A few pictures from an evening walk beside the river, with the mist settling over the meadows. This morning felt like Autumn; this evening like the start of winter. The train climbs to cross the river and enter Canterbury East station, taking people home.
Would you draw the curtains with the full moon shining in?
As I went to post a letter, the crescent moon called me to walk further. Now or never, as she was going down, accompanied by Jupiter. A little way upstream from the bridge there’s an opening to the river. Someone said it was a ford, and indeed there are cobbles leading down it. Two swans were there, keeping an eye for a human with food, no doubt.
Not much moonlight here, some reflection from street lamps, enough to give an impression of the pair that could maybe be worked up into something. There they are, paddling patiently against the current, till the one who feeds them arrives.
A week ago we walked across the fields and found damsons, small, black, sour plums that were sweeter than they would have been a month ago. The label on the jam jars reads as follows, printed beneath this picture.
Foragers’ Final Flourish
November 2020
Damsons, crabs, and other hedgerow delicacies.
The good Mrs T had brought home the windfalls a while before that. Their bruises were romping away like a rugby forward on warfarin, so now there are jars of apple puree awaiting the winter. I’m always gratified to hear the click of the jar lids as the vacuum takes effect!
It was a murky day in Manchester last winter when I met this column of men from the Great War. The sculpture is based on John Singer Sargent’s painting in the Imperial War Museum, ‘Gassed’. He had been to the front line, though he was in his eighties, and seen the men, British and American, suffering blindness after a mustard gas attack.
They are led by a medical orderly; there is a skill to leading such a group: observing the terrain, being alert for mud, ruts, obstacles, exaggerated dropping of the left or right shoulder to lead the men to turn. There are many ways to love your fellow man: the column of men support each other in what the sculptor, Johanna DomkeGuyot calls ‘Victory Over Blindness’.
Her sculpture, loves her fellow human beings: honouring the dead but challenging the living through portraying the gritty, grimy reality of unmedalled, unsought heroism. It is a bold but totally right decision to plant the men at ground level, not way over our heads, like the man on the Manchester cenotaph; an image that all but says, dulce et decorum est – how sweet and right it is to die for one’s country.
Let us not forget that the victims of war, soldiers or civilians, are men, women and children like us and ours; that cruel things have been done in our name as well as against us. Let us do all we can to bring about peace and reconciliation between nations and peoples, and within our own communities.
Lord grant us peace.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Â
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudÂ
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest Â
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.Wilfred Owen
Literally ‘by the way’, these impressive soft bracket fungi caught my eye. Without a Polish Babcia to advise me, I thought I’d best leave them for whichever creature has been eating the one at the right. After all, the birds eat yew berries that are poison to us.
A feast for my eyes, at any rate. Praise him!
Frank Cottrell-Boyce
There’s a chance to see author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce when he gives this year’s Sir Harold Hood Memorial Lecture entitled ‘Some Things We Can’t Think’ on 3rd December 2020 6.30pm – 8.20pm
Frank will be talking about stories which tell the world who we are. What happens if we don’t get to tell our own stories? What happens if we don’t recognise ourselves in the stories that are told about us?
This year’s lecture will also combine with the premiere of our new short documentary by Martin Freeth, ‘Hidden Sentences: Voices of Prisoners’ Families’.
Following the film and lecture, there will be a Q&A session with Frank and some of the people with lived experience of the justice system who feature in the film.
This is a free event. Donations to the work of Pact are warmly welcomed and can be made online here. There will be a brief talk by Andy Keen-Downs, Pact CEO, about the work of the current work of the charity in support of people affected by imprisonment.
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an award-winning storyteller. Frank Boyce was born into a Catholic family in Liverpool in 1959 and studied English at Oxford where he met Denise Cottrell, a fellow undergraduate. They married in Keble College chapel and together have seven children. Frank first worked as a television critic for Living Marxism magazine, and wrote episodes for Coronation Street and Brookside. As one of the most respected screenwriters working in the British film industry, Frank has written the screenplays for many feature films including Welcome to Sarajevo, Code 46, Butterfly Kiss, 24 Hour Party People and Goodbye Christopher Robin. His first novel, Millions, was based on his own screenplay for the film of the same name, and was published by Macmillan in 2004. In 2010, Frank co-presented the Papal Visit at Hyde Park with TV personality Carol Vorderman. Frank’s long-standing artistic collaboration with Danny Boyle included their work together to craft the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012 telling the story of Britain through a multi-media extravaganza. He has authored numerous children’s books including sequels to Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In 2004 he was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Millions, and in 2012 his novel The Unforgotten Coat won the Guardian Prize. Frank’s most recent children’s book, Runaway Robot, was published in 2019.
The Sir Harold Hood Memorial Lecture is held most years by Pact (Prison Advice and Care Trust) as an opportunity to celebrate the life and memory of a great friend and champion, the late Sir Harold Hood. The lecture seeks to contribute to public knowledge and understanding of how we as a society can make our prisons places in which individuals can achieve personal change and growth, and leave to live good lives, in stable and healthy relationships with family and the wider community.
This is the eighth lecture in memory of Sir Harold Hood. The first was held in the Chapel of HMP Brixton and was given by Cardinal Vincent Nichols. Other lectures have been given by the late Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Lucia do Rosario-Neil, Bishop Richard Moth, Dr Gemma Simmonds CJ, Dr Galena Rhoades (transcript not available), and His Honour Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, Recorder of London.
To find out more and book your place please go to: www.prisonadvice.org.uk/Event/hh2020
I only plunged into the woods because the low sun was in my eyes, but it was turning the dying fronds of bracken into gold. Another time to stop and stare.
Just before we return to lockdown measures in England, here’s a reminder, well two really. This Victorian (19th Century) letter box is still a safe place to drop a letter till the postie comes to collect it, and we trust our neighbours not to steal our post, and the Post Office not to lose it. So who’s expecting a letter from you? Who would enjoy a letter from you?
On top of the box is a pebble with a rainbow painted on it, a reminder that NHS nurses and doctors and cleaners, cooks, clerks and drivers put themselves at risk for our sakes. They deserve our prayers and support.
Will Turnstone 