I am guessing that I have had nothing to say over the last couple of months, nothing of note anyway. Writing doesn’t come easily to me, a scant surface of words can flow relatively well but words with meaning are rare. Therefore a journal like blog is what I am resolved to do as no amount of  waiting brings forth pearls of great wisdom,  or volumes of Beckett like brilliance, I will never be like Alan Bennett or even Jeffery Archer, though any position that is significantly opposed to the later is fine by me.

Sometime in early autumn I broke my little petrol lawn mower by believing it invincible and attempting to mow too earnestly through the deep undergrowth. The poor machine was bundled into the boot of the car and carted off to the local mower hospital, new starter motor and blades and several pounds poorer I returned with a brightly buffed Huskervana. As the winter seems to have turned a corner and the ice and snow cleared I am tempted to drag the mower out from its hibernation and clear a few Walnut leaves using its double cutting action. Surely this mild enthusiasm for outdoor activity is, like the emerging Snowdrops, the first signs of spring.

Blimey!, I have spent the day clearing a pond of Reedmace and I ache, I spent most of my energy [what little I had] ungluing my wellingtons from the smelly silt and retaining my balance. I am pleased to say I didn’t fall over. The cutting of reeds at the base of the stem is the most successful way of clearing them and limiting their return. The dense growth of reed reduces the waters ability to fill the pond so the clearing gradually began to let water flow back in as we worked our way through the rustling forest. The water also percolates up through the ground and soon what had been relatively dry area began to look like a significant wetland. Two beautiful large frogs paddled out of a small channel that lets water trickle down into the pond from the A428 that runs close by, they glistened in the sun and swam off in the rising water. One of the wildlife staff said frogs won’t be in water this time of year, tell that to the frogs. I have had a fantastic day, the aches will fade, I hope, but I’ll be keen once recovered to do it all again.

The sky is grey and the wind is blowing, I am tired from work and a little stressed with the ever changing methods of production that happen, it feels that nothing is stable but infact life is relatively easy for me. I have a habit of concentrating too hard on the negative and ignoring all the good stuff. I guess its a cliche but the simple things that happen are the most important, the ripples in the shadows, whispers and fruitful exchanges that get lost in the noise of life. Last week I was invited to spend a lunchtime with a group of people who are taking part in a self-help scheme to get them back to, or even in work for the first time. I was nervous, what might I have to offer, a fellow ‘volunteer’ remarked that I must be seen to be able to contribute as I had been asked, overcome with an increased sense of self doubt I trembled from head-to-toe. The session was approximately an hour and a half and involved having lunch and chatting and then performing mock interviews, I winged it, it was not dissimilar to my Drama A level, improvisation makes me feel excited and alive. Apparently I was fine, jibbering a little too much I think but the girls I interviewed certainly didn’t feedback ‘what a plonka!’. I came away feeling thoughtful, sad but hopeful. They were all so keen to get something happening in their lives, some will succeed and some will fail but I have respect for them for trying, I really hope employees can see the same qualities in them that to me were so apparent. I believe that as employed people we are still only a couple of steps short of the streets, of drug abuse and of failure and that we can be too quick to judge. Employment brings with it responsibility, not just to yourself or your family but to the community, it can bring a level of social responsibility that now I see is rarely met.

Prickwillow lies east of Ely, formed around a water pumping station and the River Lark. The land in this area falls about 2 inches a year and some houses stand proud of the surrounding area, the Fenland solution is to build more steps up to your front door, the schools and vicarage and houses are built on piles. Two steam pumping engines and two oil engines are in the village and two in Burnt Fen; the average discharge is 150 tons per minute into the river Lark. The community is rich with artists, writers and architects, a place of quiet and creativity.

I parked the car down by the river in Ely and set out my watercolours and pencils on the bench, my water in a Volvic plastic bottle. The boat that sits decaying in the Babylon boathouse reminds me of Ernest Hemmingway’s boat that sits in dry dock in Cuba, it is a romantic image of past-times, of adventure and of hope. The surface is an expanse of rust with flecks of blue remembered paint. The waterlilies have surrounded it and the yellow heads lie around the bow rising and falling in the wake of passing cruisers.

Visiting open gardens is almost always a pleasant event, especially if the host serves Elderflower cordial, even the drifting hordes of lilac scented ladies do little to dispel the pleasure, though the stout dames in denim maxis, sensible shoes and overly snug shirts pulled unnervingly tight across their ample bosoms often send me scuttling off. But I was wandering around our garden yesterday and thought I too readily accept what I believe to be the truth, this is that others tend their garden to perfection and so set the pace by which we should march. I had been ‘twittering’ earlier in the day and discovered that Yoko Ono was now a follower of my tweets [don't get excited she follows everyone that follows her], on her profile she had written ‘I think it’s better to dance than to march through life.’, could it be that in gardening there are marchers and dancers?. The marchers being the Open Garden set, and the dancers, people like me, for whom gardening is a private activity, it is a process of self discovery, making amends and healing, a reciprocal relationship with the beautiful and unendingly fantastic delight that is the small, hard seed that sprouts into life and silently aches in its desire to live, to grow and to set seed, to make its mark.

I have converted part of the flower boarder close to the house into a small raised bed. It is constructed out of found ’stuff’ from round the garden and house. The wood for the sides is made from a long old oak board, possibly from the house that used to sit in the garden, and two pieces left over from shelving, the sides are secured in place with sawn up poles from a redundant Habitat wardrobe and some cane hoops that last year supported the Delphiniums. I have used canes found in the railway carriage for the back and stout twigs for all other stakes. The compost is sadly bought and the string is not string as over Winter it vanished and is probably shacked up with all the missing odd socks. I have use plastic wires to line up the veggies and netting bought many moons ago to protect it all from those pesky birds and cats. The veg. are French beans at the back, a bit early but I have also planted some seeds between them for later plants and have a few more to plant out that are currently living in the sun shelter. In rows from the left are Carrots, purple ones, onions and 3 La Ratte potatoes.

There may be a hidden message about Education and Support but frankly this sign is crap.

Every year our village has an event entitled Bygones and Organs, a miscellany of stuff scattered about the village hall. In the yard are tractors, cars, motorcycles and bicycles, some are immaculate shiney examples of their marque and others clearly having seen better days cling to life in a near fatal state of collapse. Owners tenderly care for their much cherished vehicles, making information boards for passers by to read, details of past owners, restoration work, paint colours and miles travelled, some show photos of the vehicles perched in far away places, Hardknot Pass, the Dales and the rugged peaks of Scotland, some up-market vehicles having extended their travels to places as exotic as The Alps and the South of France, but not this year, possibly the credit crunch as stretched its evil greasey fingers into the wallets that finance the adventures of vintage tourers.

The continually chirpy organ music eventually drove me into the hall and to the displays of local Bygone collectors. Corgi cars, type blocks, tins, dolls, toby jugs, oil cans, jigsaws and a curious array of stupifyingly awful domestic flotsam. In the midst of this odd but undeniably attractive Ripelyesk madness was a stand with a collection of Fen skates, some dating from the mid-19th century and others from the turn of the 20th, wooden and metal, for adults and children, fine modern blades offset against the thicker Victorian blades. The eldery man on the stand, excited to talk, explained to me the reasons why some farmers were driven to skate. In the Mid-Winter, in this desolate frozen landscape the families on small holdings survived on a basic diet of potatoes, potatoes and more potatoes. Like the drawing of the The Potato Eaters by Van Gogh, these people existed on a meager diet, isolated and scraping a life out of the black soil. Rich locals would present meat prizes to the best skaters, people would battle in speed skating races on frozen flooded fields in order to feed their families. 

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). The Potato Eaters, 1885, Oil on canvas, 32-5/16 x 44-7/8″, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

The Orchard at Grantchester lies beside The Old Vicarage one time idyllic home to Rupert Brooke who immortalised both the house and The Orchard in one of his best know poems ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’ which ends with these most quoted lines

‘Stands the church clock at ten-to-three                                                                                                           And is there honey still for tea?’

I much prefer the lines earlier on in the poem where Brooke describes uncharitably his neighbouring villagers

‘For Cambridge people rarely smile,
Being urban, squat, and packed with guile;
And Royston men in the far South
Are black and fierce and strange of mouth;
At Over they fling oaths at one,
And worse than oaths at Trumpington,
And Ditton girls are mean and dirty,
And there’s none in Harston under thirty,
And folks in Shelford and those parts
Have twisted lips and twisted hearts,
And Barton men make Cockney rhymes,
And Coton’s full of nameless crimes,
And things are done you’d not believe
At Madingley on Christmas Eve.’

Brooke also wrote The Soldier, for me he best poem, his death in 1915 was made all the more poignant by its speculative prediction.

IF I should die, think only this of me:
    That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
    Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
    A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
        Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
    And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
        In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

This morning I sat in The Orchard and sketched the chairs and trees and my cup of coffee, it was quiet and warm, Bullfinches and Blackbirds came and sat with me, not for my company but for my carrot cake obviously. It is lovely to draw in The Orchard this time of year as it is empty save for a few walkers passing through or whispering ladies out sipping earl grey or wholesome country sorts thickly wrapped in Barbour coats and up-to-their-knees in green wellies. If you sit far enough into the trees, hidden from the tearooms up against the hedge you can loose yourself in the moment and be taken back to 1909 and a time when Brooke and fellow students would sit under the bee rich blossom of the apple trees.