'Sparks through the stubble'

 I am reading - well reading, stopping and thinking, looking up plants, looking up quotations, having moments of extreme sadness - Derek Jarman's 'Modern Nature'.

Jarman was born in 1942,  had a not very happy childhood,  became a painter, theatre designer, film maker, poet, writer - but above all a gardener.

He was gay and was one of the first 'famous' people to make his HIV status public.   We are talking of the eighties and nineties when such a state was more or less a certain death sentence.   His book, written in 1989 and 1990, is about the garden he made in the shingle around the fisherman's hut he bought in Dungeness.  He died at the age of 52 in 1994 after living with a death sentence - and years of awful illnesses - four years after finishing the book.

His mantra - which sums up his attitude to life so well was (loosely taken from The Song of Solomon) :

For our time is the passing of a shadow

and our lives will run like

sparks through the stubble.

 

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This morning it was very wet - I suppose it has been wet all night.   It was certainly raining when I went to bed at ten and it was still at it when I got up at six.   Not just wet but the trees were still, everything looked thoroughly drenched, all the passing cars, which I watch over my breakfast every day, had their wipers going full pelt, all the dog walkers were swathed in waterproofs and many of the dogs were giving their winter waterproofs their first outing.  And I thought, with a moment's passing sadness, of my farmer who - like all farmers - put on his old waterproof jacket  (which got more and more decrepit until finally one Friday (Auction Mart Day) I would steer him in the direction of the farmers' shop in an old stable building in Golden Lion Yard and stand over him while he bought a new one that was  waterproof) - and set off round the fields with Tip his dog and Tess, my Border Terrier in all weathers to make sure that all was well.  No fancy waterproofs for either dog of course - they both had 'good thick coats that turn the weather'.   No farmer worth his salt would contemplate a coat for a dog - buying one for themselves meant a major effort! (I would put this as high on the list of reasons why every farmer should marry - way above cuddles (and more) in bed.)

Living as I do on the extreme Eastern edge of The Pennines we know all about water here.  Some major Dales take their names from the river which flows through them - Wharfe dale, Swale dale, Wensleydale ( used to be called Yoredale after its river - the Yore - later Ure but changed to Wensleydale around the time that the village of Wensley - which stands on the Ure - was almost wiped out by the plague.)

These rivers rise and fall with rapidity - often aided by the strength of the wind, and as the rain stopped this morning so the wind rose.   Now it is sunny (but still threatens rain) but the wind is very strong and blowing from the West thus blowing the water from all the becks updale down into the Ure.   Rain  is forecast so we can bet tomorrow the Ure will be 'banking' or even overflowing.

Jarman talks about such days, when in ailing health he sits them out in his fisherman's hut on the shingle.  The rain stops for a while and he walks - 'the sun, a puddled vein of molten silver in a vast amphitheatre of cloud'.   He writes like a painting - it is easy to see the scene in his beautiful word-pictures.

 

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The doorbell rings and a friend calls out which brings me down to earth quickly.   She has been to Ripon and while her hearing aids were being 'serviced' she had a wander round M & S - found two pots of Prawn cocktail reduced for a quick sale.  So she bought them  and on her way home called with one for me as a starter for my lunch today.   I wish I had the ability to write about them, to paint a word picture to match the book I am reading.

If you like such books, do please give it a try.   It is superb.