Saturday 23 July 2016

Paul Southcott's Seasonal Observations

I sing to my dear friends the Trees that grow all around Haresfield Beacon ... they've given me a lot of love and teachings, and they seem to enjoy singing.

Full moon... my eyes full of her glorious bright broad face, the chilly breeze blowing around my head, the fire warming my legs and my ears ringing with the song of the stars.... beauty and blessings and peace to everyone …

Spring is on my mind, and what a subtle and slippery business the seasons can be... There's a special light around on some days now, which seems to show itself just in those extra few minutes as the days lengthen... blink and it's gone! A bit like the first young leaves, or the primroses... they're suddenly all there, then suddenly gone, and something else is happening... In the woods now you can the woodpecker drumming … that's a sound that's just not been there for months, and the tiny tinny sound of a flock of long tailed tits up in the high branches of the trees.... You have to be out there and catch all these things, because the seasons don't stop, they keep rolling and the world changes, and changes again, then again, and so on... and the wild garlic's back!

Today I went walking over the Beacon and found violets and bluebells and anemones, all growing in a place I call The Singing Place, because you have to sing to it when you go there, and now I've been sitting out with the Moon, watching her rise up through the branches of the big Ash Tree at the end of the garden... when I focused on her full on through the network of branches, the whole tree changed, and looked like a big spreading piece of embroidery against the sky …

we made a long overdue visit to Avebury today, in the Springtime sunshine.. I love the country around there...the kindly hills and hollows and the clear bright streams of water, the Ash trees and the Beech trees and the feeling that it's all lived in and loved by strong ancient Spirits who have been there since the beginning of things... we walked around the Circle and down the Avenue and up Warden Hill and down and along past Silbury Hill, across the road and the Stream and up to the Long Barrow, and the Sun shone and the Larks sang and the Breezes played and the Buzzards soared and we came home tired and I made a cheese souffle! First time ever! And it wasn't bad either.

Spent a lovely day today up around the chimney of local Stately Pile Frampton Court, with my Faithful Companion Tonto Cockings, knocking off some ancient render with a view to replacing it with some new render of the same kind... the Sun shone and warmed us, and we had the most glorious view over parkland full of Geese and sheep, to a beautiful lake... five beautiful white doves flew around, their translucent wings and white breasts quite breathtaking against the blue of the sky.. we had to remove some stones from the top of the chimney, which is an enormous double one that is also used as a bell tower, and under one of the stones was a whole colony of ladybirds, huddled in the sooty darkness, waiting for the right moment to come out and sort out all the aphids.. I know it's work, but you can't help feeling blessed sometimes...

Nobody ever talks about Jackdaws, so I'm going to. I don't know anything about them, but I see them a lot. There's a whole flock of them living in the rocks up on the way to the Beacon, and they're always flying around among the trees, chacking and chawking and generally making a lot of noise ... they seem very genial, busy sociable and curious creatures … when I was young I knew somebody who had one for a pet, and it could say a few words of speech, and in the old house where I've been working recently, there were some living in the chimney. Every day you could hear conversing with each other, and giving the odd squawk... does anybody know any folklore about Jackdaws? I'm very fond of them!

… lovely coming home, down the lane away from the street lights, into the dark where the owls and the foxes and the badgers live and the trees hold up the sky and the little diamond-pin stars stop it from blowing away...

My friend Godfrey Lacks has just sent me a flute that I asked him to make for me... I'm going to use it to play in various places where I walk that seem to be asking for a bit of music...

A beautiful afternoon up on the Beacon... It was grey, misty and raining, but there was lots of birdsong, and everything greening up.... The Hawthorns are really lovely at the moment, their branches stitched with tight, bright green buds like beads, or some with tiny feathery leaves just beginning to spread themselves into the light and the warmth… There are lots of bluebells under the beeches, and violets all along the edges of the paths, and in the open grassy spaces, suddenly, cowslips are everywhere ... It's a precious time, and it's easy to miss these subtle changes, the little steps towards Summer...

Our house is old, built of stone. The back wall is built into a bank of earth. Sometimes, when it's wet or cold, rats hide inside the back wall. They've never come into the house; they seem to have a safe place somewhere inside the wall. The piano stands against the back wall, and sometimes, when she can hear the rats, our dog Bella gets very excited and sniffs and squeaks all around the piano. She did that this evening, and got more and more excited, till we thought that a rat must have come out into the room. I pulled the piano away from the wall, and a face peeped out and disappeared... then a tiny fox cub ran out and jumped up on a chair! I managed to catch him.. what an amazing thing, to have a fox cub in the house.. and took him out into the garden and let him go. Off he went, back to his fox family, I hope, and we all had a dram to calm our nerves and celebrate this visit of a lovely wild creature into our house ... Hurray!

Went up on the Beacon to day, and there's one particular place where I like to sit, between an Oak Tree, an Ash tree, and a Thorn tree... a Gentle place, maybe. And looking down from it, across the fields, there's a big old Oak, who has stood out pretty black and jagged and Gnarly all through the winter, but suddenly he looks quite different... the young leaves, which have shown a kind of yellowy orange for the last couple of weeks have really unfolded and turned a beautiful clear green... his shape has filled out and become really graceful, and now when you see him you would think he was dancing … it's very special! Then this evening we sat by the fire in the garden and watched the Swifts, high, high up in the sky, and listened to the birds finishing their day and saw the Bats beginning to fly and saw Jupiter appear and felt the quiet grow, and now it's finally dark and the Owls are calling ... Welcome Summer...

Guess where I've been today? Yes! The Beacon! Two things struck me really strongly when we were up there.. First, it was/is beautifully hot, sunny with clouds wandering about and a lovely cool breeze, and sitting up on the side of the Hill and looking across and down towards the Severn made me feel a strange link with the past.. it's something that happens often, and I remember it from when I was small, a feeling that this time could be any time from times long past... my mind always goes back to prehistoric times, in fact, although I know that the landscape would have looked different, the bones would perhaps be recognisable, but the Earth, the dear old Sweet Earth, was the same, the Spirit was there then, and is now ... and then I was struck by how much time I need to really look at something ... looking at the Trees and realising that their "voice", or presence, or whatever you want to call it, is made up of so many things, that become more and more subtle ... going out from the centre, through the bark, and the lichens and things that grow on it, up through the boughs, the branches, the twigs into the leaves, the flowers, the scent, the fluttering of the birds and the buzzing of the insects that spend time around this tree, because it is the tree it is... and all that makes up the complete presence and ongoing effect of this tree in the place where it lives…

Sitting watching the rain today.. Rain is falling, birds are singing, and all the different songs are making a web of sounds that, once I start really listening to it, becomes something that I can almost see, made of colours and shapes and depth that move and wind about.. The Trees along the edge of the field, once I really begin to look, shine out into many more shades of green and grey and black and brown and yellow and red than my usual thoughts about Trees would allow ... they show many more patterns and forms and scapes than I see with my everyday passing eyes.. It's a grey day, the grey sky marked from time to time with the lines and strokes of the flight of birds, and below that the treescape is lightened by the streaks and drops of falling rain.. What a double - edged thing our senses can be.. where we 're used to seeing Trees, Rocks, Hills, it can be that that's all we see, but there's a trick to just letting things be, and they then allow our senses to really become our teachers, that don't just tie us to what we know, the things we're used to, and expect, but show us more and more of what's really around us, and all the possibilities.
An amazing vivid double rainbow, on Full Moon night! Wondrous!
The dear and lovely Moon has just sailed clear of the tops of the trees.. I've been standing in her light, and now I'm going to bed … goodnight and Blessings...

The young fox cub who was in our house last week was back again today, sitting in the garden! It was great to see him there...

Well, what a long way Norfolk is from everywhere. But what a beautiful place! At least it certainly was today, soft sunlight and a pale blue sky, green gently rolling fields with poppies marking out the edges, under creamy white and pink May blossoms ... all very quiet and peaceful...  and there's a beautiful poem, supposedly by Walter Raleigh, that starts: as you came from the Holy Land / of Walsingham / Saw you not mine own true love / By the way as you came...I found it years and years ago, when I was a boy, and I learned it and have never forgotten it.. I always wanted to visit Walsingham, because of that poem, and now I will. I recommend it to everyone ... I think it's especially beautiful because of the kind of broken antique language, and lumpy uneven rhythm... anyway find it and have a read ... it's a beauty... another one that always makes me cry…

Loads of things on my mind ... my family, kids, the people I know... and today we were in the garden looking at bumble bees. There was a strange one, with a gingery back with a shiny black spot on it, and a whitish back end ... It looked very weak or exhausted.. I picked it up and put a drop of honey water in my hand and it perked up slightly and began to slowly drink it up. Meanwhile we discovered that it was a Tree Bumblebee. ... An immigrant, doing what most immigrants do ... i.e. settling down and fitting in and posing no threat to the native Bumblebees ...after about 30 minutes she pulled herself together and bumbled off, and I felt quite sad to see her go ... and this evening I went to a script-reading for a film that some friends in Stroud want to make about the Chartists and what they had to contend with ... many bells were ringing, reading about their times and our times. … interesting and slightly chilling ...

One of the great pleasures of life: Lying in the bath, watching and listening to the rain pouring down outside the open window... watch this space for a haiku...?

Yesterday morning it rained ... we went out to the Beacon in the late afternoon, and walked out to the end of the ridge and looked south and east across the valley, watching the long grass running and rippling in the wind, and the midsummer crystal sunlight washing over the woods and the green hills, and listened to the birdsong echoing among the trees and the hawthorn bushes, which are now full of small, hard berries. Two weeks ago they were covered in creamy white blossoms.. The tipping point has arrived, again... there are still orchids, rock roses, buttercups everywhere, and the grasses are flowering and the knapweed is full of marbled white butterflies, that always arrive just at the peak of summer, but now the time of ripening has begun ... It's easy to ignore all these things and get left behind, but Nature has got things to do, and just gets on with it...

Do I imagine it, or are there really different qualities of Quietness? Last night, looking at the beautiful shining Moon, the quietness seemed to come in (soundless) rhythmical waves, while at other times it can be more like real silence, which I a different kind of thing to quietness I suppose... silence being absence of sound?, while quietness is as much a mood or a feeling as it is absence of sound....? Am I just waffling? Anyway, I think what I'm on about is true for me....


Cherries. We have them for just a few weeks every year, but what a difference they make. I know there are different kinds, but I've got some of these big, black, sweet ones, and I'm afraid I might finish up eating them all... it's almost as though they're eating me, in fact. It looks like wild cherries may have always existed in this country, but introducing the cultivated ones may be the one good thing that the Romans did for us... Dear friends, they're around now. Eat as many as you can, because there's no better way to show gratitude and to honour the nature Spirits that have come up with such a wonderful gift. Plus they're good for you.. in some quite surprising ways, in fact.. I may have to come back with a bit more on this... meanwhile: Hurray for Cherries!

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