The eye’s corner

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Allan

There’s nothing like taking an alternative route to enliven a familiar journey. I must have driven through the Peak District to see my parents (who live just south of Manchester) tens, if not hundreds of times.

I settled on what I now think of as ‘the way’ some years back – get the dull stuff out of the way first, up the M1 toChesterfield. Then over the peaks to Buxton, finishing with an exhilarating blast along one of the most scenic routes in the country; the infamous ‘Cat & Fiddle’ road (named for the pub half-way along, which claims to be the highest hostelry in England) , the A537 from Buxton to Macclesfield. From there it’s but a sedate trundle down the road to Poynton, and the family home.

It’s a good way to go, and I usually enjoy it. Last weekend, however, I went another way – it was a glorious day, and I suddenly felt like taking the road less travelled.

Well, when I say ‘less travelled’ I may be stretching the truth somewhat, as the first third of my progress entailed chugging up the A5. You may know it better by its Roman name –Watling Street. In it’s time the main road to the north, a little sleepier these days.

It was all very enjoyable, so much so that I came the same way home as well. Barrelling through a lovely, sunny Sunday evening, luxuriating in that particular richness of light that seems to make all the colours of the country sing…and then, somewhere between Ashbourne and Nuneaton, I saw something from the corner of my eye, and the whole journey was transformed.

 
On my way down from traversing the bare-bone hills,
shoulder  lands, cresting
those rolling, vibrant green
sweet-grazed slopes
falling each over each ever gentler, all awash with
generous evening light
(on the radio the shipping
forecast speaks of snow)
 
Gathering remembered lands around me
wrapped in loveliness and taking
great comfort there
 
I saw a Hare
 
A sudden darkness in the corner of the eye,
long shadowed
balanced half-way up the hill
 
I saw a Hare
 
Poised in one perfect instant
flickering by, but
 
I swear I saw
a Hare
 
and looked it full in
the eye, golden
and unblinking
 
Then all the way along
 
Sheepy Magna
Sheepy Parva
Atherstone
 
from name to ancient name
 
Cadely
Dadlington
by Ambion Wood
 
All the way along
held in that gaze
the road home
seemed suddenly
to stretch
much farther

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One of those days in England 3 – Whistley Wood

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Allan

see all the pix here

I did eventually manage to find some woodland to wonder through. Pleasing both in that I’d correctly remembered that there was such a place just around the corner from Syresham, and in being so delightfully named. It’s true, and here’s the photograph I took to prove it.

sign

 

Un-typically, I resolve to stick to path for once – last time I was here a year or so ago we got a bit lost and ended up walking a very long way. Partly due to a state of mild rapture brought on by thick, almost hallucinatory carpets of Bluebells. Partly, also I suspect, to being in the company of my friend Fi. Not in any deliberate way, you understand, just that it’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re with Fi. The only person I’ve ever met truly deserving of the description ‘fey’, in the proper, old meaning of the word; otherworldy, beautiful, strange and sometimes a little dangerous. Currently to be encountered delighting and perplexing the inhabitants of the Isle of Harris, at times like this I miss her a great deal.

Wrenching my attention back to the present moment, I can’t help noticing what seems like a lot of bent and curved boughs, particularly on trees near the path. Don’t remember that from the last visit.

 

I’m quite prepared to accept that this is just my pattern-seeking thing working overtime. Equally, on on the evidence of the afternoon so far, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that there’s a traditional tree-weaving festival.

Either that or I’ve stumbled on the handiwork of the Whistley Wood Tree Bending Society.

I hope so, I do really hope so.

It’s the sort of thing that seems likely on one of those days in England.

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One of those days in England 2 – Syresham Scarecrow Festival

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Allan

see all the pix here

Having had such a good time on Archer’s Bench, it seemed churlish not to continue down the road, which is how I came to find myself in the village of Syresham. Normally, I’m sure, a place of quiet charm, full of attractive cottages in that lovely butterscotch coloured limestone that makes this part of the world so easy on the eye.The sort of place that smells of Lavender and Lime flowers that you hope has a decent pub.

The air was indeed full of the sweet scent of Lime (lots of lovely mature old trees, under one of which I parked the car) and Lavender, (every other front garden seemed full of the stuff), but there was also a distinct whiff of that particularly English strain of genial madness that aflicts small communities from time to time. This is often glossed over with a veneer of tradition, but I’ve always thought that was just an excuse for us to loosen our collective stays and go a bit daft every once in a while.

Had I entered the village by one of the main roads, rather than crept up on it from behind, I would have been better prepared. I would have read the large signs and known. Syresham was enjoying it’s annual Scarecrow Festival. This year the theme was ‘Stage and Screen’. The range of interpretations offered was surpisingly wide – all the way from Steptoe and Son to James Bond – and as far as I could tell the folks happily ambling about taking it all in mainly locals.

The amount of work people are prepared to put into things like this never ceases to astonish (and delight) me – highlights included not one, but two suspended exhibits, a splendid Royal Wedding tribute featuring a car, most of the cast of Alice in Wonderland. And a defiantly not-yellow submarine skillfully papier-mache’d together from fragments of the better broad-sheets. Even the less artistically gifted found ways of adding a certain something. The creator of a memorable James Bond obviously felt that although the suit was good, they could perhaps have done better with the head (photograph straight from the bubble-jet, not even cut out). To help the ambience of sophisticated danger one associates with Bond they’d wedged a portable CD player in an open window, playing a selection of the film themes.

According to the chatty lady on the charity stall outside the post office,

‘Oh, we’ve been doing it for a while now…six or seven years…a lot of other places make it a competition, but there’s no prizes here, we don’t do that because we want everyone to join in’

I know what it’s like living in a village, the good and the bad, where anything louder than a mouse clearing it’s throat is immediately amplified and disseminated far and wide. If that’s all that happens, if the system is closed, then a type of stultifying social claustrophobia sets in, and the whole place stagnates. If there’s hardly any locals left, and the village is full of recent, commuting incomers then the system is too open and there’s hardly a real place left at all.

It’s a hard balance to strike, but this is clearly a village that understands the need to open themselves out from time to time, to go a bit daft and enjoy each others  barmyness.

The pub looks fairly decent as well – the garden was full of people, and a man with guitar was doing his thing. He’d just finished a number as I walked past, on the way back to the car. There was a warm scattering of applause, then a deep male voice intoned, with such authority as to render the conclusion beyond dispute,

‘Good job, Dave’.

This is the type of place I want to live in.

see all the pix here

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One of those days in England 1 – Archer’s Bench

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Allan

Sometimes it’s worth just stopping for a while to take a really good look around you.

I haven’t been getting out and about as much lately, since some lowlife stole my bike (that’s my excuse, anyway) but I did finally succumb to the lure of the great out-doors a few Sundays ago. Forecast to be the hottest day of the year so far, no Wimbledon on the telly and the Glasto coverage doesn’t kick in till later – so no excuses not to partake of the traditional English sunny Sunday afternoon pursuits; wondering more or less aimlessly over the countryside, clad in un-suitable clothing, perspiring freely.

A nice walk in that little woodland I found on my last cycle, that’ll be lovely. It’s a bit off the beaten track so I might be able to avoid being licked to death by the over-friendly labradors that customarily swarm in the woods, dragging their families behind them, at the first sign of anything like a warm afternoon.

That was the plan, at any rate.

Might even have worked, but for the great wave of ennervation that swept over me upon getting into the portable oven formerly (and formally) known as my car. To discover that the big, fold-out map is not in the door pocket with all the rest of them. It must be in the flat somewhere. It’s only on the third floor, around the corner from our (much prized) private parking area, but somehow I can’t summon up the energy. It’s so hot in here that the risk of melting seems alarmingly real, and the only way to get some air moving is to drive…it proves suprisingly difficult to steer using only the very tips of the fingers (the steering wheel being far too hot for my normal manly grasp). Thank heavens for power steering, the only reason I didn’t plow into the wall on my way out into the wide blue yonder.

All of which is by way of an explanatory pre-amble as to why I found myself trundling along a minor road somewhere between here and there, vaguely aware that I was probably heading in the wrong direction but not really minding…enjoying the breezes blowing through both open windows, when I went round a corner and came across this:

A park bench in the middle of no-where. A typically English bit of mildly amusing eccentricity, I thought. Not being in anything resembling a hurry, I stopped, and went to have a look. There was a discrete brass plate attached to the bench. I can’t remember the exact wording inscribed thereon (typically, this turned out to be the only subject that defeated my camera’s auto-focus all day) but it turned out to be in memory of someone called Archer. Somewhat abashed, having a bit of a sit seemed like the least I could do to atone for my earlier levity.

Perhaps I could begin to understand why this particular spot, at first sight so ordinary, had been selected. So I sat down and looked around. Nothing special – nice hedge on the other side of the road, but not one I’d go out of my way to view. Pleasant enough little road, but no particularly striking vistas to be seen, no matter which way one looks.

It did occur to me that perhaps the unfortunate Archer had met their end here, mown down by some uncaring motorist hurtling round the corner. Entirely possible, but surely memorialising the place with something that encourages the casual visitor to linger and look is down-right peculiar, if not morbid?

Warming to my theme, I spent a happy few minutes fabricating increasingly implausible scenarios – this was the place where he always stopped for a breather on his way back from the pub; this was the very spot where the meteorite crashed out of the sky and flattened Archer; one night, on this very corner, Archer just simply dissapeared, all they found was his hat and the broken-off stem of his favourite pipe…

It was that sort of place, and day.

A car or two went by. I let them, quite happy just to be sat sitting. Enjoying the gentle breeze and the melodious tweetling of the birds. Idly noticing those small visual details that distinguished this from any other place. A thick strand of spiders web blowing like a banner from the top of the waste-bin. A couple of yellow vetches, lone bright spots in an otherwise green carpet. The rather pleasing way the path into the field behind me curved up over the brow of a low rise.

After a while, I noticed I was happy. At peace with myself and everything around me. I felt better than I had when I sat down. That’s more than enough, I feel, and it actually doesn’t matter where, or why, or even who.

Archer’s Bench had, I came to realise, served it’s purpose admirably, and I’m deeply grateful to them…or him, or her, whoever they were

Update

Take yourself there – some media experiments you might like to sample here

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Surfing the green wave

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Allan

It’s a breezy but sunny afternoon  and I’ve been cycling through the green and pleasant again. Happily traversing the gently undulating, tree-dotted and pleasantly sheepy landscape of south Northants.

As is often the case when the wind is tossing the treetops about with that lovely rushing, roaring sound, I am irresistibly reminded of the sigh and surge of waves against the shore. Idly wondering why I should find this so alluring, I have a sudden flash of child-hood memory, and am transported back to Kenya…a hotel room in Mombasa, on the coast, white curtains billowing gently on a balmy breeze, drifting in that delicious space between sleeping and waking. Tired out from a day spent frolicking in the bloodwarm waters, my bed becomes a boat and I drift off to sleep, lulled by the sound of the waves on the shore outside my window.

Then there’s  the nostalgic pleasure associated with cycling, reminder of being 14 and virtually living on my bike. My  most prized possession, ticket to freedom and adventure. Back in the days when that was as fast as I wanted to go, and I knew I was going to live forever.

Small wonder, then, that cycling through this land-locked sea of sound I am almost absurdly happy. Trailing twin wakes of here-and-now and there-and-then; immediately apprehended beauty and nostalgia. Amusing myself by seeing how far the nautical metaphor will go…

Negotiating a gate onto a tree fringed byway, beneath the rushing and roaring I hear the occasional creak and groan, ship sounds. I almost expect the rising, rolling curve of the hill to crest and break, like a wave.  Scattered with pale  shapes which  drift away from me as I pass, (bleating in mild alarm) like fleecy foam carried on the current.

Best of all is belting down a narrow, tree-lined track, wind at your back – green surfing.

25mph might not sound like much, but it’s more than enough, believe me.

Especially when the track changes without warning from rough but more or less even gravel to a pitted nightmare of criss-crossing tyre and horse tracks, all baked rock hard in the sun. Coming unstuck here would definately hurt…a lot.

Thankfully, I don’t, and reach the bottom exhilerated, lightly bruised in the nether regions and with aching arms, bursting out of the green surf back onto tarmac-ed shore, shaking my head and gasping.

Wonderful…especially seeing as I didn’t get even slightly wet, didn’t have to wear rubber clothing of any sort or even ridiculously long and baggy shorts. Nor do I now feel impelled to call anybody ‘dude’.

It just made me very, very happy.

You never know… it might work for you, too.

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