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.

Feathered Friends

Early morning and the Rooks were gathered in the rookery at North End. When I first looked up there were just two rooks present, sitting very close to each other. They then made a very clumsy attempt at copulating (it can't be easy when you're balancing in a treetop on a breezy day!). Almost immediately several more Rooks arrived and started making an incredible din. Whether they were offering praise, advice or mockery was hard to tell.

Rook nests may look like haphazard heaps of twigs, but these have been here for years and survived the recent gales with minimal damage, to which their occupants soon made the necessary repairs, stealing material from each other's nests; somehow it never occurs to a Rook to pick up twigs that have fallen on the ground.

Regular readers of these pages will have noticed an increase in the number of birdie-pictures on this blog since Christmas. That's because I bought myself a "bridge-camera" with an absurd 83x zoom on it (Nikon P900, for those who want to know). See that crow on the branch in the photo above - no, I thought not.

Well, here it is! Actually both pictures have been cropped a little, but you get the general idea. The quality's not that brilliant when you push everything to its limit, but at least you can see what it is. 

Here's an often underrated and overlooked member of our avian family, a Dunnock. Despite their unspectacular plumage and quiet habits they are familiar to many people as they often frequent our gardens. In Spring they sing prettily, though quietly, from the hedgerows.

The bird above, pictured through my porch window, is what we in Britain call a Goldfinch. A few decades ago you only ever saw them when they were feeding on thistles in fields, but now they are everywhere: one of the few beneficiaries of human interference in nature. They have thrived since they discovered the feeders that we hang in our gardens, particularly if they contain nyjer seed (also known as niger, nyger or niger seed; noog or nugg; ramtil or ramtilla; inga seed; and blackseed).

This Green Woodpecker struck a rather inelegant pose on top of a fencepost. Unlike our other Woodpeckers (we only have two others in the UK, The Greater and Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers) it spends a lot of time on the ground feeding on ants.

On a recent trip to Welney WWT reserve we found the floodwater on the Washes was so high and the wind so strong that there were few birds to be seen from the main observatory. However the café provided a warm place to scan the birds out on Lady Fen and to watch the comings and goings on the bird-feedrs.

These feeders always attract many Tree Sparrows, a far from common bird elsewhere. They can be picked out from the more familiar House Sparrows by their smart chestnut caps and black and white cheeks.

The Mute Swans at Fen Drayton Lakes are also preparing themselves for Spring. At first glance I thought this might be a male and a female, but looking closer it's probably two males having a quietly civilised face-off, perhaps a territorial dispute about a possible nest-site.

And finally, in these difficult times for many, who can resist a chirpy little Robin. Their singing, though, is not an expression of joy but a warning to other Robins to keep well away from their territory. No problems with "social distancing" when it comes to Robins! And look, there are leaves just appearing on the branch behind him!


Take care.

From Meldreth With Love

I've always been a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to buying flowers. I once gave my mother a bunch of daffodils for Mothering Sunday which I'd picked from her garden. I was only little at the time and she feigned delight at the offering. In much the same spirit I walked around the village this morning and photographed some of the daffodils that grow abundantly on the roadsides, in the wood, by the river, in hedgerows and, yes, in other people's gardens (I hope they don't mind).

As you enter the village at North End

Down by the riverside

Near the stocks

By the fence

In the churchyard

In Melwood

Near the old pump

From the footpath near Topcliffe Mill

All this gardening produces lots of garden waste

which goes into the green bins 

and is collected for recycling.

Now all you have to do is feign delight at this unexpected gift! I hope the sight of all these golden daffodils cheers everyone else up as much as it lightens my steps on my frequent ambles around the locality.

Take care.

In The Company Of Angels

I've been here before. I passed along this road on my way to Hertford. I may even have glanced out of the bus window and spied the little church of St Michael And All Angels at the roadside. But I'm not really sure because, you see, there are lots of small, Victorian churches in this part of the country.

This particular one was designed by Henry Woodyer, the flamboyant and eccentric architect responsible for the extraordinary church at Highnam in Gloucestershire. Here though, he's working on a much more modest scale. The church was paid for by the local lord of the manor, R A Smith, and all the timber was obtained from his estate. He wasn't short of funds though; he just had other priorities.

Despite the understated exterior, the inside is exquisitely and extravagantly decorated by some of the leading artists of the day. I rather warm to Mr Smith for being so unlike the typical Victorian gent; most would have gone for a large building to display their wealth and power to everyone who passed by, but instead this magnificent show of beauty was reserved for just his family and workers, who came here to pray.

These are not wall-paintings but mosaics designed by J P Hutchinson for J Powell and Sons. They completely cover the walls of the chancel.

The area around the altar is paved with colourful Minton tiles, the finest available in the Victorian era. But the church's real treasure is its collection of stained glass windows. 

Most of the windows date from soon after the church was built (1872) and are the work of William Morris and his associates. Morris was a complex man with a huge array of talents - poet, writer, interior designer, stained-glass artist, businessman, Marxist and even translator of Icelandic sagas into English. The window above is his interpretation of the Annunciation, with Mary looking uncannily like Jane Morris, his wife. In fact most of the women in Pre-Raphaelite art, and a good many men, look like her.

The rather stern-looking gentleman holding the big key is St Peter, but it's said to be based on Morris himself and is the work of his close friend Edward Burne Jones. I like the idea that Morris is gazing down upon all these beautiful windows with the sun blazing down behind him as it was yesterday morning.

Burne Jones is responsible for several of the works here. Above is his lively portrayal King David and Miriam. Apparently this pair of windows is highly rated by Lady Lucinda Lambton, for those of you who might remember her off-beat-and-slightly-bonkers documentaries for the BBC (she once did a remarkable programme about the history of toilets!).

There's something eccentric about Miriam too as she swirls and twists amongst the usual formal and staid representations of Biblical characters.

Christ and The Angels is a later work by Burne Jones, dating from 1896. There's that Pre-Raphaelite face once again, but I'm also attracted by the depictions of leaves above and below them.

The swirling patterns echo the sort of thing that is commonly found in William Morris's famous wallpaper designs and may, I suggest, even be a deliberate tribute to him from his old associate, as 1896 was also the year of Morris's death.

Some of these later windows were commissioned as memorials to members of the Smith family, like the Mary and Jesus above which commemorates  the wife of the man who had the church built. It was designed by Burne Jones but was actually made by J H Dearle, for the very good reason that it dates from 1917, at which time Burne Jones had been dead for nearly twenty years.

I hope you're not becoming overloaded with all these beautiful windows as I've still got a few more up my sleeve - and I'm not even showing you them all. This set of three windows are to be found in the west wall of the church and depict Noah, St Phillip and John the Baptist. The last is another work by Burne Jones while the first two are by Ford Madox Brown.

The parable of the wise virgins meeting the bridegroom is interpreted by Selwyn Image, another designer greatly influenced by William Morris and his circle.

Image (what a great name for an artist!) strove for beauty and simplicity of line - and there's that distinctive profile once more.

The great Scottish stained-glass designer, Douglas Strachan, contributed the window above in 1928 very much in his own style. By this time he was a much sought-after artist designing huge windows for cathedrals.

So what do you do if you're Karl Parsons and asked to design the last window to complete the church?

It might have been easier to slink into the corner and hope nobody noticed: Parsons decided to outshine them all. He was an accomplished worker in stained glass with several important commissions to his name, but he spent a lot of his life assisting other artists and teaching students. His St Cecilia is a tour-de-force of artistry and technique and seems to me to tell the whole tale of the young saint.

I'm certain my photographs don't do his work justice, though it was actually the easiest to photograph as the translucence of the colours used has been balanced to perfection. I find this a very moving work, not only extremely beautiful but full of deeper meaning and emotion, like the finest symphonies; very apt for Cecilia, the patron saint of music.

The church is open every day and is situated in Waterford, just north of the town of Hertford; I recommend it to anyone who has the chance to visit. I certainly won't be able to hurry by again without popping in to pay my regards to St Cecilia and all the angels.


Take care.

Birds, Trees And Sand

When all the paths are deep with mud after a wet February, the place to head for is Sandy in Bedfordshire where the paths are, well, sandy. Up on the greensand ridge to the east of the little town the land is free-draining and supports a different kind of scenery. What's more it's also the headquarters of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds).

A few species which I rarely see in my home area are plentiful here, like the "masked bandit" above, otherwise known as a Nuthatch.

At present some of the conifers are being removed to return the area to a mix of heathland and deciduous woodland. I read that Exmoor ponies are going to be used to graze the land, when they arrive you can be sure I'll share some photos of them.

The area shown above is the site of an Iron Age hillfort and the ditch and embankment can still be seen to this day.

This part of the reserve is a great place to see birds of prey; Buzzards and Hobbies nest here and Red Kites, Kestrels and Sparrowhawks often patrol the skies.

I must admit that I rather like photographing trees of all sorts, whether they are native to the area or not.

I'm not always successful when I try to flip back and forth between looking for photographs and looking for birds; sometimes I end up failing on both counts.

Blue Tits seem to be everywhere this year, probably because it's been relatively mild and higher numbers than usual have survived the winter.

I rather liked this exotic-looking dead tree....

….and these logs which have been left to decompose naturally and provide homes for insects. I should think it was only sawn up because it had fallen across the path.

Part of the wall which surrounded the estate belonging to the house which is now used as the RSPB's headquarters.

Silver Birch trees always look good whether they are thriving or being recycled by fungi.

There's time to call into the hide and see what's on the bird-feeders....

I eventually managed to get a shot of this little Coal Tit. They have a habit of rushing in to the feeder, grabbing a single seed, then flying off again. I intend to take a more leisurely meal in the pub at Eaton Socon.


A birdwatcher's list:
Magpie, Buzzard, Wood Pigeon, Sparrowhawk, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Robin, Blackbird, Black-headed Gull, Carrion Crow, Rook, Jackdaw, Wren, Dunnock, Red Kite, Green Woodpecker, Pheasant, Chaffinch, Nuthatch, Coal Tit.
Also a grey squirrel, rabbits and a mouse.


Take care.