There is a neighbour who feeds the birds and attracts plenty of them to her front garden. This particular morning I had walked a little way past her house when I saw a young sparrowhawk with a collared dove it had just killed. It almost ignored me as I walked in the carriageway and took photos (which included a car mirror).
As I moved a little closer the hawk hopped into the hedge bottom with its prey. My scaring it actually did it a favour because the magpie would surely have stabbed with its pointed bill and maybe have stolen a meal. Let’s hope the hawk learns to be more wary and more skilful and survives the coming winter.
A festive fire at the Turnstones’ a few years ago.
Festive fires are few and far between these days, but ‘Rouse, rouse the fire, and pile it high, Light up a constellation here’, as Samuel Johnson says. It will soon be Christmas. We have our constellation of fairy lights, now what would he have made of that?
Well, we no more than Johnson, should not submit to a dreary winter’s tale: it will soon be Christmas! Let’s use each transient hour to restore the spring in our own – or other people’s hearts. It is the time of Joy.
But many are in danger of death in regions where conflict has led to famine, cold, sickness and separation from family and friends. Not to mention Covid in all its variants. Let us not bar the door of our hearts to our sisters and brothers!
Winter
Haste, close the window, bar the doors, Fate leaves me Stella, and a friend.
In nature’s aid, let art supply With light and heat my little sphere; Rouse, rouse the fire, and pile it high, Light up a constellation here.
Let musick sound the voice of joy, Or mirth repeat the jocund tale; Let love his wanton wiles employ, And o’er the season wine prevail.
Yet time life’s dreary winter brings, When mirth’s gay tale shall please no more Nor musick charm—though Stella sings; Nor love, nor wine, the spring restore.
Catch, then, Oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life’s a short summer—man a flow’r: He dies—alas! how soon he dies!”
(from The Works of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., in Nine Volumes.
There's nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountain side or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning's storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March's sun,
Like April's, or July's, or June's, or May's,
Or January's, or February's, great days:
And August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said —
Or, if I could live long enough, should say —
"There's nothing like the sun that shines to-day."
There's nothing like the sun till we are dead.
Edward Thomas.
Edward Thomas challenged his melancholy by getting out of doors, with friends such as Robert Frost but often enough alone. November sun in England, especially against a south wall, or south cliff, is noticeably warming.
Mid-November last year we went walking and foraged damsons, sweeter than they would have been a month earlier, but recorded that in prose, not poetry.
‘There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead’, and then? Why then we shall learn who the sun is like.
And there shall be no night there;
and they need no candle, neither light of the sun;
for the Lord God giveth them light:
and they shall reign for ever and ever.
Revelation 22:5.
To sing break-heartedly of light
Like dying sunflowers
Gathering to themselves their life,
Defying that which is their source.
Small suns, we grasp your wantonness
And would reverse your death.
Our poorness seize your gold.
But go you must,
Dear small reflections
Of so great a God,
We would you stay.
Sheila Billingsley.
The sunflowers are indeed ‘gathering to themselves their life’ as Summer strolls into Autumn. The seed heads will turn to black, attracting the birds when they are hung up in the garden in weeks to come; we cannot seize their gold, but we can remember them, and save a few seeds to reflect God next year.
The leaves are almost all down around here. The Victorian poet Alice Meynell also took note of them, investing them with human emotions.
“O leaves, so quietly ending now, You have heard cuckoos sing. And I will grow upon my bough If only for a Spring, And fall when the rain is on my brow. O tell me, tell me ere you die, Is it worth the pain? You bloomed so fair, you waved so high; Now that the sad days wane, Are you repenting where you lie?”
When we were growing up in Erdington, on the edge of Birmingham, we knew all about blackberries, and we knew neither to pick nor eat any berries that had not been given a parental seal of approval. George Borrow (b 1803) was a little boy during the Napoleonic Wars, and followed his father around England in connection with his military duties. Once the family were based in Kent at blackberry time.
My brother and myself were disporting ourselves in certain fields near the good town of Canterbury. A female servant had attended us, in order to take care that we came to no mischief: she, however, it seems, had matters of her own to attend to, and, allowing us to go where we listed, remained in one corner of a field, in earnest conversation with a red-coated dragoon.
Now it chanced to be blackberry time, and the two children wandered under the hedges, peering anxiously among them in quest of that trash so grateful to urchins of their degree. We did not find much of it, however, and were soon separated in the pursuit. All at once I stood still, and could scarcely believe my eyes. I had come to a spot where, almost covering the hedge, hung clusters of what seemed fruit—deliciously-tempting fruit—something resembling grapes of various colours, green, red, and purple. Dear me, thought I, how fortunate! yet have I a right to gather it? is it mine? for the observance of the law of meum and tuum had early been impressed upon my mind, and I entertained, even at that tender age, the utmost horror for theft; so I stood staring at the variegated clusters, in doubt as to what I should do.
I know not how I argued the matter in my mind; the temptation, however, was at last too strong for me, so I stretched forth my hand and ate. I remember, perfectly well, that the taste of this strange fruit was by no means so pleasant as the appearance; but the idea of eating fruit was sufficient for a child, and, after all, the flavour was much superior to that of sour apples, so I ate voraciously.
How long I continued eating I scarcely know. One thing is certain, that I never left the field as I entered it, being carried home in the arms of the dragoon in strong convulsions, in which I continued for several hours. About midnight I awoke, as if from a troubled sleep, and beheld my parents bending over my couch, whilst the regimental surgeon, with a candle in his hand, stood nigh, the light feebly reflected on the whitewashed walls of the barrack-room.
From Lavengro by George Borrow.
These berries, known as ‘lords and ladies, look delicious, but we once had to stop a friend’s daughter from eating them. She had just arrived in England from Belize, and aged 3, did not know the local flora. At her sort of age, we had been much impressed by a gravestone at Erdington Abbey, an angel weeping over a child who died from eating poisonous berries, a contemporary of our mother’s. I think Borrow may have been eating nightshade, but lords and ladies would have been a shock to the system as well.
This is more likely what the young Borrow made himself ill with: nightshade, growing through the railway fence, possibly very close to the spot where the incident took place. That was before the railway came to the ‘Good town of Canterbury’; this would have been among the fields.
around during lockdown, we came to Saint Stephen’s church. Many years ago we came here regularly for Roman Catholic Mass. Today the church, like all churches, is closed, but not the churchyard. We found one stone with a passionflower, bottom centre of the disc, amid roses, a morning glory (?) and others that must have meant something to the bereaved husband. There are oak leaves and acorns in the triangular panels below the disc.
This verse is my best reading of the damaged inscription. It speaks of hope.
A happy world, a glorious place Where all who are forgiven Shall find their loved and best beloved And hearts like meeting streams that flow For everyone in heaven.
There’s a virus about, so maybe we don’t want to look at skulls or gravestones right now. But Henry Brown of this town (Fordwich near Canterbury) has some fine lettering above his plot as well as the two skulls. Whatever else was wrong in England in January 1720/1, there were skilled stonemasons about, and they needed no W.B. Yeats to urge them to cast a cold eye on death.
The date 1720/1 does not indicate that the mason did not know exactly when Henry Brown left his town. It just shows the confusion that prevailed between England and Continental Europe in the years between Pope Gregory XIII introducing the calendar that bears his name in 1582 and its adoption by Britain in 1752. Although the Gregorian was more accurate and sorted out most of the slippage between the earth’s year and the calendar year, the British were not going to accept this crazy, Catholic, continental innovation. Not in 1720/1 anyway.
Why was I in Fordwich? Despite the virus, I’m still allowed exercise and I was preparing the way for a L’Arche pilgrimage, and Fordwich to Canterbury is the last 5 km stage. No major hazards is the good news!
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid, An ancestor was rector there Long years ago; a church stands near, By the road an ancient Cross. No marble, no conventional phrase, On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
A man recently took his lie after appearing on a British ‘reality’ tv show where a lie detector allegedly ‘proved’ that he was unfaithful to his partner.
Thank God for the Samaritans, including my friend L, who listen in ways beyond the capabilities of such shows. They know, far better than the distressed caller ever can, how much their death will affect others. Here’s another reminder of how to contact them, a poster that greets the traveller at Canterbury West station in Kent.
Talk to us if things are getting to you, 116123.
And if someone desperate talks to you, take courage, and listen.
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.
Will Turnstone 