Bonfire Days

The last time I posted about the edgelands where we walk most days it looked as if this year's late, slow-burning autumn was about to catch alight.

Then I got Covid and didn't go anywhere for ten days - literally, in fact, as my partner omitted to catch it at the same time and, since he's self-employed, was keen not to miss work. So I sat in the bedroom for most of that time, with only a walk-deprived collie for company. 

While we were in seclusion, there was some wild weather, including storm Ciaran, so when we finally rejoined the world, it was a wetter one. 

And since the rain has continued, Cwtch and I have spent some time exploring The Small Dark Wood of the Mind, which affords some shelter.

The Small Dark Wood of the Mind is a feral, largely untended wood that wasn’t where it is now in the 19th century. Along with the Field of the Hollowing Oak and Rooky Wood to its east, it’s part of the edgelands sandwiched between the golf course, a housing estate, Charlton Road and the Airbus campus. The trees in the above photo grow on top of a bank or dyke alongside the footpath, which clearly isn’t a natural feature of the landscape and also doesn’t feature on the Victorian map. 

There’s another similar bank, also marking the boundary of the campus, where the rookery grows. You can see it in the recent video I took of a muntjac running up and down the wood.

I’ve been trying to work out why and when these earthworks were undertaken. I wonder if, because the factories have been used to build aeroplanes (or parts) and weapons for decades, they were put up during the war to make it harder to infiltrate the hangars and workshops. (Presumably the footpath would have been blocked for the duration.) I like this theory but haven’t been able to verify it online. Maybe I’m using the wrong search terms. And the people I might have asked who worked there - my father, my godfather, poet John Terry - are all dead, although someone on Facebook did suggest they might be bunds, designed as blast protection walls, also during the war.  

Haws barring the way to the Grove of the Silver Chair (and Ruby Crown)

Rubbish adopting an effective camouflage

Cwtch in the clearing where so many trees were felled about a year ago

Even though there’s a fence with razor wire and keep out notices running through the part of wood on the factory side of the footpath, paths running through it are still routinely blocked with branches at the junction with the footpath, presumably to deter German spies still. Doesn’t stop Cwtch and me having a nosey about every now and then, though I’m mostly interested in fungi and feathers, and she squirrels.

Of fungi, there are a few, most of them brown. I'm not skilled at identifying them, but might hazard, clockwise from top left, inkcaps x 2, milkcap maybe, candlesnuff fungus, waxcaps x 4, potato earthballs.

As for feathers, the falling season is over, apart from woodpigeon feathers. There are always woodpigeon feathers, and no sooner have disparaged them, than the God of Fallen Feathers says hey, these are beautiful too. 

As for flora and fauna, I again glimpsed the hindquarters of a muntjac scuttling into Rooky Wood (they definitely seem to have taken up residence there), while flowers have been restricted to the occasional hogweed (this one with a soldier fly) and common vetch valiantly having another go at blooming.  

Far more spectacular are the colours of autumn, which did indeed advance while my back was turned.

field maples

The ash trees in the Small Dark Wood of the Mind are starting to carpet the path with yellow leaves ... 

... while the oaks are stunning.

Looking towards the new Severn bridge

Oak and ivy on Golf Course Lane

Of course, my most fervent admiration is for my beacon tree, the hollowing oak.

One other big change during my absence ... the golf club has removed a wooden fence and an entire hedgerow at the top of the lane. It now looks like Colditz, instead of a lane with the occasional vestige of its rural past. 

As we were leaving, we watched a jay pick up an acorn, perch on the fence and drop it a little further away from the tree. Nature will prevail, in the end.

Poems like falling leaves

Usually the end of October sees me charging around trying to absorb as much autumn colour and light as possible before the long slump into darkness. This year I'm experiencing a strange sort of half-life, lived mostly upstairs, while the Northerner stays down and tries to keep his distance from me and my Covid germs. The night the clocks went back saw me tossing and turning the extra hour away on my fever bed with only the dog for company; it was truly as long as the night Odysseus arrived back in Ithaca from the Trojan War and was reunited with Penelope, but almost certainly a lot less fun.

So, trips I'd planned around my son's schedule have been put off, first because of his Covid and now because of mine, and I haven't been anywhere. Time, then, for a poetry round-up, considering the occasional triumph, both modest and more modest, the first of which - completing the Sealey challenge of reading a poetry collection a day through August - I'm pretty proud of, as maintaining the focus required for attentive reading isn't something I find easy.

Some of the books I wished I'd had longer to linger over, and I've already picked one up again, to reread once I recover my concentration, and it's 'Jackself' by Jacob Polley. It took me a few poems to get into it, but what a strange, dark narrative it is. 

Here's another book of interesting narratives, although with only a couple of poems in. (They are mine, however. 😎)

It's always great to have a poem or two included in one of Jane Russ's nature books, published by Graffeg, the latest of which, The Crow Family Book, is now available and would make an excellent Christmas gift, because let's face it, most people love a crow, unless they once pretended to wave a stick at one, ever since when generations of corvids have passed down tales of this misdeed to their nestlings, who are thus primed for attack the instant this hapless miscreant sticks their head out of doors. Yes, that's what crows do. Luckily, our local tribe at Asda recognise me as Friend because I feed them, and just crap on my car roof instead. 

And here's another tome I contributed towards, this time with a review - the mighty Tears in the Fence, issue 78 of which appeared in August. 

Some of my more recent poems, which will be published in a collection by Indigo Dreams next autumn, have been making their way in the world, finding lodgings in both real life and online journals. I'm expecting my contributor's copy of Artemis Poetry some time this month; in the meantime, here's some links to online poems in Crowstep, London Grip and Amsterdam Quarterly.  

Meanwhile, one poem has returned to its roost twice recently, each time with a tattered laurel leaf or two in its beak, having been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and then achieving runner-up status in the Frosted Fire Fourth Annual Single Poem Competition, for which many thanks to judge, Angela France. Since the later accolade includes publication in the competition anthology, that is the end of its journeying until the collection's published. Well done, doughty poem, you've earnt your rest. 

All Aboard the Flying Scotsman

  

It was a long journey to the Bluebell Railway at Sheffield Park in Sussex. It started well over a year ago, but the celebrity visiting engine we'd booked to see, at the request of Son the Elder, developed a fault and the 'experience' was put off for twelve months. 

And then Son the Younger, belatedly reading his messages, said actually he'd have wanted to join us if he'd realised the rest of the family was going, and so I banished to the back of my mind the not inconsiderable amount I'd already paid, bought him a ticket, upgraded the four existing footplate viewing tickets, and reckoned my father would be really pleased we all had tickets to ride on the Flying Scotsman.

Getting my lot together is like herding proverbial cats at the best of times. Throw Covid into the mix and it's like herding wildcats with rabies, but my daughter tested negative three days beforehand and her partner, who'd had to go to hospital for a scan and a lumbar puncture, having suffered a thunderclap headache - virus-related, as it turned out - finally tested negative on the morning in question, so we were set to go.

To board the train, we had to cross to the other platform and show the really rather inauthentic email that constituted our tickets ...

... and we were off! 

Our journey lasted an hour and three-quarters, from Sheffield Park station to East Grinstead and back. It's a rural route, but many of the fields, and all the stations en route, were lined with people waving, many with unfeasibly large-lensed cameras set up on tripods. I think it was the first time in my life that I hadn't been the wistful onlooker, but part of the gilded company on the inside.  

The excitement got a bit too much for my companions. 

Back at Sheffield Park we watched some shunting ... 

... and stuck around for a bit to get a good look at the Flying Scotsman, because of course you don't actually see it/her/him while you're in a carriage being pulled by it, you just get looked at. Next time when I'm on the outside, I'll remember it's the onlookers that get the best view.