At the top of Saint Thomas’s Hill, behind the University, the old road dips down and climbs again to Blean Church, far enough from the main road to grow this bed of lichen on a tombstone. On a grey day it glows.
A most unexpected contrast as I was cycling home from the supermarket. The low, wintry, afternoon sun is full on the bridge and the lady walking through, but the naked tree is black against the gold of the willow stems behind. The shadow of the bridge at work!
The first frog I saw this morning was flattened on the street, possibly en route to our pond. But there were two in there this morning, and a splash and a croak when I went to lock up. Let’s hope they are not deceived by the warm weather into laying eggs that will be killed by the frost. This one met Abel’s mummy a few years ago.
Even the bees are feeling the spring in mid-February.
I hope it warms you too, even if another beast from the East appears next month. And there were worms and centipedes in the compost heap that Abel and I were harvesting. A day to be out of doors!
Robert Browning is writing to Elizabeth Barrett, his secret fiancée. She has told him of her dependence on morphine, as prescribed by her doctor, who is reluctant to take her off it, but agrees to do so, ‘slowly and gradually’. Robert is keen for her to get out and about, for she has been housebound for a long time, and offers her some encouragement. He writes this day, February 6, 1846. His home at Camberwell was still in Kent then, while Elizabeth was in Central London, under the jealous eye of her father.
‘Slowly and gradually’ what may not be done? Then see the bright weather while I write—lilacs, hawthorn, plum-trees all in bud; elders in leaf, rose-bushes with great red shoots; thrushes, whitethroats, hedge sparrows in full song—there can, let us hope, be nothing worse in store than a sharp wind, a week of it perhaps—and then comes what shall come—”
Elizabeth (‘Ba’) had written of when the drug was prescribed:
I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite—and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable—besides palpitation—as if one’s life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me morphine, and ever since I have been calling it my amreeta* draught, my elixir,—because the tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I have—so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very slowly and gradually.
I was dining alone with 3½ tear old Abel the other day, when he put a spoon into his glass of water. (His mother need not know about the 50 year old toy truck that helped feed him by ferrying grapes across the table.)
‘It makes it bigger’, Abel announced of his spoon in the water, so taken with this that he did not notice the photograph being taken,
‘Like your magnifying glass’, I suggested. He considered this for a moment. ‘My magnifying glass is missing.’ I feel sure he knows exactly where it is. He seems to think that things like to hide. Under the piano is a good spot.
But note the budding scientist: don’t tell him he’s wrong, when he is simply not in possession of enough facts and enough vocabulary to say more clearly what is happening. Let’s see if he can find that magnifying glass!
The great bell of the Cathedral was chiming the hour, but that was not the sound that caught Abel’s attention. It was a blackcap perched on a fence about eye-level to both of us – Abel was lifted up on the bike seat so could see clearly. And hear and ask, what’s that bird?
When the little bird had ceased warbling, we looked up in the trees around the theatre and Dominican and spotted a pair of wood pigeons. We had been talking about them a few minutes before, when we saw a few town pigeons foraging outside a café.
There’s no need to be 3½ years old to marvel at the blackcap or the robin, blackbird or thrush’s song. Listen out, and be grateful!
We, the half-barrel group of gardeners at L’Arche Kent – had been looking forward to the Big Bird Watch since Christmas, so it was good to gather again at the Glebe to see who might fly in.
The moorhen just walked in from the river alongside, otherwise the rest flew in. Four robins were twice as many as we might have hoped for. The bird table must be shared territory, but one of them was prepared to chase all comers – except his mate – from the feeder by the river gate. Even the bird table was only grudgingly shared and there were a few ruffled feathers when three or four robins were there together: rights to the table had to be asserted!
There were at least seven sparrows, that being the most we saw at any one time. I think that was more than last year. The highlight for L and G was seeing a pair of dunnocks. They managed the feeder but were happier pecking about on the ground. But two dunnocks were two more than last year, and they were too shy to present themselves for the photoshoot a couple of days later.
What else? blue tits, great tit, wood pigeon and collared doves, blackbirds, and a blue-green Kubaburra bird-man flapping his wings and frightening the others away.
Having fed the birds, the humans fed themselves and looked forward to a new season of gardening. Watch the weather and watch this space!
Photos: top, MMB; lower, Przemek Forek.
One morning a couple of years ago a group of people awaited the arrival of the substitute librarian at Wood Avenue branch library in Folkestone.
I looked up and saw this skyscape. The black line at the top is the top of the library wall. Standing in the shadow allowed me to capture the two faint spectra in the grey sky created by the cold and the neighbouring English Channel. Re-organising files allowed me to share the picture!
The Folkestone libraries were very welcoming to my students and me; lets hope that can continue for my colleagues despite the financial constraints.
