Stories from Purdown and the Madness of Trees

The Stoke Park Estate on Purdown is one of my favourite places in Bristol and part of the reason why I like it so much is its location ... 

... right on top of the M32.  I mean, how brilliant that there is a breathing space for wildlife - and beauty for anyone who cares to go there - even next to a motorway leading straight into the heart of the city, less than three miles away.  

I have a trick for blanking out traffic noise and it is this: I pretend that it is the sound of the ice age torrent that carved the original valley - in this case, I suppose, an early incarnation of the now rather lethargic River Frome.  It works at Burwalls Cave in Avon Gorge as well. 

I wasn't always as fond of this area as I am now - in fact, it scared me when I was small.  The building you might just be able to spot perched on the hill in the distance is the Dower House, a rather forbidding edifice most recently rebuilt by 4th Baron Botetout (apparently) in 1760.  It's now converted into apartments and although I really don't like the lurid shade of yellow it's been painted, it looked a lot worse when I was a child, as the bare stone was dark and it served, as my parents cheerfully informed me, as 'the looney bin'.  'If you ever go mad,' they said, 'that's where you're sent.'  'What, for ever?' I squeaked.  'Sometimes,' came the answer. 'It depends if you get better or not.'  As I was the sort of small child already prone to wonder how you knew if you were mad or not, and if you didn't (I didn't), did that mean you were?, from then on I was frightened every time we drove past.   

It's easier to see in this photo, as is Duchess Lake at the foot of the hill, although not the stone obelisk which overlooks the lake.  As every Bristolian knows, it was set up in memory of Lady Elizabeth Somerset who died aged 18 in 1760 when her horse bolted and she fell.  And this story persists despite there being evidence that she actually died far less romantically, ie in her bed of the fever.  It isn't the original lake either, that one having been drained to allow the motorway to be built in 1970 - but not before one of the boys from our nearby suburb drowned in it.  

So, yes, this place has always been a bit scary to me, but I'm largely over my collywobbles now. And since Ted loves it, we go there quite often, although yesterday was our first visit since January owing to the slipperiness of the footpaths after all the rain we had a while back.

But now spring is in full joyous leap, as evidenced by the scrape of a chiff chaff - truly the sound of spring(s) - while high overhead a buzzard drifted.  

As I didn't have an awful lot of time to spare, I decided to visit three of my favourite trees on the estate.  The first is this splendid oak, which is just coming into leaf.  It seems to have shed a couple of branches during the recent storms.  

The second - another oak - lies a little way further down the hill, and is much older - a fat-bellied, venerable thing.  The approach to this monster lay over already quite substantial nettle beds.  It will be unreachable in a couple of weeks, I should think.

Camping out under its still bare canopy is an elder tree, already leaved and nurturing the beginnings of those frothy plate-like blossoms it will carry come June.  

The massive bole is hollow, so I crouched down to take a few photos ... 

... and stung my bum on some of those nettles.  The tingling didn't stop until bedtime.  

The third and final tree I visited was this ash, surrounded by masses of blackthorn.  It's not quite as decrepit as the one I saw last Saturday between Semington and Seend, but marching around waving its arms in the air, nonetheless. 

I'm glad there are far more enlightened attitudes towards madness these days than half a century ago, and that the notion of the looney bin is firmly in the past.  

Writing On The Wall

While I recover from a thankfully very mild flu-ey thing, here's a few pictures from a series of recent forays around Bristol and its surroundings distributing Poetry Festival brochures.  Thanks to all the shops, cafes, galleries, theatres, concert venues, hotels, pubs, open mics, etc who took them, and especially to the staff of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset library services who, for the 10th year running,  happily took their allotted boxes of brochures for distribution throughout their areas.  

If you are a user of Bath and North-East Somerset libraries and you'd like to know what's happening in the Bristol Spring Poetry Festival, you'll have to make do with this electronic version, I'm afraid.  Apparently poetry no longer bridges the cultural divide between our cities, not even when organised by the poetry development agency for the entire south-west.

Anyhow, on a brighter note, keep looking up. It's a jungle out there ...

  














... one which includes the print of the past.

Plus some newer additions... 

... including one to make this Bristolian proud indeed. 

Three Women - and a Man - and a Dog - in a Boat

Going to see Dru in her new home reminded me of the time we went mulberry picking - how she could walk straight up the (slanty) trunk of the tree while I climbed cumbersomely, scaredly, not liking the thin air on either side of each branch. 

Because she's already trotting along impossibly narrow ledges while I peer at my feet, trying to work out where the canal bank ends and the silty reed edge starts. 

As soon as we arrived in darkest Wiltshire - that's me, Ted, Dru's House Teenager (whom I suppose must now be called Houseboat Teenager), and my own Son the Younger who has less than a fortnight of teenagerhood remaining to him - there was stuff to be done.  Like returning a narrowboat that had slipped its moorings to the bank.  

Time for a quick glance at NB Eve, Dru's new abode ... 

... before we had to get the boat facing the opposite direction, which meant going through a lock to reach the turning point and then coming back the same way.  Poor Dru, her crew had no idea what they were doing. Can only  hope to get better with practice.  

'What's that funny squeaky noise?' worried Dru as the water level fell, taking the narrowboat with it. 'It's OK, it's only Ted,' I said.  

By the time Dru had turned Eve and we'd come back through the lock the other way, Ted was an old paw and coping with equanimity.  

And Dru was looking to the manner born.  

Once we'd moored again, it was time ... 

... for tea and cold cross buns.  

And to watch the first swallows of summer buzzing the water for insects.  (Well, my first; Dru had spotted them the day before.)

Then we walked the two and a half miles along the tow path to the Barge Inn at Seend, with its flocks of rooks and jackdaws ...   

... its pussy willow and massed blackthorn ... 

... the remnants of the GHQ Stop Line which I didn't know about till Dru told me ... 

... a gnarly old ash tree, with an old, mud-lined nest from last year in it ...

... and built and rebuilt bridges.

Plus more rooks to go with our cider. 

Poem for World Autism Acceptance Day 2014

I'm posting this poem for World Autism Acceptance Day 2014, which was yesterday.  I wrote it a long, long time ago - around 1999, I think - when the two of my children who have autistic spectrum disorder were aged 10 and 8.  They are adults now and have exceeded all expectations of the medics who diagnosed them.  The neighbour who terrorised me every time I let my children into the back garden is still living two doors away. 

There's still a long way to go before autism is accepted.  Certainly books like 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime' by Mark Haddon have helped, though I doubt Herr Nachbar has read it.  

I still struggle to go out into the garden.  

The Village Idiot

Four children in a photograph –

sisters and brothers –

all scrubbed, all dutifully gleaming.

So which are deemed deficient?

The camera doesn’t know.

But there you go

windmilling down our street,

and there’s our Nazi neighbour

who thinks that you are thick,

he tells me you should be locked up.

See how he battens down spent daffodils,

entrenches his French marigolds

with pissy little rings of slug pellets!

Let’s grub them up at midnight,

let malnourished molluscs feast.

                        © Deborah Harvey  1999, 2014

Bah! Humbug!

Wassat? Too monochrome?  

Bah! Humbug!