I walked pony trails through tall gorse, emerged to low scrub, there to find more Dartford Warblers. A family, at least three individuals. The same group, or new? I asked myself, enjoying the scene, surprised that the birds seemed unperturbed by the relative proximity of people. This little flock flew into taller gorse and I lost them, so I set out to continue my walk, along the length of the valley, taking with me that warm feeling of accomplishment.

As I slowly descended, following a grassy track bordered by rough patches of heath and light scrub, I watched the common stonechats flitting between the terminal spikes of gorse; listened to their chat-chat calls. These charismatic birds are ubiquitous in this landscape; familiarity does not dull their strident calls, their bright colours. This time of year they skulk more so than in the spring, but they are easy to spot, travelling and feeding in family groups. My recently tuned ears detected a different song mixed in.

It must be a common mistake, for people who do not watch birds, to assume the members of a flock belong to the same species. I know mixed flocks often pass through my garden, but with the identification cues attenuated by distance, I had come to expect a flock, led by easily identified stonechats to be a homogeneous group. Using the power of my camera lens I could see that this was not always, or indeed generally, the case. Quite often, a brace of chats would pull a few aliens in their wake; Dartford aliens. On that day I counted 9 Dartford Warblers. This bird I had previously taken to be rare, it turns out, is not.

I understand the difference between locally and nationally rare. Finding out that these birds are not locally rare, and once seen clearly, so easy to identify, leaves me feeling a bit foolish. Foolish or not, I’m happy to be able to visit them, just a couple of miles from home; they are quite stunning. Now I have to learn the rest of the warblers, before I make the same mistake again.

Hissing on summered lawns

Summer's fervour breaks;

With spattered benediction,

Heedless of desire.

Quick flutter

Home from yesterday's walk,

Saw this year's first small tortoiseshell.

Forgotten how large they are.

Quickened Silver

Beneath June's cut thorns,

Found legless lizards new-born.

A nest of live nails. 

Ephemera flap

Fraternise, but don’t befriend the butterflies.

My erstwhile companion, the territorial small heath,

Who let me photograph her outer-wings on dull days,

But never basked her marigold inner wings to camera,

No longer patrols her sandy, gorse border-lands.

The stegosaurus of death falls to the forces of 'truth'

I can understand why it is that, instead of changing the way we report Covid deaths to make the statistics more accurate, someone has chosen to simply deprecate the graphs we had all come to know and love. Even Wikipedia seems to have withdrawn these depressing daily barcharts.

Statistics are of limited value when the underlying method is hidden. In mainstream media, in which I include much official output, the 'necessary' simplification of complex subjects usually results in the obfuscation of the method. It is only now, when the obfuscations have come to skew the results that something closer to the truth has emerged.

I was gob-smacked, back in May, to hear that, in the UK published figures for Covid deaths, the reporting rules differed according to which country was reporting. Scottish deaths for example only included those who had tested positive for Covid and whose families had agreed for their deaths to be included in the statistics.

Now, on the long spiky tail of the stegosaurus, we learn that English statistics for Covid deaths include everyone who has ever tested positive, irrespective of their eventual cause of death.

If the meteorite theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs appears unlikely to you, let me offer a more plausible explanation. I believe the end of the dinosaurs was probably brought about by a simple update of the truth.

</rant>

Alliterative nonsense tea

The first sup of Darjeeling, taken as I entered the kitchen carrying my bowl, to swill the Crunchy Nut Cornflake semi-skimmed slurry from my teeth, gave me pause. Its earthy, bitter-sweet undertones stroked my tongue, like yesterday's bracken compost bouquet under mixed deciduous boughs,  as I strode the butterfly flecked boulevards. A foreign sun's shine-fed sinensis foliage infusion teleportation!

Talking heads

Bright yellow heads of hawkweed sway gently across my lawn,

like balanced plates on their serried stems.

They dip in turn, as insects visit, to spin them up again.

Heathen summer walk

The recent sprinkling of rain, breaking a month of drought, has loosed the expected flush of flowers. On my lawn, short stemmed grass has already seeded, attracting goldfinches that flash and flit amongst tall stems of hawkweed.

Across the neolithic landscape on the village’s Southern side, small channels hold water again and the sward has returned, lush. Clover and bird’s foot trefoil are dominant at ground level, with bell heather in all the shades of sugared almond. The heather is dotted with basking and sparring silver-studded blues and close to one of the more permanent pools, a dragonfly lanced by me, too fast to leave any more than an impression of purpose. The harsh call of stone chats rises from gorse heads and from the marshes, the slightly mad warbling of lapwings. Above all, when all else is quiet, invisible skylarks sing from out of the blue.

In the lanes, hedged by blooming bramble, clouds of meadow browns were disturbed by my passing.

Under the shading woods, buzzing insects threatened, triggering false alarms from stretched spider strands; I waved my arms to discourage feeding. In sunny patches, spotted woods patrolled.

Summer; barely pausing for low pressure

Older foals begin to gambol.

Poached and pock’ed water meadow, commonly too wet to traverse, has dried.

Passerines comb my shasta daisies for spiders and the first meadow brown visits, seeking nectar.

My potato patch looks like yesterday’s plated salad leaves (but green shoots show).

The ‘lawn’ is too rich in flower and bug to groom now, it buzzes with bees and flaps with finches.

Yellow hawkweed nods tall and proud, with buttercup competition. Speedwell and plantain, clover and shaded bugloss shake amongst the seeding stems of grasses.

Rag-tag

A wild patch of Siberian iris capture a cloud of cinnabar moth;
The far ends of the visible spectrum dance together in the light breeze.

Behind the twining clematis

Mahonia tiers; hollied leaf rosettes,
ripened recemes of powdered purple.
Pass a mixed flock flow of admirers:
Ungainly young blackbird, still speckled cape;
House sparrow, and swifter blackcap;
Skulking great tits steal a berry.
At half-harvest, in rising sun.

Disturbed while digging

Rich loam's golden thread,

Live wire; writhes. Not slow, nor worm.

Blinks and glides away.

May be soon

Another Mother takes a stand outside the school. Three and a half legs, she’s stupified by sun. Insect distraction flicks an ear, a lazy tail; sends shivers cross her coat. Her lobsided belly writhes to its own rhythms. Her coterie attend, anticipating magic.

May be

Fresh foal.

Still folded too tightly to stand alone,

Like a new Birthday card.

Leans on its envelope.

Faves

The flutter of an orange-tip
A cuckoo's call
The questing hooks of bracken breaking sod
Ponies, ribs spread, bellies full, with new life
Miniature oak trees on each terminal twig, trailing green flowers
Apple blossom
Dusty gutters
Sunlight
The ghosts of sleepers in the disused railway bed
More cyclists than cars

A new nag

My new fitness watch;

I'm wound up by its nagging.

Funny how times change.

The pace of ***

Our right to roam around the ironmonger has been suspended. Transactions are now conducted over a trestle table round the side. The till is a flowerpot tray.

The pace of life has been reduced. People on the streets in ones and twos (or families with the compulsory bikes) are happy to smile from a distance and nod or greet. A few cars still circulate, but the steady drone of traffic has receded behind the bucolic whistling of bird life.

I realised when out for a piece of daily exercise yesterday that, after changing my trousers more than a week ago, I had still not accumulated that cruft of jangling coin in my pocket. Not sure whether to feel denuded or liberated.

The loudest noise I heard when outside was the sneeze of a pedalling youth on the opposite pavement; the quietest was when a fox, trotting up the churchyard, noticed my attention and broke into an easy lope.

How will this end?

With a whim or a banker

Quiet Spring

I have always enjoyed supermarkets, for the wide range of ways they provide for avoiding social contact. Often, I have the energy to chat, and I choose meats and cheeses from the delicatessen counter and the more voluble checkout operators. Occasionally I'm in a hurry, or just plain grumpy, and I choose the pre-wrapped stuff and the self-serve tills.

Yesterday, under the new regime, I waited fourth in line to enter the shop. I enjoyed a peaceful time selecting from (a slightly decimated) range of produce, paid, nearly in silence, and emerged faster than was possible before this crisis hit.

I don't think it was grim satisfaction, just that the experience was far less unpleasant than I had expected.

Boot swinging

Across the lawn, North of the path I walk on automatic, I heard the bubbling cry of curlew from the boggy bottom I skirted. Water has run so long on this grass this winter that the shallow sheets of runoff are choked with mats of algae. Off the made-up paths, the tracks that ponies make are puddled and muddied. Boot weather.

Squelching and splashing through the gorse stands, clothing grabbed by thorn and prickle, things only get marginally worse when more rain falls. Fortunately it is a day of very short showers. Where this landscape opens to heather heath, with fewer bushes, stonechats flit and chatter; over the marshy lawns skylarks make cryptic love songs.

Taking a dryer, unfamiliar route, I find a spot where I can see the church 6 miles to the North as well as the spine of the Island, 4 miles South. The cranes of the city to the East are hidden by smooth hilltops and wooded enclosures. Thrushes and goldfinches fly and call between the trees dotted here.

Almost without exception, those I meet are exercising dogs. I'm passed by a couple of runners, half a dozen cycles. I see two picnics; it is lunchtime after all, albeit damp and only just in double figures Centigrade.

UI woes

The DeWalt flashes while charging and indicates fully charged by a steady LED. The Oral B does the opposite.

When the toothbrush caught my eye in the bathroom this morning, I wondered how it had received an email.

RIP JIT

Manufacturing;

‘Just In Time’ is out-of-stock:

Coronavirus.

Ciara

Rain drops swarm under the force of Ciara, wetting windows North and South, blowing under the porch. I opened the door to taste them and the trees sounded like the sea.

Youngest made porridge for all. He called it well.