A One Red Kite New Year

Today I made a 205-mile round trip east to deposit an offspring, and then immediately back west again. As excursions go, it was pretty dull. I saw few lorries, which was good, Windsor Castle twice, and one red kite picking over the carcase that is Berkshire in winter. 

I tend to gauge my joy quotient in birds - choughs, ravens, and red kites mostly, although sometimes there's delight like a bushful of spadgers or a clatter of jackdaws in a churchyard. But the same scale also measures melancholy, and to be honest, a whole red kite felt rather over-optimistic for such a drab day. I can't say this coming year fills me with anticipation either.

In fact, the best I can wish anyone is Happy New Peaky Blinders. Or Game of Thrones. Or possibly - hopefully - People's Vote. 

There's always poetry, of course. Here's a poem I wrote about red kites a few years ago. It was recently published by The Blue Nib, in their latest issue. (If you're reading this and you're a poet, do submit to them, they're great.) It has an air of alienation about it that seems to suit this shabby little island right now. 

Red Kites Over High Wycombe

I know they’re here before I see them

my eyes on the road, the car in front

then snatching at sky for that russet

skirl, daubs of white underwing,

riffled pinions, twisting tails.

There must be eight – no

wait – a dozen overhead.

The first time I saw one swoop

as I stood at the window of your room

I thought it an omen.

Now I know they can’t be owned, won’t be

diminished to fit my need

I’m a visitor here, shifting boxes and bags

from one drab impromptu lodging

to another,

and unfamiliar with this town,

the suburbs these natives survey

with ferocious intimacy.

When my job’s done I’ll travel back home

where red kites are rare and the air

trembles at their whistle.

  

Photo of a red kite by Dru Marland

This poem will be published by Indigo Dreams in my 2019 collection, The Shadow Factory.

A Wander on Chittening Warth

As I'm still juggling pain relief to ease my joints, and the Northerner twisted his knee on the stairs, we decided against scrambling over sand dunes at Berrow and settled for a wander along the top of the flood defences at Severn Beach instead. 

It was misty when we arrived.

Since there were small children  with bikes, trikes and toy pushchairs aplenty, and since we had a slightly enervated holiday collie with us, we headed for Chittening rather than the more frequented route to the old Severn bridge. 

In fact, I was a bit astonished to realise that I hadn't walked down that way before. 

The industrial estate there looked quite Dark and Satanic, though, so I suspected the Northerner would feel at home. 

'I am the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, ready to trap the unwary, the showoff, the fool - '

We were sensible, though, and stayed on the causeway ...

... but not for long, for who can resist a track (with teasels)?

It was high tide, so there weren't that many birds about. 

A few ducks and oyster-catchers ...

... crows ...

... herons, and somewhere way overhead, a raven.

Very early flowering butterbur

Warth is a local word for salt marsh or flat meadow covered by tidal water. It sounds Viking* to me ...

... and it did feel as if a boatload of bearded, helmeted raiders could disembark and come running out of the mist at any moment. 

I wondered if, much more recently, some other invaders might have been expected.

I haven't found out anything about World War II defences in here, but there is mention of a decoy to lure German bombers away from oil installations at Avonmouth, so maybe these constructions are to do with that.

Once last glance towards Avonmouth and a very mistily distant North Somerset coastline, and it was time to retrace our steps. 

Now that the tide was receding, we walked some of the way along the warth itself.

As the sun burnt through the mist, the vegetation turned all shades of green and gold and beautiful.

It's always good to go home with your eyes full of colour. 










* though my knowledgeable friend, James, says it's from an Old English word 'waroth' meaning 'shore', so probably isn't Norse in origin.

The Blue Nib no 36

It was great to get our copy of the Blue Nib plopping through the letterbox, on a Sunday of all days. What a treat. 

The Blue Nib is a Dublin-based publisher of poetry, fiction, essays and reviews, all of which are represented in the current edition, no 36. 

One of the even betterer things about it is that it's also available online, so you can read Bob Beagrie's reimaginings of historical characters on blasted heaths, and Chris Hardy's crystalline observations, and the review of Claire Williamson's 'Visiting the Minotaur'. And amongst all the other poems, five of mine from my forthcoming collection The Shadow Factory. 

An Arising from the Settee of Suffering

I've spent a lot of time reclining lately, mainly because sitting upright is too agonising. When I hobble round to the surgery, my GP wonders if it could be fibromyalgia that is causing this widespread pain, as well as the increasingly well documented arthritis. Am I under a lot of stress at the moment? 

I wonder if he's come up with this by himself or whether he's swayed by the notes from the physiotherapist. It seems to me that fibromyalgia is treated much the same way as depression was in the 1970s - something women get, and just keep necking the valium, love. And anyhow, I don't really care what they call it; all I care about is that it hurts. 

Maybe, I concede.

I decide my strategy of resting up and only going out when I have to - which is most days anyway - isn't working. Alice Oswald is appearing at the Bristol Poetry Institute and I've missed hearing top poets read their work in Bristol since the demise of the poetry festival. Moreover, the last time we heard her, she was astounding. That evening remains the best reading I've ever been to.








Alice's latest book is 'Nobody', ostensibly about a bit-part player in the Odyssey: the poet who was charged with guarding Clytemnestra by Agamemnon, and subsequently marooned on a rocky island in the middle of the Mediterranean by the queen's lover, Aegisthus. Really it's a paean to the ocean, and as Alice recites it by heart in darkness, I find myself drowning in it. There's not so much as a cough to break the spell. Not a shuffle or a shifting, and when, after an hour, we can finally move, I find I can't. I can barely walk back to the car. Perhaps I should try swimming.

Saturday it's off to the Floating Market on the Kennet and Avon canal at Bradford-on-Avon with Hazel Hammond. I'm delighted to see that despite the manky weather, Dru Marland is doing a roaring trade in art on the tow path. She squeezes in a quick coffee with us between sales, and we repair to the pub for lunch with a haul of thirteen 2019 calendars of boating life between us. Twenty per cent of the profits go to the Floaty Boat Fund, which helps boaters keep their homes afloat when hit by unexpected problems.  You can get yours here.

As we leave the canal, a pair of ravens croak overhead. Hazel hasn't been inside the tithe barn so we drift through its cavernousness in almost darkness.

Back up on the tow path there's a lot of shantying going on, and the lights of the market seem to float through the twilight. 

Twenty days till the year turns and it starts getting lighter again. Not long to go.