A Year's Reading

Last year, for the first time ever, I kept a list of all my reading. It turns out that I read the nice round number of 52 books, which suggests that I read one a week, though I'm a much more irregular than that. In August I read seven, while in December I only managed one. 20 of the books were fictional, either novels or collections of short stories, while the rest were biography, memoirs and factual books. It's this latter group that I'm concentrating on here.

"The Man Who Climbs Trees" by James Aldred

If you ever find yourself needing to get an elderly man to the top of a very high tree then James Aldred is your man. If the gentleman happens to be Sir David Attenborough you'd better get him safely back down again too. Aldred makes a living by climbing trees, taking photos and working on wildlife films. This book will take you on adventures to Borneo, Congo, Peru, Australia, Gabon, Papua, Venezuela, Morocco and even little old England. It opens up the world of the forest canopy which is otherwise hidden from us, without us having to be stung by bees, chased by elephants or brave these vertiginous heights. If you want a slightly quieter read closer to home, I can also recommend his book "Goshawk Summer" where he attempts to film these enigmatic birds of prey during the Covid pandemic.

"Soundings - Journeying North In The Company Of Whales" by Doreen Cunningham

I nearly included this among the novels I read in 2023; it reads very like one, for she exhibits not only her breadth of knowledge but also depth of feeling. As a young single-mum living in a hostel she decides that she and her little boy, Max, with embark on a journey to see the Grey Whales which migrate along the west coast of N America. She does have some experience of whales and the peoples of the far north, but that's now all in the past as young dreams are overtaken by harsh realities. I can't recommend this book highly enough if you'd like to learn about whales, climate change, the changing lives of the indigenous peoples of the north while at the same time being gripped by this brave woman's quest.

"An Economic History Of The English Garden" by Roderick Floud

A rather dry sounding title for a fascinating book. Most of us, when wandering around England's great gardens will ask the same question "How many gardeners does it take to look after all this?" Floud goes on to ask many more: "How much did this all cost at modern day prices?", "How much money did Capability Brown actually make?" "Where did all the money for these gardens come from?", "What was the point of it all?" "Did this have any effect of the economy of the country?" "Just how much did it cost to produce a single pineapple when they first learned to grow them here?" - at modern day prices? £569 for one pineapple!

"Finding Hildasay" by Christian Lewis

Ex-paratrooper Chris Lewis finds himself slipping into the kind of depression and hopelessness which so often afflicts former servicemen once they leave the armed forces. On a whim he decides that he'll walk around the coastline of the UK - including all the islands. He sets off with little equipment, hardly any money and only the vaguest plan. He returns years later with a dog, a fiancée, and a child. Along the way he also raise £500,000 for an ex-servicemen's charity. 

"The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England" by Ian Mortimer

Ah, if only school history lessons had been like this! The "time traveller" bit is just a device to put you firmly in those distant days and describe what you might have encountered. It doesn't flinch from some of the more unsavoury sights and smells - a sort of "Horrible Histories" for grown-ups! It tells you about living conditions, food and drink, the laws of the land....everything in fact that those dreadful stories of kings and queens fail to mention

"A Wood Of One's Own" by Ruth Pavey

I always enjoy a quiet poke about in small woods, finding out what's there, figuring out the wood's history, and, often as not, finding unexpected peace and tranquility. Reading this unassuming little book is a similar experience. Ruth Pavey, a teacher in London, has a sudden desire to own some land in Somerset. Having found a suitable plot, she goes to the auction, gets outbid, and buys a piece of land that nobody else wants. How she goes about transforming this unpromising scrap of real estate into something useful to her forms the basis of this quiet little tale.

"Madhouse At The End Of The Earth" by Julian Sancton

Great achievements are sometimes said to be the result of standing on the shoulders of giants, however in some cases it would be truer to say that goals have been reached by standing on the shoulders of madmen, cranks and failures. Those who triumph are celebrated by history; those who fall short are forgotten. This is the story of Belgium's attempt at Antarctic exploration which foundered in frozen seas and the long, dark polar winter. Many of those involved left diaries of their disastrous misadventure and from these Julian Sancton has reconstructed their gripping tale. But among the madmen cranks and failures is a discredited dreamer who saw a possible way to succeed and also a highly-motivated young man who later drew on these ideas and became a household name.

"The Lost Rainforests Of Britain" Guy Shrubsole

They are not all in the tropics, you know. There are also temperate rainforests and Britain has some tiny fragments of them, scattered along our western shores. Guy Shrubsole sets out to visit as many as he can, which involves some difficult journeys, some negotiation and more than a little trespassing. Along the way he learns a great deal about these (almost) lost rainforests and conjectures just how much can be restored and how much is gone forever.

*******

Some of you will have noticed that I haven't posted for a while and some may remember a long hiatus back in the second half 2022. I think it's time I explained what's going on. 

Back in August 2022 I started to get pains in my back and hip; having spent most of my life doing very physical work I didn't pay it much attention. Eventually, at the beginning of October, I was admitted to hospital, had all kinds of blood tests, scans and courses of medication, though it didn't take long till they told me  that I had prostate cancer, not only that but it had spread to other parts of my body and was incurable.

I had hormone treatment and, alongside regular medication, was put on a new drug that was being trialed. After a few days I felt good as new and Les and I were able to recommence taking regular walks. My brother has been a tower of strength throughout, taking me to my endless appointments and keeping a grumpy old man positive.

Just before Christmas my blood tests revealed that my cancer had found a way around the medications and was starting to have a party in my bones. Pain started soon after. There are still further courses of action - radiotherapy, chemotherapy and another new drug. I wait to see how this all goes.

If I find things to blog about I'll be back here pronto!

Take care.

Novel Ideas

I wasn't at all surprised to hear recently that reading has increased in popularity over the last year. Books not only fill time in a pleasant way but have the ability to whisk us away into other worlds (many of which would be a lot less comfortable than our present existence if we experienced them in reality), and they also allow us insight into the lives of others in a much deeper way than a Zoom call. 

Last time I wrote about books, I'd been reading biographies and didn't include any novels, so we'll remedy that this time - though in reality I rarely read two books of the same genre in succession.                       

A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler

A while ago Mary (at A Breath Of Fresh Air) recommended Robert Seethaler's novel A Whole Life which I ordered and read that very evening (Aha! You can do that with a Kindle!). From that you may be able to reach two conclusions: firstly that it's a short book, but also that it's one that's not easy to put down.

It is, as it says, the account of a man's whole life. Apart from the war years he never strays far from his mountain home, nor from the morals and truths of the hard life into which he was born. But such lives are important nevertheless, more important than is generally acknowledged in this age.

So we follow his progress through the unkindness inflicted by others, through the loss inflicted by an avalanche, surviving a war which he doesn't fully understand and wrestling with the changes brought about by the modern age....."Scars are like years, he said: one follows another and it’s all of them together that make a person who they are."

But more than that it's the light which shines through the troubles and afflictions that really define a "whole life".

Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier

Here's another book which describes a whole life and one which starts off in similar poverty but goes on to attain a measure of fame - though, because the subject is a woman, it's never the level of recognition that she deserves.

I'm usually uncomfortable with books about real people which include the kind of speculation and invention which are presented here in addition to the true facts, especially when it's about a person that I already know something about - it gets difficult to know where truth ends and fantasy begins. This book about the fossil-hunter Mary Anning is however an exception.

If you've never heard of her, she was a young girl from a poor family who scraped together a meagre existence by searching for fossils in the cliffs along what became known as the Jurassic coast of southern England. She seemed to have an instinctive understanding of fossils as well as an uncanny knack of finding them. Many of the great men of science owe much of their reputation to Mary's finds but until recently she had received little credit.

She did have one person who helped her and fought for her, a rather odd spinster called Elizabeth Philpott, herself a self-taught geologist and equally shunned by the male establishment.

Most of what appears in the book is true, all that has been added is is a little romance, and that is largely based on rumours which circulated at the time. There is one event which occurs in the book which seems preposterously far-fetched, involving an incredibly generous gesture by someone acting entirely out of character - it is however completely factual!

How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won The FA Cup - J L Carr

For those from foreign lands I should explain that the FA Cup is (or at least was; it's lost some of its glamour in recent years) England's premier football knock-out cup. It's charm lies in the fact that almost any football (soccer) club is able to enter it, including teams made up of milkmen, teachers, bricklayers and the like who play the game just for the fun of it. 

Every year a few of these part-time hopefuls manage to progress to the stage where the footballing millionaires of the biggest teams in the land join in. And most years there are one or two "Cup upsets" where bigger teams get beaten by those who should really have no chance.

But what if one of these little teams were to manage to get to the Final itself? And what if they won it?

The whole idea is ridiculous and the football-loving J L Carr knows it, but that doesn't prevent him having a great deal of fun with the idea along the way, as well as drawing some conclusions about "the beautiful game" and life in general.

Incidentally this is the same J L Carr who wrote "A Month In The Country" which I recommended some time ago, though you'd probably never guess they were both by the same author.

A Change Of Climate - Hilary Mantel

I keep reading excellent books by this author, but so far have avoided immersing myself in her best-known works, the double Man Booker Prize winning Wolf Hall trilogy. It's just their sheer size that keeps putting me off, but it'll happen.....one day.

A Change Of Climate is a modern-day family saga mostly taking place in rural Norfolk. Now rural Norfolk is not so far from rural Cambridgeshire, where I live, and I've known families very like those in the story - well-educated, very liberal, sort-of-Christian folks. And every twist and nuance of the tale rings true.

It concerns long-buried secrets and unfollowed dreams and how they re-surface and affect those living years afterwards. Apart from that I don't want to say anything about the plot which might spoil it. 

It's a complex and multi-layered story with a multitude of characters but such is Hilary Mantel's skill as a story-teller that it's never confusing. It's a book I shall definitely be re-reading for the sheer pleasure of it.

This Is Happiness - Niall Williams

Here we are on the west coast of Ireland in the little village of Faha when something remarkable happens - it stops raining!

Young Noel Crowe is living here with his grand-parents, having recently left the seminary and turned his back on religion. Into all their lives comes Christy, a wandering labourer with a rich and colourful past, who is here to help with "the coming of the electricity", for progress is about to encroach on this rural backwater.

The story is told by Noel Crowe as he looks back on his life from the perspective of old age. He takes his time relating what happened, as he remembers it, and the language is often reminiscent of the poetic style of old ballads. 

Here we find Noel and Christy reeling home from the pub after an evening of music. Now they're whitewashing an forgetful old lady's walls for reasons which Noel doesn't understand. Here come the doctor's three beautiful daughters. Grandfather is now deliberately wrecking old bicycles so he has an excuse to visit the old German who is able to fix them. Then there's the man from the electric company trying to sell the new-fangled gadgets to the disbelieving old folks of the village. Next Christy's singing loudly outside the bedroom window of the chemist's wife.

So it goes on with its own beautiful but crazy logic, weaving an intricate mythology of Ireland's past and its charismatic inhabitants.

Take care.

 

Books For The Curious

If there is anything good about having to stay home more than I would choose, it's that it has made more time for reading books. Here are just a few that have interested, intrigued and entertained me over the past few months...

"Dark, Salt, Clear" by Lamorna Ash

If you grow up with an unusual name like "Lamorna", you soon become aware that it's the name of a Cornish fishing village. Not only that but one of Cornwall's favourite songs is "Way Down To Lamorna". So it was for Lamorna Ash, even though she grew up in London and went to university in Oxford. The book tells how she moved down to Cornwall to discover her roots and learn about the fishing community in the town of Newlyn. Most of us would be content with a brief visit and a search on the internet, but, luckily for us, Lamorna is made of sterner stuff and joins in with the drinking in the pubs and accompanying the rough 'n' ready lads out on the fishing trawlers, learning how to gut fish. It's a privileged glimpse into a fast disappearing world.

 

"An Audience With An Elephant" - Byron Rogers

Those of you who enjoy the eccentric tales and curious places that I sometimes turn up for this blog will warm to this collection of writings by Mr Rogers. Besides meeting the last elephant to appear in a British circus, we also makes the acquaintance of the last tramp to walk the roads of Wales, a very old man who competes in triathlons, the Duchess of Argyll, a rather jolly hangman, the poet R S Thomas and the man who wrote speeches for Prince Charles, among others. You'll also visit an ancient church, see a big hole in the ground caused by an explosion and get to ride on a train to nowhere. How can any sane person resist?

"At The Loch Of The Green Corrie" by Andrew Greig

Andrew Greig is a fine Scottish writer of all kinds of books. Once upon a time he wanted to be the poet, Norman MacCaig (and once upon another time he wanted to be a member of the Incredible String Band - but that's another tale, and one that gave rise to a different book). He later became friends with MacCaig and on the last evening they spent together before the poet's death, MacCaig said to him:

"I should like you to fish for me at the Loch of the Green Corrie, only it's not called that. But if you go to Lochinver and ask for a man called Norman MacAskill, if he likes you he may tell you where it is. If you catch trout I shall be delighted. And if you fail, looking down from a place I don't believe in, I shall be most amused."

A few years later Greig set out on his mission; the loch was elusive and the trout even more so. But along the way he learns about MacCaig, about life and about himself. It's a profound meditation set in the beautiful and sometimes bleak landscape of the Highlands.

"Mudlarking" by Lara Maiklem

"Mudlarks", if like me you've heard the word but don't really know what it means, were people who descended on the mud revealed by low tide on the River Thames in order to scavenge whatever had been washed up. These poor people made an unhealthy and precarious living by finding bits of coal, lost coins, old bottles and other "treasures". More surprisingly still, there are people who still engage in this grubby activity, though not from necessity, but more as an eccentric hobby. Lara Maiklem is one of these people and she takes us along with her as she scours the mud for anything that catches her eye, making her way slowly downstream past the best "mudlarking" sites. What she finds reveals the history of London, though you never know what's coming next - rather like being a "mudlark". And like the hobby itself, she gradually entraps you in the charm of this unlikely pursuit.

"The Baroness" by Hannah Rothschild

Cast your mind back a month or two and you may remember me writing about the banker and entomologist, Charles Rothschild and his interesting and very different children. The most surprising of all perhaps was Pannonica (Nica) who went off to New York and became immersed in the world of bebop jazz, being a kind of patron to the likes of Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. Here her niece, Hannah Rothschild, uncovers the story of the aunt whom the family avoided mentioning to her. She travels to New York and meets her and pieces together the extraordinary tale of the woman that the jazz musicians knew as the Duchess.

Thelonious Monk was also a strange and enigmatic character; many said he couldn't really play piano, while a knowledgeable few thought he was a genius (an opinion to which Mr Monk himself subscribed). Luckily for posterity Nica was among those few and supported him while he pursued his unique musical vision, waiting for the rest of the hepcats to catch up.

That's Count Basie sitting beside the piano - I think he understood, not sure about the man doing the introduction though!

Take care.

Outside Of A Dog....

"Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read" - Groucho Marx.

A selection of the books I've read in the last few months:

Sometimes it's necessary to step off the normal path and explore something new. Here are three books in which the authors do exactly that.

The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds - Stephen Rutt  -  Britain's seabirds occupy a difficult space. Of course they are not "our" seabirds at all; they merely visit us for a few weeks each year in order to raise their young. They cling (sometimes quite literally) to the cliffs, sea stacks and islands around our coasts, often in some of the least hospitable places. When Stephen Rutt tires of life in London he sets off to seek out these remote locations and get to know the birds that briefly reside there. It's not so much an ornithology book (though I certainly learnt much from it) as a travelogue to the remarkable edges of these islands.

Common Ground - Rob Cowan - Edgelands of a different sort are the destination of Rob Cowan; he explores an odd bit of wasteland on the edge of an urban location. It's become an almost "trendy" idea to regard these unattractive sites as havens for nature in recent years, with several books championing the cause. "Common Ground" makes the most complete and satisfying job of all of them, weaving nature, history, politics and his personal life into a beautiful whole.

Under The Stars: A Journey Into Light - Matt Gaw - Matt Gaw's untrodden ways are into the night-time darkness of these islands. You have to warm to Gaw for his complete honesty, whether he's recounting his irrational fear when spending a night in the forests of Northumberland or trying to interest his children in the stars (the ones in the sky rather than the ones on Twitter). Along the way he makes a powerful argument for preserving darkness from artificial lighting and appreciating its attractions.

Three novels that worked their way into my consciousness in different ways:

If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor -  I'd read good things about this novel on various blogs that I follow. If you like a story that progresses from A to C, passing through B on the way, then this may not be for you. The ambitious scope of this novel is to document the many diverse residents of a London street and their reactions to a terrible event that takes place there on a lazy summer afternoon. Some of the characters are perhaps drawn more fully than others, also some of them are more appealing to me and I'd like to hear more about them a little less about others. But that's a minor criticism and I kept eagerly turning pages till I reached the end.

Fludd - Hilary Mantel - I should really have read at least one of Mantel's Booker Prize winners, but I'm always deterred by their sheer size. This little tale is more manageable for a slow and steady reader like me. The story revolves around a small church, hidden away in a moorland valley. It's supposed to be set in the 1950s but at times you'd think we were back in the Middle Ages. Fludd is the rather mysterious curate who appears to help out the crusty and difficult old vicar, though Fludd is clearly more than he first seems. Hilary Mantel says that its style is influenced by her childhood when all sorts of strange things seemed possible. What evolves is something akin to a modern morality tale that is full of sly, wicked humour.

The Island - Ana Maria Matute - When a book turns up on Penguin Modern Classics and I've never heard of it, or its author, I see it as my duty to investigate. On the surface it's a little coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, though the unrest is just a shadow that falls across the island on which the action takes place. The writing is superbly evocative, especially the powerful portrait of the elderly aunt who seems to pull the strings of everything that happens on the island, and I've been looking for translations of other books by the same writer, though none seem to be available.

And now three about the evolution of new ideas in different centuries:

The Wonderful Mr Willughby - Tim Birkhead - Francis Willughby was a seventeenth century scholar who collaborated with John Ray on a hugely ambitious project: to see, describe, illustrate and classify the entire nature of the known world! There's always been a debate as to which of the two pioneering naturalists was the more important, but more interesting to me was the sheer difficulty of quite how to set about such a difficult task - exactly what attributes of birds, or insects, or fish, do you consider when trying to classify them. They were also impeded in their quest by their religious beliefs - if you believe in a benevolent creator just how do you account for parasites that kill off their hosts? - and if the creator is all-knowing then how do you explain fossils of organisms that are now extinct? A fascinating read for anyone interested in the natural world and the evolution of ideas.

Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants - Ken Thompson - Charles Darwin was also a scientist who had to wrestle with the religious implications of his work, most obviously in The Origin Of Species. But Darwin was interested in a wide range of other topics, in fact he could not prevent himself from investigating anything which grabbed his attention. Darwin did not have the technology to answer many of the questions that he posed for himself, but was ingenious in his approach to botany by what was little more than the intelligent and obsessive pursuit of gardening.

Where Do Camels Belong? - Ken Thompson - Not the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East; they're relative newcomers there. They evolved first in North America, of all places. Most members of their family can now be found in S America (llamas, alpacas etc). The only Dromedaries living wild nowadays are in Australia. From this bewildering series of  contradictions Dr Ken Thompson goes on to investigate the science of "invasive species". To people like me who've grown up (and grown old) believing that "invasives" are always a "bad thing", this is a refreshing and enlightening volume.

The Rosie Trilogy - Graeme Simsion - Don Tilman, the fictional central character in these three books, is also a scientist. Like many outstanding brains, his is firmly on the Autistic Spectrum, a fact that is obvious to everyone else in the story - except to Don himself, of course. At the age of 39 he decides that he ought to find himself a "life partner" and he sets out on his project. His logical brain suggests to him that the most effective way of doing this is to prepare a questionnaire which he will distribute to potential partners, he will then apply scientific method to the answers to find the most compatible person to be his wife. What could possibly go wrong? While pursuing the ideal partner he falls in love with Rosie, who may be the least compatible person in the world. I must admit that romantic comedies are not my usual reading matter, but I found these brilliant, not only for the comedy (which was hilarious) but also for the serious points which it makes about our attitudes towards people who have Autism as their superpower. 

Take care

A Few Books

It looks as though I'll be reading more books than I thought I would in the coming weeks. Here's a few I've read and enjoyed over the last year or so, some read for the first time and some revisited.

Gods Of The Morning - John Lister-Kaye

I haven't quite finished reading this myself, but I'm loving it so far. John Lister-Kaye is the owner and director of the Aigas Field Centre in Scotland and his observations are all based on that particular locality. As it says on the cover it's mostly concerned with the birds that live there at various times of year, though for the purposes of this account Pine Martens (mammals, for those not familiar with them) seem to count as honorary birds as they feature quite prominently too.

It's not a detailed, species-by-species, account, but rather the story of one man's wanderings and thoughts about nature and our relationship to it. It's all expressed in gentle poetic language which is a joy to read, bringing to life the highland landscape, it's moods and weather, as well as the natural life of the area.

Bear Town - Fredrik Backman

Everything you read about this book says "by the best-selling author of A Man Called Ove", but I've no idea why - this is a much better book; a real novel instead of a charming tale. Beartown is a struggling town sunk deep in the winter forests and deep in poverty and hopelessness. There's one thing that they cling to - they have an ice rink and a hockey team. Now, you may think why should you be interested in a book about hockey, but that's not what the book is about; it's about people, it's about us. All kinds of themes relevant to modern life are entwined in this saga - the cult of celebrity, the way we treat misfits and foreigners, power and privilege....it's nearly a year since I read it but it lives with me still.

The Fens - Francis Pryor

A hard one to assess this, perhaps more interesting to me than to anyone else. It is, of course, about an area just north of where I live. It's about ancient history. It's about archaeology, digging in the mud to try to understand the past. Is anyone still here?

Francis Pryor may be known to some from his frequent appearances in BBC's Time Team programmes and if this book doesn't appeal then he's written many others, including some fiction, that might be worth investigating. Pryor is an engaging writer who may take off in any number of directions at the slightest excuse. But that, as he demonstrates, is often what archaeology is about - following small discrepancies and subtle hints which send you off on unexpected tangents. 

Besides being an archaeologist interested in the history of the Fens he also lives there and farms in a small way, so he knows his subject from all sides. At the heart of it the people of the past may not have been so very different from us today so his first-hand experience of the land is invaluable.

Yes, it's about archaeology, but don't be surprised you're suddenly hearing all about his Land Rover, learning about the railway line to King's Lynn, joining him in doing some Morris dancing or lending a hand as he builds his own house.

Free Country - George Mahood

It was a simple, if rather silly, idea: get from Land's End at the south-west tip of England to John o' Groats in Scotland without spending any money. Oh, and you start off wearing just your underpants. Surely people will want to give you clothes, shoes, free food and drink, and offer you places to sleep....and, errr, a couple of bikes, please, if you've got them to spare.

Amazingly the Great British public are more than willing to help out and are rewarded by our intrepid travellers with a postcard saying "I am OFFICIALLY a VERY nice person" and having their photos taken as a sort of hall of fame, which you can see here.

Some travel books make you want to do the identical journey yourself - this is not one of them.

A Month In The Country - J L Carr

This short, beautifully written story is a classic that I often re-read. Tom Birkin returns from his experiences in the WWI trenches and a broken marriage and is offered the job of uncovering and  restoring a wall-painting in an idyllic country church. From that starting point the action (such as it is) unfolds slowly through hints and suggestion. There is always a feeling that something is being withheld by the characters, hidden away as deeply and thoroughly as the wall-painting beneath layers of whitewash.

It evokes it's period so well that when I first read it I was convinced that it must have been written around the 1930s, though it was actually published in 1980 and was nominated for the Booker Prize. If you haven't read it you certainly should.

Wilding - Isabella Tree

Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree are the guardians of the Knepp Estate in West Sussex. Having attempted farming the land in the normally accepted ways - pouring more and more resources and chemicals into the land in an attempt to squeeze out more profit - Charlie makes a daring and innovative decision to return the land to something like its natural state.

There are grants available for this sort of work in Britain, but it's usually restricted to restoring small areas of woodland, constructing a beetle-bank or leaving wild margins around arable fields. Restoring 3,500 acres of land in the midst of intensively-farmed and populated countryside was on another scale altogether. This memoir charts the problems they had to overcome, the compromises they had to make and finally the triumphant return of nature to their land.

****** 

As it's Friday now (I started writing this post on Wednesday, but got sidetracked reading bits of the books described) we ought to have some music.

Jez Lowe is a singer-songwriter who's well-known at folk clubs and folk festivals in the UK but not perhaps elsewhere. It's a pity because he's a very skilled maker of songs about all manner of unlikely subjects such as......I'll let him tell you himself...

There you are, hope and humour in the grimmest setting; just what we need right now!

Take care.

The Lost Words: Spell Songs

Back in 2007 something happened which those who perpetrated the act thought would go unnoticed. But since then a movement has quietly grown and it appeared in its latest incarnation at the Folk By The Oak festival at Hatfield House.

Early in the afternoon three people appeared on the Acorn Stage. They had no instruments with them and were not about to burst into unaccompanied three-part harmony. On the left was the writer Robert Macfarlane. In the centre, the artist Jackie Morris. And interviewing the pair of them was the broadcaster Matthew Bannister.

Rachel Newton

(just what the Scottish harpist and singer, Rachel Newton, and others who follow have got to do with this will become clear later. Back to the interview...)

The Oxford Junior Dictionary of 2007 made a decision to exclude certain words from its pages to make room for other words which they deemed more relevant to today's children.
The missing words included "dandelion", "acorn", "bluebell" and "otter", all words to do with the natural world, left out in favour of words to do with the internet and computers.

Kris Drever

The loss of the words from the dictionary was of course not the fault of the publishers; they merely reflect what's going on in the world. But if children do not know the names of these things how will they know how important it is to protect them?

Julie Fowlis

I can't recall the exact details of how it came about but the landscape writer Robert Macfarlane and wildlife artist Jackie Morris came together to produce the book "The Lost Words" to celebrate the beauty and mystery of the very words left out of the dictionary.

Beth Porter

Each double page contains one of Robert's "spells", illustrated by Jackie's painting. The word "spell" here has two meanings: firstly the initial letter of each line spells out the name of the subject - O T T E R for example, but the words also conjure up a vision of the animal - like a witch's spell. There is absolutely no "talking down" to children - more like the words of Dylan Thomas than Enid Blyton!

Seckou Keita

Every year Folk By The Oak brings musicians and singers together to produce a suite of new songs on a theme, and these are presented as the central set of the afternoon's music. And this year the songs were based on the Lost Words. And the musicians pictured here are the ones who collaborated in the project.

Karine Polwart

The book itself has been the subject of a crowd-funded scheme to introduce it into every primary school in England. And recently a CD of the songs has also become available.

Somehow I didn't get a picture of Jim Molyneux apart from where he sneaks into the left-hand edge of the band shot above. Kerry Andrew, who was also part of the group, was not at the event but does appear on the CD. So here they are, The Lost Words book and CD, floating ethereally above the festival site surrounded by a golden glow....

There's lots online about the project for those who are interested:

An interview with Robert Macfarlane on YouTube

All the songs of The Lost Words CD on YouTube

A podcast about Jackie Morris's part in the project by Folk On Foot

Take care.

A Handful Of Books

I haven't posted much in the last couple of weeks; the weather's been cloudy, humid and with a threat of thunderstorms; my brother needed a bit of help with his garden; I've been on birdwatching trips to Wicken Fen, Fowlmere, Fen Drayton Lakes and Lakenheath Fen where I've been royally entertained by Marsh Harriers and Hobbies but, apart from a fuzzy picture of a Bittern in reeds, these trips didn't yield many photos - and I've been doing some reading.

Doing a bit of research before going to the Glaven valley back in April I turned up the name of John Craske - one of his paintings has been preserved in the Shell Museum at Glandford. I'd never heard of him but there's a book....

Threads: The Delicate Life Of John Craske - Julia Blackburn  

John Craske took to painting after becoming ill at the age of 36. Much of the rest of his life was spent in a "stuporous state", only surfacing from time to time to paint and later, when he was confined to bed, to embroider. 

Before his sickness he'd been a fisherman and it was scenes of the sea and ships that formed much of his work. He was not a trained artist of course and not taken seriously by the establishment, though he was championed by several people such as the poet John Betjeman  and the singer Peter Peers.

Julia Blackburn pieces together the few precious facts about Craske's lfe - and they are very few indeed - but also lets us in on the process of the writing such a book. We wander off down all kinds of sidetracks - conversations with old fishermen - Einstein on the Norfolk coast - prisoners who do embroidery - Robert Hales, the Norfolk giant. All these episodes throw some kind of oblique side light on to Craske's life, but the man remains as elusive as ever.

Augustus John: The New Biography - Michael Holroyd

Most artists are like Craske to some extent; they spend most of their lives in front of a canvas with all the action taking place inside their heads. Critics sometimes try to explain the artists motivations and decisions, but there's not much action for a writer to get their teeth into. No such accusations can be made about Augustus Edwin John OM RA!

I'd known something about John for most of my life: in the early years of the twentieth century he lived for a few weeks on Grantchester Meadows (near where I lived later in that century). He had a gypsy caravan, two "wives", several raggedy children and got into fights in the pubs of Cambridge.

Michael Holroyd chronicles (over 700 pages) the rest of Augustus John's eventful life, which turns out to be no less colourful. One would have liked to have been a peripheral character in his circle, able to observe his erratic, fizzing progress. But you wouldn't want to be too closely involved! 

The Eagle Tree - Ned Hayes

For those of you who don't know, I spent the last twenty-odd years of my working life looking after very vulnerable young people, many of whom were considered "autistic". At first this was hard going but in time I got to appreciate and enjoy their company and friendship. So it won't surprise you to learn that I enjoyed this story of an autistic boy who's obsessed with climbing trees and who attempts to save a tree from being felled.

Just because someone sees the world differently from most people, it doesn't always mean that they're wrong.

The Running Hare - John Lewis-Stempel

In an earlier book John Lewis-Stempel wrote about the wildlife of a meadow over the year, this time he turns his attention to a small arable field.

Like many of us he is horrified by the lack of wildlife on the huge fields of a modern arable farm but, instead of just moaning about it, he sets about cultivating his little plot as near to the traditional way as possible.

The writing covers history, farming, wildlife, landscape, country lore, science....but through it all runs the author's beautifully poetic turn of phrase.

Springtime In Britain - Edwin Way Teale

This is an old paperback that has lived on the little bookshelf near my bed for many years and has been pulled out at regular intervals, sometimes read right through but more often just dipped into for a bit of reading before sleep arrives.

Not that it's a boring book in any way, but it is calm and restful. The American author sets out to follow Spring's progress through Britain, from Land's End up to John O'Groats.

Although it was written in 1970 it already seems to speak of a much earlier time - how much things change without our realising.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Take care.

A Message From Pumpkinland

We don't really do Halloween in England, possibly because our farmers don't grow a surplus of pumpkins which they have to get rid of at this time of year! So when I was a child I'd hardly heard mention of  All Hallows' E'en. In more recent times the supermarkets have been only to happy to sell you a witch's outfit, some spooky spiders' web or a zombie mask, all tastefully made in the finest plastic the petro-chemical industry can produce.

But do we like to be scared out of our wits by supernatural happenings? Indeed we do, indeed we do. I spotted this strange weather-vane, suitably backed by a malevolent sky, in a Hertfordshire village. What can it mean? Does a witch dwell within, casting her spells to control the weather? I was too frightened to knock on the door and enquire! I hurried by without, I hope, being noticed.

Meanwhile here's a book that has somehow slipped unnoticed by me for many years. But a friend told me it was good and Penguin publish it under their Modern Classics banner so I thought I'd investigate.

We Have Always Lived In The Castle - Shirley Jackson

The rather Gothic house on the cover, pictured at dusk beneath threatening skies, should be enough to tell you that this is a suitable story to be reading at Halloween. 

There are no zombies, vampires or ghosts stalking these pages: nothing more scary than two young women, their cousin, an old man and some neighbours, in fact. The main characters have a wide range of psychological and mental problems between them and at least one is a mass-murderer, but they are the ones we are persuaded to identify and sympathise with. Meanwhile the neighbours behave as any rational human beings might, i.e. with cruelty, vindictiveness and violence borne of irrational fear. A jolly little party then. 

In this strange alien world - 1950s small town America(!) - things are never quite as they seem; the story has a Fairytales Grimm atmosphere to it, the innocent commit crimes, the crazy speak the most sense, those who try to help cause untold trouble, the wicked help and the reclusive see the world more clearly than those on the outside. It all reads like some elaborate metaphor or fable whose exact meaning is just beyond ones grasp.

The writing is entirely beautiful even if some people find the plot rather lacking in substance. I didn't, though I did find myself suddenly at the end of the book wondering if I'd missed some vital clue. Which of course makes me want to go back and read it again.

Meanwhile back in Pumpkinland....

Even when we do Halloween in England: 
                                                         we don't do it very well!


Take care.