All the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire (and Warwickshire)

Son the Elder was roboteering just outside Oxford and needed chauffeuring, so the Northerner and Cwtch the Collie joined us, on our trip to visit the places we failed to see last November, when we were making the same journey and my car broke down en route.

After dropping my son off in Botley, we headed for St Edward's in Stow-on-the-Wold, mainly to see the famous door in the North Porch, which is flanked by two three-hundred-year-old yews and said to have inspired Tolkien when he was writing about the Doors of Durin in 'The Fellowship of the Ring'.

I'd hoped to linger and take some photos of the Northerner here because he loves 'The Lord of the Rings', and maybe get him to take a possible author photo of me for my forthcoming poetry collection, but there was a constant stream of visitors rounding the corner to pay homage to The Door, so we didn't linger. 

Inside the church the things that interested me most were the remaining traces of mediaeval paintwork on the south side of the sanctuary ...

... and a splendid ledgerstone to the sacred memory of Sir Hastings Keyt, a Royalist who died, aged 23, in 1645, during the last battle of the first Civil War just outside Stow-on-the-Wold. 

I particularly like the detail of the skulls. 

In the churchyard there's a memorial to the battle itself, which saw 1000 Royalists held prisoner in the church ... 

... and also in the nearby square, scene of the slaughter of 200 Royalists and of the surrender of their commander, Jacob Astley, 1st Baron Astley of Reading. 

After lunch at the Porch Inn, which apparently dates back to 975AD and is another of those pubs claiming to be the oldest in the country, we set off for Adlestrop to pay homage to Edward Thomas, poet and wanderer, who wrote his famous poem about a brief, unscheduled stop at the railway station in 1914 just a couple of years before he died during the Battle of Arras in 1917. 

The station fell victim to the infamous Dr Beeching's axe in 1966 and is no longer standing, but the railway sign is ingeniously displayed in the local bus shelter, along with a plaque inscribed with the poem, which we read aloud, of course, in homage.

After our similarly fleeting stop, we headed for the Rollright Stones, which stand right on the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire border, not that the border existed when they were set up from the 4th to the 2nd millennium BC.

The earliest of the stones are believed to be the Whispering Knights - actually the remains of an early or middle neolithic dolmen. 

Chronologically, the next stones in the complex are the King's Men, a stone circle more than 100 feet in diameter and apparently comprising 77 stones, although how anyone can state that with any certainty is beyond me, for as we all know, counting standing stones accurately is impossible.

the Clootie tree by the King's Men

The most 'modern' of the Rollright Stones is the King himself, just over the road in Warwickshire and a sinuous curved shape thanks to the tradition earlier visitors and drovers had of chipping off parts of the stone as good luck charms. 

'Seven long strides shalt thou take 

and if Long Compton thou canst see, 

King of England thou shalt be'  

said the witch in the Early Modern folk tale attached to the site, and on the King's seventh stride a mound rose up blocking the view, and the witch turned them all to stone:  the king becoming the King Stone;  his army the King’s Men;  and his knights the Whispering Knights, forever plotting treachery.

daisies and corn speedwell; ground ivy; harlequin ladybird; hairy chervil and red campion; speedwell and stitchwort; red and white campion; butterbur leaves; hen pheasant feathers

Having wanted to see the door of the church in Stow, and the Adlestrop railway sign, and the Rollright Stones ever since I lived in Banbury 35 years ago, I was in a very buoyant mood as we headed for Cumnor, the Northerner's choice of destination, having studied Matthew Arnold's 'The Scholar Gypsy' for A-level, but having had a necessarily swift drink in a truly awful, unwelcoming pub and failed to find the Cumnor Hills, we soon moved on to the nearby village of Iffley. This has a church I was keen to visit, being Romanesque in style and dating from the 1160s. 

Beakhead ornamentation on the West Door

The South Door

Carving of a King by the South Door

the ancient Iffley yew

white and blue forget-me-nots

This sculpture in the churchyard reminds me of work by Peter Randall-Page but I haven't been able to find out who carved it.

The first thing I noticed as I stepped inside the church was the 12th century font in the baptistry, with its mismatched leg, the result of an ancient repair job, and its striking lid that dates from 2014 ... 

... and then the two beautiful, modern stained glass windows on either side of the space.

The Nativity window was designed by John Piper and made by David Wasley, and was installed in 1995 as a gift from Piper's widow, Myfanwy Piper. 

Cockerel: Christus Natus est

Goose: Quando? Quando?

Crow: In hac nocte

Owl: Ubi? Ubi?

Lamb: Bethlem! Bethlem!

detail, Piper window

The second window, designed by Roger Wagner and installed in 2012, continues the theme of the Tree of Life, with Christ crucified.

looking up through the nave, tower and chancel to the altar

The sumptuously carved stone was reminding me of Bristol Cathedral Chapter House, which is probably my favourite space in all of Bristol, and when I got home, I checked the date and discovered it too dates from 1160.

 the altar

one of many delightful carvings, this one a bird on its nest

It was time to go to the pub, for a swift drink before picking Son the Elder up and driving back to Bristol, but before I left, I resolved to return to St Mary's, Iffley next time I'm in that area, and stay a little longer.

I really love you, I do ... [hic]

Frome Festival Poetry Cafe, 10th June 2017

I love Frome. It's one of my favourite Somerset towns, and if obligation hadn't kept me closer to Bristol, I'd have loved to have moved there the year before last.  So when Crysse Morrison kindly asked me to read at the Frome Festival Poetry Cafe some months back, I said yes yes yes and thank you. 

Not that the journey was without tribulation. Having been held up for two hours on Flowers Hill in South Bristol last autumn on my way to read at Words and Ears in Bradford-on-Avon, I vowed, as we squeaked into The Swan with moments to spare, that I'd never accept an invitation to read outside Bristol on a work day again. Obviously I'd disregarded this in the my eagerness to go to Frome ... until we found ourselves sitting in traffic on the ring road for 40 minutes. Even the relatively startling sight of a muntjac nibbling on a hedge at the side of the road couldn't distract me from my gloom.  

But the M4 was remarkably clear, as was the rest of my route, apart from when an elderly denizen of B-o-A blocked a single track section of road for four minutes while I avoided eye contact and everyone behind me papped her.  Eventually she deigned to reverse.   










Once in Frome, in the garden of the Garden Cafe, everything was sunny and lovely again. The theme of the evening was 'That Adlestrop Moment' and all the poets reading in the open mic produced poems which either referred directly to, or were at least partly inspired by, Edward Thomas's poem.  The poem judged the best would win its writer the title of Frome Poet Laureate for the year. 

It turned out the guest reader is the judge in what was a simultaneously enjoyable but tricky task. There was barely a hair's breadth between so many of the best poems, and in the end I opted for honourable mentions for several poems, with Liv Torc winning a book for her beautiful poem about her baby, and B a bottle of wine and the Laureateship for her poem. I don't have the piece of paper to hand with the notes I made while I was listening to the poems so I can't give you the titles, but the winning poem was about riding pillion on a motorbike, and was memorable for all its original images playing with the neither-here-nor-thereness of the original poem. 

And my reading went well too, I was told. (It's good to be told even when you think it was probably OK.)

I was far too busy to take photos, so I've half-inched some from other people. 

Crysse Morrison with Martin Bax, taken by David Chedgy

Crysse, drawn by Frome Festival sketch artist, Ann Harrison-Broninski

Liv Torc, taken by Crysse

B reading her winning poem, sketched by Ann

Louise Green reading her brilliant glosa on Adlestrop, taken by Crysse

B and me, taken by Crysse

Ann sketching the guest reader, taken by B