What do you do?

Today is one of those September in November days. The sky is a deep blue and, after an early white frost, the sun is shining and the air is still. Although there is a bite to the day, in the sunshine it is quite warm. Tess and I soak up the sunshine on our lunchtime walk. Well, I soak up the sunshine more than she, as I spend a lot of time waiting for a tail sticking out of the hedgerow. Later on, as the sun is beginning to go down, we walk again with a friend and this time Tess "goes to earth" and we walk home without her. A quarter of an hour later she turns up having been rabbitting in the pasture - wet, muddy and pretty tired. This will not do, we tell her - she will have to go on the lead for a day or two to learn her lesson.
I have been re-reading Ronald Blythe's River Diary - a wonderful book to just dib into at odd moments. Reading one of the October entries he brings up a subject which sets me thinking. He remarks how often at parties or gatherings where there are people we don't know, someone will chat to you and say "And what do you do?" Blythe says how crudely people's lives are simplified by their being pigeonholed like this. We are all the sum of many parts, not just by the job we do - or did.
Up here in the country, I find that people are not particularly impressed by whatever job you might have done. They are much more interested in what kind of a person you are now. When I first moved up here in 1987, upon retirement from teaching, I don't think anyone ever asked what job I had done, and I certainly didn't tell anyone. This was my retirement - my teaching career was in the past - and I wanted to explore new avenues. Someone (a local) paid me a very backhanded compliment when they remarked that they knew we would settle well up here. When we asked how they knew - the astonishing answer was "well you don't wear posh clothes and you don't have posh furniture - people who come with those rarely stay long!"
I don't quite know what I would reply if anyone asked me that question today. Maybe I would say "farmer's wife", or "dog owner", but what I would really like to say would be something along the lines of "I don't DO anything, I just AM".
Lovely sunset here, golden sky, no breeze, Tess home and safe, the farmer just off for his walk round the fields - what more could anyone wish for. Have a nice evening.

In a Dark Time.........

When reading Loren's post the other day (In a Dark Time.....the eye begins to see - see my blog list - he takes the most wonderful bird photos) it struck me what a brilliant quotation that is. Taken at face value it is true - the longer you walk in the dark the more you can see as your eyes adjust to the change.
Here we are quite a long way from artificial outdoor light (except for the neighbouring haulage yard which has security lights). But we have only to walk down the fields on a really starry night to get the full effect and to marvel at the wonderful display. People who live in towns never see this wonder. Where I grew up, in the Lincolnshire Fens, the skies were huge as the land was so flat (I am sure Reader Wil in The Netherlands has the same experiences now) and the stars, in those days of few artificial lights, were spectacular. What a lot people miss. I can only imagine the effect from the centre of the Sahara Desert.
We often walk in the dark. In the days when we had a dairy herd the farmer and I would walk down the fields in the early hours to check on a calving cow. He would take a lamp but rarely put it on until we had to start searching for the cow (finding a black and white cow in the dark is not so easy - thank goodness for the white patches!). It is surprising how quickly one's eyes would adjust to the dark. And on a moonlight night one soon sees almost as well as during the day.
There is something about the dark that gives a whole different meaning to the landscape.
But, of course, in the wider sense the quotation has even more meaning. I hear this morning that my friends grandson is well on the way to recovery - physically. Mentally only time will tell. One thing is for sure though, he will never see things in quite the same way again. For it is often the "dark" times that shape our future, that make us see things in a different way. For some this is a positive experience but for others, sadly, it can become negative. But, as the quotation says, it is only that contrast between dark and light, both physically and metaphorically, that really makes us see things in perspective.
The quotation is from the work of the American poet, Theodore Roethke, who died at the tragically young age of 55. Good that these words have survived him and taken on such meaning.

The Dark Days.

It is half past two in the afternoon and already the light is beginning to go. As Tess and I set out for our afternoon walk down the lane, the sky is heavy with unspilt rain, black clouds hanging low. There is an overall atmosphere of damp and desolation. The trees are bare, their leaves lying dead on the edges of the lane. There is a smell - not unpleasant - of rotting vegetation. As we approach our neighbour's cottage, a hundred yards down the lane, I smell, long before we get there, that they have lit the log fire. The sweet smell of burning wood pours from the chimney and billows down into the lane in the low pressure, and as I pass I catch a glimpse of a roaring log fire.

The hedgerows are mostly bare branches now except for the blackthorn, where the yellow leaves hang limply, waiting for the first real frost. Some of the ash saplings on the lane side are also hanging on to their leaves - you can see them in the photograph.

The birds are largely silent except for a gaggle of quarelling sparrows in a blackthorn bush and a sentinel robin singing his heart out in the tree top.

But Tess can smell pheasant! Luckily for me, she is on the long leash so she cannot disappear into the undergrowth, but she stands on her back legs and looks into the hedge bottom, pushing into the dense foliage wherever she can and setting up disturbed pheasant. In the field where the beef heifers are still out, there are nine pheasants perched on the edges of the food troughs cleaning up the crumbs that the cattle have left.

The sheep in the field with the ram are all grazing contentedly, many of them already showing the tell-tale red rumps which signify that they have been serviced by the ram and are - hopefully - in lamb for the Spring. I love how the farming year is constantly looking forward to the next season.

The farmer is just finishing off cleaning out the midden. Yesterday morning he cleaned out the loose housing, just in time, as after lunch seventeen in calf Holstein heifers came in for the winter. They look happy to be in and as you can see in the photograph are happily ensconced in the deep, clean straw. The cats are not so pleased though, as this was their prime mousing site.

The farmer is tipping the contents of the midden into the field, as the land is too wet to spread it. You can see from the photograph that deep ruts show his passage into the field. They will have to be harrowed out early in the year.

This weekend is Remembrance weekend here in the UK, when we remember those who were killed or badly injured in all the wars since the 1914-18 war. We have had two timely reminders this week - one in Afghanistan, where soldiers were killed by a colleague as they relaxed and another in the US where a similar situation occurred. War is a terrible thing - it kills the innocent far more often that it kills the guilty and because, in this instance, it is so far away, it is easier to push it all to the back of our minds. A dear friend has had a grandson wounded in

Afghanistan this week. He is now safely back in UK and she says "in good spirits", but others in the incident were not so lucky. So tomorrow, Remembrance Sunday, is a good time to pause and think about our boys who are fighting - and the civilian population who are trying to get on with their everyday lives, many of them, I am sure, just want it all to be over. There are no winners in any war - everyone loses.

In the garden the roses keep on flowering. Almost every bush is full of buds - the last rose of summer is a long time blooming this year. The first real frost will no doubt finish them off.

Bad feet.

Start looking at the sheep as you pass a field full and I will guarantee you will quickly notice that some of them are lame. Some will be running normally, others will be running and limping, some will be running on three legs and the really bad ones will be limping behind. The truth is that sheep have immense problems with bad feet (as do c0ws too). Sometimes it is a kind of digital dermatitis; sometimes foot rot; sometimes a stone caught between their two hooves, lodged there and the wound going septic. The problem is always worse this time of the year when the weather is very damp - and this year it has also been very warm, which has compounded the problem. So today the owner of the Swaledales we are over-wintering, sent two men down to treat the flock. That involves inspecting each foot, trimming the hoof, swabbing any sore places and spraying with antibiotic spray. They do not like it - obviously their feet hurt and we cannot explain why we are doing it. So the poor dumb creatures have to endure the whole procedure. But I am sure they feel better for it afterwards when they are back in the field.
Sorry about the awful photograph of a septic foot, but rarely do we get the opportunity to see how bad the feet can get, so I passed the camera over to the farmer, for a close-up.

Sunsets

I suppose it is inevitable that sunset has become a bit of a cliche for dying, for the end of life, for the "twilight years." I don't think any poet now could use sunset as a metaphor for the end of life - because it has been done so often.

I love Robert Browning's use of "the sunset touch":-

Just when we're safest, there's a sunset-touch,

A fancy from a flower bell, some one's death

A chorus ending from Euripedes, -

And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears

As old and new at once as Nature's self,

To rap and knock and enter in our soul.

Lord Byron (I think from Childe Harold) has a nice little mention too:-

The moon is up - and yet it is not night -

Sunset divides the sky with her - a sea

Of glory streams along the Alpine height

Of blue Friuli's mountain.

(My father quoted this regularly at sunset if anyone was listening!)

And, of course, there is the old Tennyrson quote

Sunset and evening star

and one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning at the bar

when I put out to sea.

Oh dear - all a bit sad and pessimistic aren't they? Well,, I have to tell you that I don't view sunset like that. Our kitchen window faces due West, so at this time of the year we usually eat our tea to the accompaniment of a glorious sunset if one is available. I thought you might like to see these five different sunset photographs - all taken from our kitchen window - to say that each one fills the sky with beauty is an understatement. Enjoy them.

What makes a good book?

Today was our writers' group meeting. The subject was "What makes a good book?" What an odd subject some of us thought (well, OK I thought) but we had a really interesting morning. Only a few had chosen to write but each one was different and we had a really good discussion.

Here is my piece:-

The trouble with adjectives is that their meaning is so subjective. "Being a good girl" when you are a child really means conforming (and all the best brains tried not to conform). Every mother has a beautiful baby in her eyes, whereas you might look into the pram and think - what an odd looking little thing. So there is going to be trouble with this word "good." So let's re-write the question and ask "What makes a good book - for me?"

Now the really important word in the question is "me". Is there anyone reading this who has not had the following experience? A friend, relative, colleague, acquaintance, radio programme, someone standing next to you in the library queue holds up a book and says "this book is really, really good - I so enjoyed it." You take the book home looking forward to curling up in your favourite armchair by the log fire, with your chosen tipple in a glass by your side, a box of choccies to hand - you open the book and by the time you get to page 2 you are beginning to have your doubts. By the time you get to page 6 your dream evening has gone "pouf". You need that tipple to drown your disappointment.

So let's be perfectly clear - this is what makes a good book for ME. Don't take any of the following to heart - you are not me (Thank God for that do I hear you say?), your taste will not be my taste - and what a good job that is so, otherwise there would be huge library queues for some books while others would moulder on the shelves.

I am not a lover of too much dialogue. Everyone raved about the Harry Potter books, so I tried to read one. After ten pages of solid dialogue I knew these books were not for me. I like descriptive writing - about nature, about travel, about scenery, about people (as long as they don't do a lot of talking).

Of course I have read the classics, Shakespeare, Trollope, Dickens, Jane Austen - some of them I loved and they are on my list of good books; others I found hard going and have no desire to read again. That they are great works of literature cannot be denied, but that does not make me want to curl up in their company.

So let me list a few books which I call really good books - for me. I have read E M Forster's A Passage to India many times and never tire of it. The great Russian writers - Turgenev, Tolstoy, Pasternak - I love them. Of present day writers I would say that Sebastian Faulks's

Birdsong is, for me, one of the best books of the twentieth century. On the other hand, if I am tired or unwell and need something which does not tax me too much, I am happy to settle for Wind in the Willows, Alice in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables - all tried and trusted favourites.

What do these books have in common? Each of them tells a story with a beginning, a middle and an end (not necessarily in that order), and each is memorable enough for me to be able to recall it sometimes years after I first read it.

Some writers are able to do that for me, some aren't. Anita Brookner always stuns me with her well-written style; Hilary Mantel makes me come back for more; Salley Vickers "Miss Garnett's Angel" sits in my head like a much loved recurring dream.

I have just finished reading Adam Thorpe's "The Rules of Perspective" (Thorpe was recommended by Dave (pics and poems) so thanks Dave- there is one recommendation which was a success). Not an easy read, a harrowing subject (the fall of a German city at the end of the Second World War) - I read it one evening and when I got to bed I couldn't stop thinking about it and wanted to get up to continue reading it - now there is a really gripping book.

Now I am reading Katherine Swift's "The Morville House" about the making of a Shropshire garden. Fascinating stuff. This is a really good book. What makes it good - well I suppose it is good because I think it is so. Would you like to borrow it? Pour out a glass of your favourite tipple and curl up by a log fire with it. Don't overdo the chocolate. You will not be disappointed.

Or will you?

Sorry about the quality of the photograph - it is a pouring wet day here and I can't find anywhere to take the photograph where the flash doesn't spoil it. But you get the idea.

Nature .....ever the opportunist.

I suppose that the reason the countryside is as rich as it is is due in part to the opportunistic side of nature. If there is a piece of open ground then rapidly plants will begin to colonise it. Poppies and other "shaken dispersal" plants shake their seed heads violently so that seeds fly in all directions - only some will take root but the ones that do you can bet your bottom dollar are the ones that land in the most advantageous places for development. Similarly, little plants like violets will seed in a crack in the paving - just the right place to keep their feet cool.

The same applies to birds - a farmer ploughing a field will notice that the sky goes from empty to full of gulls at a rate of knots - where they come from it is hard to say, but ever the opportunist - the seagull will sense there is food around. And how long does a dead rabbit lie on the roadway before a crow or two are pecking at it?

Earlier in the year in a gale, our ancient plum tree broke across its middle and half of it fell down.

The wood has already been sawn up for the stove - plum wood is lovely to burn. (I suppose you could say that was the farmer being opportunistic). This morning the farmer called me to come and look what had happened to the spot where the branch had broken away. Lo and behold - fungi had already grown in it - not just one but a veritable little town of fungi roofs. And do you see - on top of the fungi an overhanging holly bush (laden with berries this year) has dropped a berry right in the middle. It will be interesting to see if it takes root. Watch this space.

All the glisters....

Although the Poetry Bus has well and truly crashed into a ditch while that zany Einstein was driving, I cannot get out of the habit of Monday being Poetry Day. So here is my poem for Monday:-


All that glisters....

Catching the sun,
an apple hung
on a laden tree in a
leafy bower.

Its fiery hues
led me to choose
this perfect fruit.

I took a bite.
But it was sour!

A Birthday Outing.

Glorious sunshine, lovely company, chauffeur-driven, incredible scenery - what more could anyone wish for on their birthday?

My friend took me out for the day and we went into Nidderdale. It is maybe a lesser-known Dale towards the Southern edge of the Dales, and is called after its river - the Nidd. There is a river called Nidd in Norway - I think flowing through Trondheim - so I presume it to be a Viking word. It is a picturesque river and where it flows through its Dale it is quite small as you will see from the photograph - but it eventually flows into Knaresborough, where it takes on a much more mature face.

We left home at ten o'clock and drove a short way towards Ripon before branching off into the high country. Up there on the tops it is wild and empty, populated only by Swaledale sheep. The heather has finished flowering and has gone brown so we drove through miles of this open moorland before Nidderdale opened up in front of us - a pretty dale, peppered with tiny grey stone villages looking so neat and tidy in the Autumn sunlight. Everywhere we looked there were patches of deciduous larches standing tall and golden in the sun and beech trees in their weekend of glory lighting the landscape like Hallowe'en lanterns.

There was a lot of cloud overhead but round the edges was blue sky, so we decided that it wasn't going to rain - and we were right. After going through several small villages my driver suddenly turned off over the River Nidd and into a tiny hamlet where there was the most beautiful Country House Hotel. The hamlet was Wath and the hotel The Sportsman. Here, in a cosy, well-upholstered, warm, pretty lounge we had a tray with a cafatiere of coffee and a plate of biscuits, served by a charming and welcoming young lady - very civilised. As we came out we gave my friends dogs a Utility Walk (as she chooses to call it) and I took photographs of the river from the pretty little bridge.

Then it was on into Pateley Bridge - Nidderdale's market town. We didn't stop here but I took a photo from the moving vehicle so that you could see what it looks like.

And then it was off again over Grassington Moor, another high moorland place, although this one has a main road running through it, so there is more traffic. We stopped at the Old Hall Hotel for lunch. We had (to quote the menu) Award-winning sausages on a bed of mash, with onion gravy. I hope your mouths are watering - it was delicious. Here we met a lovely rescue dog, reputedly Border Collie cross Labrador, with such a shiny black coat, white feet and a tiny white tip on his extra-long tail.

Then we were off again (Heather, Marmalade Rose and all other embroiders can feel jealous here) to Embsay Mills near Skipton - an embroiderers Mecca. We had a lovely mooch, were sorely tempted - in fact I spent the Birthday money my friend had just given me on a lovely box

of materials (see photograph in order to feel intense envy those mentioned above!)

A cup of coffee in the cafe and then it was home again by a different but equally pretty route, through villages with lovely sounding names - Kirby Malzeard, Grewelthorpe, Masham - ending up back at home just as the farmer was about to light the pumpkin.

Lovely birthday - thank you dear G.

Hallowe'en

A Happy Hallowe'en to you all - and a big thank- you for all the Birthday wishes. Another year older.