Category: Art

Where’s Wally?

A vibrant patch of wildflowers and greenery by the seaside, featuring pink and white blossoms among lush foliage, with a calm sea in the background.
Coastal undergrowth on Roseland

We were sitting on a bench, resting after a bit of a hilly stretch on the coast path and I was squinting closely at a tiny fragment of leaf when a small group of walkers passed us. “What have you found?” one of them asked. “I’m just checking out this plant that I may have misidentified” “It’s Hedge Bedstraw”, one of them said. It was a friendly – we’re all in this together – kind of remark that instantly established a common bond. “I don’t think it is”- I replied – “I think it may be Heath Bedstraw because there are tiny forward-pointing prickles on the leaf. This is the kind of thin, acidic soil they grow on”. We were all set, then, for a long (and for Madame and the rest of the group) tedious hyper focused discussion when another walker standing at the back of the group said. “There’s a Hummingbird Hawkmoth!” – pointing behind us. We all stopped whatever we were thinking about and turned to where the the speaker was pointing. And there it was; I’ve never seen one before so it was a bit of a moment to see this oddly beautiful creature whose wings moved so fast they were not much more than a blur. Then there were five of us eagerly following the path of the moth as it foraged among the coastal plants, oblivious to us it seemed. Moths have had this capacity to evolve towards seemingly endless recklessly stunning forms and patterns. It’s hard not to think of some kind of artist lovingly creating them. Madame grabbed my phone from me and attempted to take some photographs but couldn’t get close; held back by thick brambles.

Our cheerful conversation continued and then we went our separate ways having – all of us – learned something new. Back at the campervan I just had to double check my already double checked identification and keyed out the piece of Bedstraw in my pocket (it’s a way of naming a plant by answering a series of either/or questions until the name pops out at the end). Yes it was Heath Bedstraw. Then I googled Hummingbird Hawkmoth and discovered that Hedge Bedstraw is one of its food plants; that’s to say it will lay its eggs on them for the hatching caterpillars to feed on. Interestingly it was hovering around clumps of the related Heath Bedstraw so maybe it’s not that fussy. One of the things I find most difficult to live with is the sheer provisionality of all wildlife records. It’s true until someone discovers that it’s not.

And that’s the trouble with this natural history malarky – it can get wildly out of control with those of us disposed towards intense attachments – let’s call them obsessions or addictions. Later, and wakeful in bed, I mentally rehearsed the various species of Bedstraw I’d seen, and where I saw them. That was fun, and there were five species spread across North Wales, Mid Wales, Pembrokeshire, Bath and Cornwall. Madame woke up and asked if I was OK? 3.00am is a bad time for those kinds of discussion – at least it wasn’t a nightmare, and we’d had a good day’s wandering about; pub lunch; a couple of excellent finds and a major step forward with the breakthrough discovery that I could load WAV audio recordings files of plant findings straight into Notebook LM which positively relishes English plant names and Latin binomials issuing gentle corrections and straightening out misunderstandings. All my previous doubts have been resolved, and I’ve got a functioning workflow at last.

I know this is problematic for some, but Notebook LM is rapidly becoming my pocket tutor and data organiser. Oh, and I also made progress with identifying some new grasses and that meant getting to grips with identification keys – PLUS our youngest moved into his new flat after being evicted by a (barely Christian) charity under one of those noxious Section 21 orders, now abolished due to abuse. We also met some heartwarmingly nice people with whom we shared many interests and the Potwell Inn human kindness index leapt up three points, something of a record. We rarely listen to the news when we’re away.

What’s happening on the allotment while we’re here? Well we gave it a deep watering, especially in the polytunnel, before we left and there are a couple of allotment neighbours who have promised to keep an eye on things. Every day we scan the weather forecast and wonder what will be happening on our patch of earth. Bath is situated in the steep sided valley of the River Avon and surrounded by the outliers of the Cotswolds, which means that rain tends to fall on the hills rather than in the valley. But then, we’ve also often had heavy showers at home and discovered that the allotment – only 800 yards away – is still dry. The most accurate forecast amounts to looking through the window. Madame retains a passion for isobars, warm and cold fronts and all the rest which she gained at the research station where it really mattered, and thousands of trees could lose their blossoms to a sudden frost.

We even have some allotment planning software on my laptop and we’ve spent one rainy morning here bringing it up to date. Does that make us into a couple of old saddo’s ? Ask us that when we’re eating just-picked peas that make the frozen ones taste like bin waste; and ask us again when you taste one of our tomatoes just harvested and hot from the sun, or sweetcorn from the polytunnel that would make a badger faint with pleasure. As with every other human pursuit, the more we practice, the harder we work, the happier we get; so thanks for asking ….. we’re not saddo’s!

It rains every day in Cornwall and today is no exception and so I’m writing and Madame is reading a biography of the artist Gustav Klimt and reading aloud to me the bits she finds most interesting. I’m a man, so that’s the closest I can get to multi-tasking.

25th May 2010

Scenic countryside with lush green fields, grazing cows, and rolling hills in the background.

So it’s sixteen years since Andrew and I reached the highest point on the Aubrac Hills in Southern France. We’d – well I’d – failed to realize during the planning, that following a river can be a bit of a nightmare because every tributary makes its own valley and the line on a map becomes a relentless combination of long downhill valley-sides and punishing climbs to the crest of the next. We’d also failed to realize that the Camino has been monetized like everything else and was crowded with trippers who filled the cafes restaurants and refuges while we were carrying our rucksacks and all our possessions and often struggled to find somewhere to sleep, We did a lot of trespassing!

A winding dirt path through green vegetation, leading to a panoramic view of rolling hills and valleys under a clear blue sky.

But the hard work was redeemed by the wonderful scenery, the wildflowers (spring comes late in these high places) and a chance encounter with the transhumance – the seasonal festival that accompanies the movement of the cattle from their winter quarters in the valleys to the high pastures. If you look closely at the photograph you’ll see the cattle and their horns decorated with flags. We heard the clanging of bells and the sounds of celebration from miles away. Festivals in France have deep, deep roots and with many of the local villages quite isolated, the chance of a gigantic piss-up feels like all their market days in one. We watched from a distance and camped outside the towns where the riotous fun seemed to go on all night. The maximum height of the Aubracs in the Massif Central is around 3000 feet but I think we must have climbed it half a dozen times before we finally dropped down to Cahors. Somewhere up there I overheard a conversation between a couple of immaculately turned-out women from Nice when they spoke in tones of horror about a couple of elderly farmers we’d seen . “La France profonde!” one of them said.

As it happens I like La France profonde for exactly the same reason I love Wales. The culture is often a bit obscure to outsiders but its very isolation has protected it from withering away, and even ceaseless promotion by the tourist boards can’t seem to erode the central power with which it feeds a deep connection with the past, present and even the future. It ain’t cute, that’s for sure, but it’s the cultural matrix that frames life in a harsh place.

25th May 2026 – the same canicule, but a couple of decades later

Here in Bath we grow some, at least, of our own food in the centre of a Roman city which feels – today in the unseasonable heat- increasingly like Avignon. We shall call it Sulis en Provence and – like them – lay down our tools some time in July and spend the next six weeks in idling, chasing bulls down the streets trying to catch them by the tail, wearing white T shirts stained with red dye as a form of simulated bravery and getting very drunk whilst eyeing up the adoring girls and presumably boys as well. We should join the festivities and play football with the plentiful melons by the light of thousands of fireflies and breathe in the wine infused night air as if we might live forever whilst the gammon faced elders scream abuse into the internet because they couldn’t find anywhere to park their Range Rovers on the pavement. Ladies and gentlemen – at the risk of being thrown into prison by Sir Keir and the Brigade of Goons I’ll quote Eldridge Cleaver – “If you’re not part of the solution you must be part of the problem”. Interestingly when I verified that quotation on Google Gemini I got a little homily on the middle ground . Sadly the middle ground is on fire. The time for discussion, committees and forward planning seems to have passed us by.

In any case, we’re keeping a Provenĉal timetable here at the Potwell Inn. Rising at five followed by two or three hours on the allotment – mostly watering at the moment – and then breakfast followed by cooking, preserving and bottling as required and then writing; after which it’s eating and telly, avoiding the poisonous news and early to bed. Nil Carborundum is our motto. I’m celebrating my inner peasant.

Finally some photos of various places in France including a small chapel just beyond Le Puy en Velay, A park in Uzes near the Roman aqueduct to Nîmes, The Musketeers outside the cathedral in Albi and below that, the fortified Cathedral. Then there’s a scorpion that came to play, the bridge at Cahors, a street corner in Nîmes – that’s from memory; the beach at Collure, and a couple more from Uzès.

It’s said that figs prefer stony ground and produce more fruit when you prune their roots. Maybe that’s it. The aqueduct that crosses the Pont du Gard and goes through Uzès and on to Nîmes was sealed with the juice of figs. Maybe if I think of myself as a kind of fig, that story makes me feel better because some good comes out of the pain and – as Jung said – we’re most creative where we’re scarred. Perhaps spiritual energy really does flow like water in a thirsty place. I had my roots pruned on 20th June 2016. My European passport has since expired and I didn’t bother to renew it. I was rendered a stranger in a place I once felt at home and it was my own folk that did it.

It’s a mess – but a holy mess!

A small pond surrounded by tall green grass and clusters of yellow and white irises in a garden setting.
If you look closely enough you can see a tiny patch of pale blue painted plaster where St Francis keeps an eye out for frog spawn

I know there are all manner of gardening styles, from Gertrude Jekyll’s gingham and lace to Beth Chatto and all the way to the regimental ranks of RHS Wisley. Our allotment neighbour Pete is definitely Midlands in style and we are – frankly – untidy. Some plants blow in on a gardening wind and some settle down. We don’t have weeds but we certainly have some pestilential visitors like couch and bindweed, who outstay their welcome. Other visitors are harder to evict – we have a longstanding relationship with some Tall ramping Fumitory, Fumaria bastardii whose nearest relative seems to grow in a quarry thirty miles down the road and came over from Ireland at some time in the past. A proper traveller you might say. Ours is a polymorphous, polyglot and pollyanna plot with attitude.

Madame is the seed sower and nurturer and I am the surly under-gardener who nails things together muttering dark threats, and does all the heavy work; which is OK because I like the civil engineering bit. My present project is turning four underused compost bins into eight raised beds using as much free material as possible. When I sawed it horizontally in half – as you can imagine – it became a bit floppy and so old screws were removed with my worn-out driver set and new ones driven in with the wrong heads because the others were all worn out from previous bad choices. My arms were consequently purple with bruises due to the blood thinners I take. What with the constant dripping nose from hay-fever and the ugly arms and the cursing, our neighbours gave me a wide berth. They think, maybe, that old-age is something you catch from people like me. I say my language is a homage to my maternal grandfather who taught me almost everything I know about swearing. You’ve no idea how much pleasure I get from celebrating my disused vicar status by creative cursing.

The trick to recycling old topsoil into new beds is to work out a way of minimising the distance each shovelful has to travel – so bed one which can’t be lowered because of the damson tree roots – gets the soil from bed 2 with some composted manure for good luck. Bed 2 then stays empty until some wood chip can be sourced when it will be topped up with the soil from bed three which I stored in old compost bags. That leaves bed four to be filled with much more expensive nursery-bought topsoil and compost. The upside is that beds are much easier to work and much deeper so we can grow longer carrots and parsnips and we haven’t bought a single plank or post.

So its been a good week on the whole, without paying too much attention to the elections. The fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the artists’studios of which we’re almost the last surviving founder members were such fun we returned there for the May holiday open studios. I was having a rather difficult conversation with a disarmingly lovely young welcomer and fiddling with my pixel watch nervously when I managed somehow to turn on a podcast which was sent straight to my hearing aids. Our conversation became bewildering and she must have thought I was quite demented. Madame had another such conversation with a rather deaf man when she was talking about Vermeer who did many of his paintings in pairs and he mistakenly thought that she was saying something about him painting pears. As I’m sure Sam Weller says in Pickwick Papers – ‘collapse of stout party!‘ There’s nothing funnier than a cross-purpose conversation with a complete stranger.

On Sunday, after a family meal our youngest son – who’s a chef – brought around the experimental sourdough pizza dough he’s been working on with my 20 years old starter. As we chatted he said that he’s got three of my favourite family favourites onto the menu at the restaurant. I felt absurdly proud. They’re not really mine at all but dishes I picked up over sixty years and worked up for fun. Some I’d eaten on our travels, and some came from books, all inflected with the local availability of ingredients.

He’s being evicted by his landlord (a so-called Christian charity on a Section 21 no-fault notice. As the evictions deadline has approached over the last weeks we’ve seen any amount of furniture stacked on the pavement outside their empty flats. This so-called charity has turned out thirty people from their properties in order to sell them off, under the pretext of rediscovering their original charitable aims; so it’s all perfectly legal and they make it sound as if it’s some kind of moral obligation to turf people out of their homes. Isn’t it just a bit puzzling how much suffering is caused by ultra respectable people who wear suits to work and worship the gods of commerce and profit? I think of Dante’s vestibule of hell; the place where the uncommitted, those who refuse to take sides on moral issues, those who just don’t give a shit are sent to continue their pointless existence in an eternity of suffering.

But that’s enough. Let’s get back to the allotment and finish this rather anguished piece with a couple of photos that say something about our messy manifesto. We found our first ripe strawberry today, lurking under its water-cooler micro-greenhouse. The two water butts are going to be plumbed into a row of four and could even be purposed to circulate lukewarm water beneath the greenhouse in winter, powered by a solar panel and a recycled radiator in a system we say years ago in the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth. Until today, the latest frost we’d ever experienced on the plot was on May 6th but we had a frost yesterday, today and possibly tomorrow, so- 11th, 12th and 13th May. Luckily we’d covered anything tender with fleece, but our neighbours potatoes were all frost nipped and damaged. They’ll recover but it will take them a while.

Meet the Cranesbill Trio

I used to work as a community artist on a large satellite housing estate on the North West of Bristol. This wasn’t of those six month temporary contacts, I was there for ten years nd I got to know a lot of lovely people I’d never otherwise have met; like the stripper who caught the same late bus as me into Bristol to work, and often had to walk home alone, and told me she never felt safe until she’d re-entered the estate. I loved overhearing conversations on the buses because I learned so much – and one day I heard a comment on another community leader which has never left me. “That Jack B” said one passenger to her neighbour – “He can’t tell shit from pudding!” The estate was one of those places where everyone was related in some way to dozens of others. You quickly learned not to express any opinion about anyone without checking carefully whose cousin they were. Anyway, I’ve been profoundly glad of that phrase over the years and today I especially commend it to those of us who are feeling a bit down at the success of election candidates whose tastes and opinions are wildly weird. If you’re hoping for a tasty meal never order the pudding on the say-so of a waiter who might be called Jack B, because it will probably turn out to be – well, need I say it?

So in order to escape from all that I was casting about for a cheerful story and as I wrote about the cousin challenge in the first paragraph, I remembered that yesterday whilst preoccupied about raised beds on the allotment, I spotted three botanical cousins just above our plot; Herb Robert, Geranium Robertianum, Hedgerow Crane’s-bill, Geranium pyrenaicum, and Cut-leaved Cranes-bill, Geranium dissectum all within ten feet of each other and – as far as it’s ever possible to know – growing wild. I wish I could say I’d stridden forth, vasculum across my shoulder and a copy of Stace IV in my poachers’ bag in search of them, but I was leaning on my spade gasping for breath after shovelling a mixture of compost, manure and topsoil into the four beds. Most good spots like that happen when – for whatever cause – I’m standing still. Please don’t run away with the idea that any of these geraniums are rare because they’re not. It’s just a lovely coincidence to see them together because the differences aren’t that great until you know what to look for and then it’s easy. Like the residents on the estate they are related but quite separate species and their antecedent connection, whether lawful or one-nighters are lost in the mists of thyme. Harm one and you offend them all.

Wooden raised garden beds filled with dark soil, positioned beside a greenhouse.
The cause of the pause – approximately 3000 kg of home-mixed topsoil.

It would be easy to mistake the total weight of four raised beds of soil. Once I’d added some strengthening posts, and mixed together the components it came to around 3 metric tonnes in weight and because I mixed them in situ it meant an awful lot of leaning and turning. Not to worry, though I’ve finished half of them now and the other four – which is to say the top sections of the dismantled compost bins – will have to wait until it’s time to plant up in the the autumn. My back will probably have recovered by then.

We’ve been very focused on the allotment this week because now is the time where – if you sit back and relax – you will discover the extraordinary energy of plants in the spring. Our plots are infested with bindweed, and we run a general (but not religious) policy of not deep digging but working just the top 3 or 4 inches of the soil with hoes and a three or four pronged cultivator. Bindweed spreads by way of underground rhizomes – thick and white and known as devils guts. It’s worth saying that, unlike those who spray them, they’re immune to glyphosate and other chemicals and so the only way to control them is to hoe the tops off regularly and pull out every bit of root as you find it in order to starve them. There are jobs you can leave for another day, but bindweed must be pulled up on sight! I’ll put some photos of the current state of the allotment on at the end.

Meanwhile I struggle but mostly succeed in finding time to read because things are changing so fast in our understanding of the earth and our role in its destruction. At the moment I’m reading Michael Pollan’s new book “A World Appears” in which he explores ways of understanding consciousness in plants and is absolutely fascinating, as are all of his other books. The parallel read is Mary Midgley’s philosophical book “Beast and Man” first published in 1978 which explores the roots of human nature and which overlaps slightly when it comes to the higher animals. She’s the most lucid philosopher I’ve read, and avoids technical language as a matter of principle. One stand-out insight from Pollan’s chapter on sentience is his sudden exclamation – “So that’s what a theory of consciousness is going to generate – Art!” Writing, reading, gardening, botanising, cooking are the key to flourishing for me. You can keep your profits and huge bonuses because I know better than most that there are no pockets in a shroud.

And so – a few more photos of our magical allotment that turns sunshine plus water into food and releases oxygen as it does so.

Canal Reflections

A tranquil scene featuring reflective water, with the sun illuminating the surface while green foliage and delicate plant stems are visible in the foreground.
Cow Parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris on the Monmouth and Brecon Canal
A close-up of a white flower with six petals, surrounded by green leaves and grass.

Maybe I’m being a bit evasive here. Obviously the photo is partly about reflections on the water – largely due to the inbuilt wizardry of phone cameras which make a photo with a huge tonal range like this so easy. However, as everybody knows, a stroll along a canalside towpath on a beautiful sunny day, is apt to promote a reflective frame of mind. This season of the year is especially beautiful because the emerging plants all look so pristine. I started taking a few photographs principally as notes for the blog, but within twenty minutes I was in full-on recording mode. One such photo was of the abundant Greater Stitchwort along the canalside. I can remember the first time I saw this plant; it was on Dartmoor on March 16th 2016, ten years ago. Yesterday they were everywhere, among many other favourites – 27 species in the end.

A cluster of small white flowers with purple accents, surrounded by green grass and leafy plants.

Another old friend that set off a chain of thoughts was the Cuckoo Flower, Cardamine pratensis which I’ve often seen but never once connected its flowering with the coming of the Cuckoo. “Why didn’t I notice?” I thought, metaphorically banging my head against a tree. The reason of course is that Cuckoos are becoming ever rarer, and it just so happens that we were lucky enough to hear them twice in the last two days. It may seem to us a bit like metaphysical poetry to yoke the two phenomena together but to my mother – born in a cottage in the Chilterns in 1915 – it was part of the the natural calendar that structured her days. The clouds over Granny Perrin’s nest foretold rain, and that was that.

A close-up of a person's hand holding a purple violet flower, with green grass and yellow flowers blurred in the background.

We wandered on, stopping to note a couple of dead Bream floating in the water. One had a deep nick in the side, suggesting a fatal encounter with a narrowboat propeller. There were more signs of the season’s perpetual motion; the Wood Anemones past their prime and ready to shed their petals, Lords and Ladies in their priapic stage but awaiting the big red berries; Herb Robert, Yellow Archangel below, Bird Cherries above our heads, Dog Violets nestling in the lower layer with the Primrose, Bluebells of course, and a single Barren Strawberry barely noticeable in the understory. With the canal on one side atop a bank, with a large marshy area below we spotted hosts of Ramsons undamaged so far by foragers and beside the canal the young leaves of Hemlock Water Dropwort, ready to administer a fatal punishment to those who gather incautiously.

I was lagging behind as always, when Madame waved me closer and told me to be quiet. She had spotted something interesting down on the edge of a marshy pool below us. We waited in silence until something moved, ran along a log and disappeared into the undergrowth. Too pale for a ferret, too large for a stoat, and unlike any squirrel we’d ever seen. Back in the campervan we searched diligently and decided it was a pale Polecat – possibly a hybrid ferret polecat cross – and it had obviously been stalking a mallard perching on the log. What a find!

We spent the afternoon (after dropping off at the pub) reading and cataloguing today’s finds. I’m reading David Elias’s book “Shaping the Wild” at the moment and in the chapter on moorland birds in a discussion of the present state of the Kestrel population, he quotes Mary Midgely who wrote in one of her books:

The world in which the Kestrel moves, the world that it sees is, and always will be entirely beyond us

Mary Midgley, “Beast and Man: the roots of human nature”

All of which brings to mind Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent” and Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “Windhover” which fails to bridge the gulf magnificently.

Later we watched (part of) David Attenborough’s latest TV series “Secret Garden”. I say part of it because we both found its anthropomorphism both saccharine and misleading, and turned it off. I spend a lot of time and words here on the Potwell Inn trying to say something sensible about our connection with the natural world. There’s no doubt we are dangerously detached from nature.

Last night our son recounted a truly worrying account of a difficult conversation with his neighbours in Birmingham. He overheard them discussing the lovely mature oak that overlooks his, and their garden and it was clear that, for them it was nothing but a nuisance. They complained that it blocked out the sun and the birds made an intolerable noise. The tree had probably been there for a century before their terraced houses were even built and yet they were trying to enlist him in a neighbourhood campaign to have it felled. Yes we’re dangerously if not fatally detached from the natural world.

However the manner in which we re-attach ourselves is questionable, and here’s my beef with Attenborough and the BBC version of wildlife. It’s all too cuddly, and smooths over the immense difficulties with a commentary that reduces everything to winsome little human stories, as if animals were simply miniature and cute versions of ourselves. Attempting to engage with nature on those terms reflects an almost colonial attitude.

Yesterday’s encounter with the Polecat, as David Elias’s and GM Hopkins with a Kestrel is a form of engagement that takes seriously the otherness of the species we share the earth with. As long as we think that we can batter the natural world into the shape we invented we’re lost. If our love of nature, or if the idea of green spirituality strays too far into the religious mindset we’ll repopulate the horrors of religious extremism with an equally dangerous set of ideas taken from misunderstandings of nature with all the witch trials and heresy hunting thrown in.

If we can confine ourselves, in these occasional and wonderful encounters, to behold the inscrutable strangeness of the creatures, plants, insects, mammals, fishes, birds, moulds and fungi in silence then maybe we could begin to rediscover our own creatureliness which could be the foundation of a true green spirituality.

Close-up of two butterflies resting on a green leaf with a blurred background featuring water.
Crane flies mating

Back in the Bannau Brycheiniog

A scenic view of rolling hills and greenery under a bright blue sky, framed by trees and shrubs in the foreground.
The view from the door of the campervan

I use the Welsh name of the Brecon Beacons because that’s what they’re called, and those who object to the correct name are all too often readers of the kind of newspapers that think their role in life is to incite incandescent fury against foreigners of any sort. We have a favourite campsite here that’s close enough to home to be extremely accessible and also fabulous for walks and wildlife. We drove in yesterday and had a brew up and then listened to 13 species of bird in barely half an hour. Dare I make a list? – Blackbird, Chiffchaff, Robin, Grey Wagtail, Mistle Thrush, Blue Tit, Dunnock, Blackcap, Garden Warbler, Wood Pigeon, Goldfinch, House Sparrow, and Raven – all without getting off my chair. Then the braver among the birds swept in while we cooked and ate every crumb of cake that we’d left there for them.

We are escaping from a difficult week with the builders who are treating our black mould; or rather not treating it because they have the habit of scarpering whenever an easier or more profitable job comes up. It’s been five weeks and goodness how many emails and they still haven’t fixed the shutters after they broke them. There was a building firm in Swindon years ago who operated out of a Morris 100o van and called themselves “Bodgit and Scram”. I imagine their slogan was You know where you stand with us!

Anyway on Wednesday we’d been invited to a “Founders Lunch” at Spike Island, the increasingly well-known artists’ studios on the floating harbour in Bristol where I was to make a short speech about how we’d set it up fifty years ago. Madame and I had put an ad in the local paper and asked any artists in the area who needed a studio to join us at an open meeting and we were astonished at the numbers who not only came but were prepared to pay rent on our imaginary studios while we looked for somewhere cheap enough to build them. It’s a long story that travels from flat broke to manageable overdraft and from fractious meetings to – well, probably even more fractious meetings because creatives don’t readily work cooperatively until there’s no alternative. Strangely and beautifully we went back on Wednesday and were greeted by many old friends who’d been tracked down by Bruce and Novvy Allan and discovered that the original artist-led community of our dreams is still alive and kicking. It was a powerful moment to be reunited with a part of our own history which we’d moved on from many years ago. As I said in my speech – it made me feel very proud and very old! Travelling by train – it’s so much quicker – we decided to walk over to Spike Island passing the house we lived in while I was curate at St Mary Redcliffe and then caught the M2 metrobus back to the station after the event finished. It was a beautiful sunny day for walking and after the speeches which encompassed past present and future plans we had a lovely meal in the cafe – prepared by Josh Ecclestone and his team, and some equally good sparkling wine from the Limekiln Hill vineyard. We don’t drink any more but in this instance I drank half a small glass of their biodynamic wine and it was big – if you know what I mean. It was a lovely thank-you. I haven’t kept in touch with the project as much as I should, in fact the last time I heard from anyone connected with it was a solicitor’s letter from a company I’d never heard from threatening to sue me for 1 million pounds worth of damage by a frozen water pipe in the old building. I replied and said “go ahead, I haven’t got two halfpennies to rub together” and the matter was dropped.

Anyway, here we are again in God’s Own Country taking a day’s break before we go for a walk tomorrow to look for interesting plants. In Spring, every plant looks beautiful before the insects, rusts, galls and smuts get to work. Either way they’re fascinating and remind me – as if I needed reminding – that nature is in constant motion and nothing, no-one, lasts for ever.

Clusters of white flowers with pinkish centres surrounded by bright green leaves, growing in a natural setting.
Hawthorn in its pristine state before the “catastrophe of life” takes hold.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

A stone staircase leading down through an arched entrance, with a lantern visible at the bottom and greenery lining the path.
The passageway and steps leading steeply down from the Paragon to Walcot Street

We were lured out by the sunshine this morning and went for a decent circular walk taking in some shopping, a stop off at Toppings bookshop to book tickets for John Wright’s launch for his new book”Grasslands” in May, and then a bit of wall propping overlooking the weir feeling warm for the first time in months. Then another loop up the greatly diminished Walcot street to the top and back along through the Paragon, Milsom Street and home.

Don’t try this at home (or ever)
A lush patch of green foliage with bright yellow flowers growing alongside a stone wall.

Going down the steps to Walcot, if you looked closely across the road,you’d have noticed a rather early flowering Greater Celandine in a large pot outside a charity shop. I took this photo ages ago and didn’t think to photograph today’s specimen until it was too late. The thing is, I’d only today been looking today at an entry in a book on Welsh herbal remedies. The section on Celandine comes from a 15th Century herbal translated from the Welsh by John Pughe in the mid 18th century and taken from the tradition of the Physicians of Myddfai – so going back a bit.

A good eye salve. Take vinegar, white wine, the juice of Celandine, and Plantain. Mix them together in a pan and let them stand there 3 days and 3 nights, take it hence, keep it in a box and anoint thine eye therewith.

Here’s the thing, though. Among many other suggested uses, the bright yellow juice of the Greater Celandine is caustic enough to burn off warts and piles. There’s no way on earth anyone could put such a decoction in their eyes without damaging themselves unless there’s something in the recipe or the procedure that the canny doctors failed to share. I’ve got both glaucoma and cataracts (not that they trouble me much and they’re being well looked after by the NHS) but I’m sure that if Andy the optometrist were to lean across me with a mixture of Greater Celandine juice, vinegar and Plantain, and then try to drop it into my eyes I’d be out of the door pretty fast.

That’s the trouble with the reading that I’m doing about Wales and her history. Someone recently alluded to a kind of Cambrian fog that gathers over the culture of the country and leads unprepared travellers (like me) astray if we fail to inspect the teeth of the Bard to be sure that it’s gold and not mercury amalgam glittering between the lines.

We learned the difference between exegesis and eisegesis at theological college. Exegesis means trying to unpick what the original author was trying to say. Doing it properly can feel like unpacking a bottomless suitcase full of ancient garments and figuring out how they were worn. The opposite term, eisegesis, is much beloved by the evangelicals and involves trying to stuff a pair of your own theological pants into the suitcase after discovering that there’s nothing in there that quite matches your prejudices and so you have to chuck out the original contents and their bizarre notions, so you can get more of your ideas in and declare that you have the true meaning of the original.

There’s a phrase that comes from one of the great 20th century scholars of ancient literature who said – if that was what it meant then to the writer, what should it mean to us today? – which is to say that ancient literature and history need to be read with your brain in gear and not uncritically regurgitated as if it had nothing to do with the culture in which it was created.

The events of history are mundane and slippery; evanescent. It takes a poet to land a grappling hook on them and haul them in. It takes a poet to write about them fruitfully and yet another to read them well in vastly different circumstances and even those readings are as evanescent and slippery as the original events. There is never anything but provisional in the pursuit of history, and yet it’s the cultural air we breathe and so we must take it seriously.

I’ve been reading Jan Morris’ book “The Matter of Wales” and the third chapter deals with religious faith in Wales. I found it quite troubling because as she enumerated the waves of religion from the Celtic through Roman Catholicism, post Reformation Anglicanism (both enforced on the Welsh) and then waves of Calvinism, Methodism, Moravianism leading to the 20th century collapse of faith – I realized that in my own way I’d been touched by all of them and even experienced many of them myself. I went through what’s falsely described as Primitive Methodism in Sunday school (the Prims); conventional low Church of England, fiery atheism, Wesleyan Methodism, Evangelical low churches, Anglo Catholicism and theological college on the cusp of the Charismatic revolution. Whatever the light was at the end of the tunnel, they all seemed to swerve away from it when it got too challenging. Pretty well all of them operated a chaplaincy to the status quo. Nowadays if I was forced to put a label on my beliefs it would fall somewhere in the dim space between Celtic Christianity and Taoism but it would be better to evoke the old spiritual doctrine of reserve and apply it to the world in general and the understanding of past cultures in particular. The light at the end of the tunnel for me is the incredible freedom of feeling I don’t have to defend any orthodoxy at all.

The three graces – possibly

Learning by immersion

A panoramic view of a tranquil lake surrounded by rolling green hills and scattered trees under a blue sky with fluffy clouds.

Madame and I were sitting in bed today, reading peacefully – she on her tablet and I was immersed in a book by Jan Morris called “The Matter of Wales” the title being a playful use of language in order to indicate the substance, the deep matter of the country. The book was mentioned in Carwyn Graves book “Tir” which I’ve now finished and recommend without reservation as a gentle pushback against some of the more extreme (destructive) advocates of rewilding. For Carwyn Graves the Welsh landscape embodies the history of Wales for better and for worse. History is written in the soil, the rocks and fields; the livestock, the farmers and their lives but especially in their stories and poetry. It’s a beautiful book, and completely by accident I met one of his interviewees in the pub in Bwlch but we only talked about our experiences as writers for the then local Bristol newspapers. As soon as I saw his name in the book I recognised my lost opportunity to talk to an award winning maker of perry – pear cider.

The two books – Graves and Morris take interestingly different approaches to their subject. The landscape for Carwyn Graves is perfused with recollections of the old ways; a form of living history and its lessons for us in the present day. For Jan Morris the landscape is a living being; writhing, roiling, joyful and melancholy by turns. The history here is inscribed in lives lived in the landscape. She’s a magnificent writer on Wales.

So there we were (I mean Madame and me!) in bed reading and we have rules. Silences are only broken by mutual consent – “can I just play this ?….. ” Today she played an old recording of Pentangle – the brilliant Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Danny Thompson and Jacqui McShee with others – and in something of a Damascus moment I realized I’d left out music, and in what Flann O’Brien would have called a “Keats and Chapman” moment (without the terrible pun at the end); the whole landscape opened in front of me as if I were stood on a mountain top seeing the plains below receding in aerial perspective until the faint blue landscape reached the sea. Of course, you idiot! I thought -it’s language, history, literature, poetry, art, religion, drama and music. It’s the art of the kitchen table and the blackened pot suspended by its crân dân (fire crane) over a crackling fire, the blacksmith, the spinner and weaver, the shepherd, the singer and the traditional doctor, the understanding of plants, the wood carver and the brewer. One of the most inspiring paragraphs in Carwyn James ‘ book is his explanation of the way that in Welsh the word for culture isn’t the cocked finger, class ridden culture from across the Severn – but it also embodies all of the undertakings of ordinary people to advance the experience of being human. So emboldened by this thought I made some coffee, went into my room and guided by some odd instinct searched out a small book about Welsh folk medicine. I’ve known about the Physicians of Myddfai for many years in a more or less superficial way but I had no idea where Myddfai actually is. I had a strong idea of what I was intending to write but (as ever) no idea of how it would shape up so (also) as ever I hunted for a suitable photograph and came up with one I took of one of the three reservoirs which accompany the A470 across the Bannau Brycheiniog passing Pen y Fan. We stopped in a layby there for a brew-up and were joined by a couple of bikers from Merthyr Tydfil on their way to a campsite near Brecon. It seemed to me at the time that this was a near perfect view, but as I looked for the village of Myddfai on the OS map today, thinking to include the physicians who came from that area, I realised that the village was no more than a couple of valleys to the west of where I took the photo, and furthermore the foundational story/myth of these physicians involved a meeting between a farmer and a beautiful water goddess near a lake just like the one in the photograph.

My question would be – is it even possible to understand a landscape or a word in isolation from its whole culture. Many years ago we travelled by ferry and bus down to a small hamlet in southern Ireland for a holiday with friends. One of the friends owned a holiday cottage down there and knew some of the local people. One night we were introduced to two brothers who lived alone in a fairly squalid cottage just up the lane. The two brothers shared a bottle of Guinness with us and clearly thought we were pretty wealthy on account of one of us wearing a new pair of Docs. I had taken a small tape recorder with me and they told stories and sang songs to us provided we returned the offer with songs of our own. Our companions suffered a sudden attack of elective mutism and I sang a supporters song from Bristol Rovers which seemed to please them no end. Just to give a flavour of their lives, they told us that they had advertised in the Cork Examiner for a wife that they would share between them. The ad also generously noted that a pre-existing child would not be an obstacle! Anyway, it became very clear that their stories and songs of the Famine, and of the IRA battles of the past – not to mention a disastrous storm from some time in the distant past – all existed in their minds as if in the present. They sang and spoke of them as if they were still actually happening. It was a powerful example of what I’ve been thinking about in relation to Wales.

The photograph at the top was taken the day after my retirement ten years ago. I remember the journey because our youngest phoned just after the photo was taken with some kind of crisis and we had to abandon our plans and drive back to Bristol where we were still living. The photo and the memory belong together and can’t be separated.

So here I am ten years on, firmly resolved finally to speak and read Welsh. But the conglomeration of these thoughts has led me to the inevitable conclusion that this project goes much further than learning a bit of grammar and some words. The project is a kind of total immersion into the language; the broad culture, history and all the rest, in order that – finally again – I can see the Welsh plants in their broadest meanings, and I can see Welsh food and poetry, history and song as the Hegarty brothers saw their corner of southern Ireland – as essential to their humanity – daft and cruel as that might have seemed at the time. This is what I mean by using the phrase “learning by immersion” because it’s the absolute prerequisite for deep connection with any place in the world.

I’ve done a bit with the words already and I’m pleased to be able to write and say “good morning dragon” in Welsh, although I doubt if there will be any opportunities to use it, and so I’ve switched over to a different but well-connected course which is filling me equally with terror and hope. I can already say most of “I would like to learn to speak Welsh” without having to take a lie down in the middle. Madame has banned me from doing any practice in her presence. Oh and I’ve bought some – well quite a lot of – books. Learning by immersion, you see.

An open grassy field with a row of trees, possibly apple trees, under a cloudy sky, surrounded by rolling hills in the background.
One of the Marcher Network orchards near Cwmdu

Lost and alone in old town Malaga, and a horse ate my phone

Anxiety can be an awful burden, but when Madame suggested that we might clear off to old town Malaga for three weeks next February I saw the beauty of the idea at once. Our February break in Cornwall this year was completely overshadowed by rain and storms and although we summoned up the good old blitz spirit like proper Brits; even we were unconvinced by our stoicism. So yes – we both thought – renew the passports (we haven’t been to Europe in a decade since a 2000 mile adventure – crossing the Pyrenees in our tiny car three times). Never mind the health insurance says Madame; we’ll get an apartment with a kitchen in the centre of old Town then we won’t have to take a car, and (all in one breath) we can shop at the market, cook our own food and catch trains and buses and ……

Well yes, we’ve been there a few times and it’s lovely and also T shirt warm in February half-term week and we can eat lots of tapas. Last time we went, we read a glowing review for a tiny tapas bar and went to take a look during the day. As it happened, the owner was just sweeping outside and Madame accosted him and asked (rather firmly) if a space could be found for us that night. The owner caved in without a fight, and that evening we passed a long and hostile queue and settled down for some of the best tapas we’d ever eaten. I got talking to one of the locals and he said “he only let you in because you’re English!”

We found an equally good restaurant in Old Town who were offering a taster menu of local delicacies – about ten courses. I should have known better than to order two of them, but I’m a sucker. I was only thrown by the ninth course which appeared to be a pair of gigantic bull’s testicles but which were actually stuffed squid. Anyway sadly – if you’re off in that direction any time soon. (there’s a photo of the place at the top here) – a quick internet search suggests that it’s probably under new management twelve years on, so you’d need to make sure it’s still offering the amazing and totally retro service. But thanks, Hugh Whatley for a brilliant memory.

We happened to be in Malaga on Valentine’s Day that time and we treated ourselves to a meal in the rooftop restaurant at the AC Hotel where the waiter took a shine to us and insisted on treating us to two disabling large brandies on the house. That same week, we were in our room when we heard a strange noise and we raced down to the waterfront where watched and listened to a large marching band processing in a very slow march, while rehearsing for the Ash Wednesday parade. It was almost overwhelmingly emotional even to a case-hardened old pro like me to be in the midst of a performance of such ancient Christian street theatre.

Anyway, all that plus roasted almonds in the street and the quite wonderful Alcazaba Islamic palace and fortress, made Madame’s suggestion a definite yes. Except, that is, until I had the dream last night when my enthusiasm shriveled and puckered like a birthday balloon and I woke as a definite maybe.

We were there together in a market and then suddenly we weren’t together any more. Madame had disappeared on one of her customary missions without mentioning where she was going. I’m very used to it but in an English supermarket she’s easier to find. In the dream it wasn’t easy at all, and as I penetrated further and further into the market it seemed the the stalls were less and less crowded and I could see more of the building, even in the increasing darkness. It closely resembled an Escher painting but although I had my phone in my hand, for some unaccountable reason I decided not to photograph the complex of interwoven brick arches. Before long it was black and I was becoming increasingly anxious without Madame and frankly lost. Then I spotted a crack of light and a door and I left the mysterious market and entered another village market complete with flower stalls. Desperate to contact Madame I grabbed my phone just as I met a rather nice horse. I stroked his nose and without hesitation the horse swallowed my phone. I was aghast; lost in an unknown village without a phone or any clue as to how to get back to where we started. I recall waiting and mercifully the horse vomited up my phone, or rather only half of it, which was the point at which I woke up. For reasons I can’t be bothered to explain I need to take one of my several medications at 4.00am. I’ve got used to it but it does mess up some good dreams.

In my eyes that was the kind of premonitory dream I might have shared with my therapist Robin back in the day, but I knew him well enough to know he’d only throw it back at me and say “What do you think it means?” Well I think it means that we’re just like everyone else. Life is ephemeral and vulnerable and can’t be saved for later like a pension scheme; and what better way of rounding off our lives together than having fun doing what we love while we can still do it.

Today we passed a photo booth where you can get passport photos for a fiver and we both paused but said nothing. I think we’ll be back – however it was a black horse. I hope it got indigestion!

First trip of the year – moderately chaotic preparations.

The old Serpentine works at Poltesco.

The problem when the Potwell Inn goes on tour is that our plans for a break out invariably involve quite a few bits of kit. So a week before we set out, and perfused with optimism, we attempt to stow as many things as we could possibly need into our little (and rather old) car. The car itself needs plenty of TLC, and the campervan cost us more to run this year than an upmarket old people’s home. So this trip is by car – which entailed getting the brakes serviced and the windscreen wipers replaced in honour of the exceptionally gloomy weather predictions. The forecasts also make most of our longed for plans unattainable so we’ve also packed (just in case) for reading, drawing, mothing, botanizing and watching a load of films on DVD that we seem to remember we enjoyed at the time.

The packing has involved four quite different scenarios. The first is to spend the time walking hand in hand through dappled sunshine; finding and recording rare plants by the dozen. The second is to work our way through our collection of DVD’s and the third is to read a load of pretty impenetrable books. Options two and three may also include lively moments of conflict due to the cramped environment. Alongside all this intellectual stimulation there is the hope that the nights will be mild and windless enough to make a list of moths attracted to the new moth trap. A quick bit of research suggests that with nothing more than a gentle zephyr from a warm quarter and either a bucket of home made sugaring solution or a prolific ivy bush in flower outside the door we may even find a few volunteers for ID including some migrants without appropriate mothy passports. Madame has also packed a large quantity of paper and drawing equipment.

This one’s a 200 mile drive to the Lizard in the extreme South West of Cornwall; proper – next stop America territory. So cameras, head torch, GPS unit and hand lenses are all charged up, the boots are oiled and waterproofed and the laundry revived after the unexpected flood caused by a broken washing machine – is there a theme here? The quills were sharpened; the oak-gall ink and hand-made nettle paper were prepared (maybe I told a tiny lie there). The heat dryer passed silently, surrounded by its favourite washing at the end of December and rather like the two elderly ladies in Laurie Lee’s “Cider with Rosie” the washing machine went into terminal decline when the dryer died. So it was an interesting week.

Madame made pasties on Wednesday last to get our palates tuned for the reckless beauty of Cornish haute cuisine. Stargazy Pie and White Pudding come to mind. We’re working our way through an endless series of named storms and it seems perfectly possible that we’ll have gone through the alphabet by the end of February, so It’s a long way to drive to have your dreams dashed by Storm Zelah. On the other hand when you’re young and madly in love everything is lovely. Sadly we’ve moved on from that bit – well, at least the young bit. Wish us luck!