A lovely day at Dyrham Park with the Grandchildren and their mum. We’ve pretty much got used to the absence of the deer since it was culled due to so many animals being infected with TB. But the knock on effect of their absence is obvious when you compare the photo in the header with the one below. Firstly, of course we notice the much more ragged look of the avenue of Lime trees today. The header shows how closely cropped the lower branches used to be, and the avenue had a formal, clipped quality that led the eye forward. Elsewhere, the change in grazing has allowed the coarser grasses to take over because, sadly, mowing cannot replicate grazing as a means of improving grassland diversity. Let’s be fair, if you know where to look the variety of grass species is (so far) about the same but it’s consigned to smaller areas.
July 2019
Today the two figures are the mothers of the figures in the header – Madame on the left and our lovely daughter in law on the right. But there’s good news too. It’s been hard to get any official information about the return of the deer herd; but today we discovered – by talking to a couple of friendly volunteers – that there are plans to restore the herd some time next year. We’d noticed that there’s been a continuing programme of installing high fences around the park. In our helpful conversation we discovered that the fencing is not so much about keeping the Dyrham Park deer in but keeping the wild (possibly infected) deer out. The badgers in the park have all been trapped vaccinated and released, and soon – we know not when – a new herd will be brought in. Hooray!
Common grasshopper
For today our grandkids hunted grasshoppers, spotted buzzards and we were able to talk to them about wildlife.
Back home we’re up to our necks in produce; processing tomatoes for the winter, for instance. I’m completely knackered!
An unknown apple in a collection of Welsh apples in Cwmdu last autumn.
I was casting around my collection of photos for the image of an apple suitable for a short piece on sin and the avoidance thereof, and then this cracker came along and I thought “That’s it!”. If you wanted an illustration for a little excursus on Girolamo Savonarola the last thing you need is an illustration that inflames the passions of the ordinary sinner like me. You’d need a manifestly ugly and dangerous looking specimen as seen through the eyes of – lets say – Savonarola; you’d need something like this. Seen through the lenses of his rheumy eye, this is what a cow looks like to George Monbiot whose latest pronouncement from the pulpit condemns regenerative farming as “Climate change denial” and urges that we bend every sinew (a questionable image, I know) to replace meat with some kind of fermented gloop, provided by the fast food industry by way of the very suspicious ultra processed food path, known to most of us as the royal road to diabetes and early death.
Savonarola, who was a gift to the Gucci handbag manufacturers of the day, persuaded the rich of Florence to burn all their luxury goods in what became known as the “bonfire of the vanities” four years later he was the one on the bonfire, and the members of the guild of luxury goods became even richer as they replaced the vanities so eagerly despatched to the flames. My fear is that George Monbiot’s fervour for heading off climate disaster has tripped into a kind of fundamentalist mindset where all means are justifiable if the end is (in his view) correct.
It seems to me to be obvious that the only people to genuinely benefit from these industrial foods are the producers of the feedstocks, the supermarkets and the PR industry who will need to spend billions persuading us that processed fungus with added bacteria is absolutely the thing. “Look” they say, “It even bleeds.”
You don’t need to be a vegetarian or a vegan to be utterly opposed to the deliberately caused suffering of farm animals. You don’t need, either, to be a halfwit to know that there is a strong connection between soil fertility, ecological diversity, food security and human health. These either/or arguments are cheap and easy but they’re still an extension of the old colonial attitude that would consign millions of the poorest pastoralists to unending poverty. Yes, industrial gloop might save the earth for the left behind in the west, but for poor farmers in India and Africa it would be a slow descent into starvation. The rich would, of course carry on eating foie gras and wagyu beef and driving their SUV’s. Michael Pollan’s advice – “eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables” is both sensible and achievable.
Yes we need to take immediate action to curb methane and CO2 emissions and to bring carbon back into the soil where it can be stored safely; and yes there are ways of doing this well short of the bonfire of the vanities; evidence based ways of reducing the impact of intensive cattle farming on the earth’s atmosphere, and yes it will require cultural change. But waiting for the Seventh Cavalry to come over the hill and save us all with some kind of ram stamped iron pump is an essentially religious assertion. And I’m just not that religious!
I’m not suggesting that regenerative farming will save the earth, but what it could do is form one component of a strategy for carbon storage and – ultimately – reduction, using less oil, less chemicals, less intensive production of effluent with nowhere except rivers to go. Using prodigious amounts of energy to store carbon is no better than an industrial wet dream afflicting those industries who hope to supply that energy. There’s only one way to reduce carbon and methane release into the atmosphere and that’s by releasing less of both – is that so complicated? The a priori rejection of regenerative farming that Father George is suggesting seems to indicate that there’s no point in arguing with him because he’s always right. That’s bad science, bad journalism and downright daft tactically. Short of a Robespierre style reign of terror casting farmers as terrorists, dispossessing them of their land and handing the land over to the oil companies to balance their carbon budgets by planting tree deserts so they can supply the energy to ferment human waste and turn it into cordon bleu toothpaste tubes of delight.
This is simply not a credible strategy but a Tory style culture war. I’m sad to see a previously solid green activist fall into this trap.
This view through the campervan door on consecutive days is a perfect cameo of Welsh weather. The patch of grass that’s visible on the right hand photo is just out of frame on the left. If you’re lucky you can make out the ridge of Talybont forest on the left whereas it’s clear on the right.
The campsite we stayed on is a place we’ve used several times. Right next to the canal it’s only a short distance to a place where we can easily launch the kayak, and we’re far from alone in seeing this as a perfect place for energetic walks and even more energetic bike routes over the hills on the Taff Trail. All day long the supremely fit come bowling into the campsite with their Volkswagen T5’s magnificent legs and haggard faces looking for all the world like sturdier versions of the crack smokers on the green outside the flat in Bath. I’ll get to them later.
Notwithstanding the physical challenges available, there’s also an awful lot of wildlife to be seen, although how you would get to experience any of it from the saddle of a bike is debatable. Ironically we saw more wildlife than we ever expected by just sitting still on the grass outside the van. There was a field mouse who took an hour to make his mind up and then shuttled back and forth collecting the crumbs we’d thrown down. He was sleek and almost chestnut in colour, quite beautiful. There were the two hedgehogs in the dusk and innumerable birds; sparrows, dunnocks, blackbirds, an amazing kingfisher bursting out of the hedge, buzzards, robins, wrens, blue tits, coal tits and woodpigeons – all seen without moving a step from the van. I was racking my brains to remember this line from W.H. Davies:
WHAT is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?—
W.H. Davies “Leisure”
It’s a bit corny, but then I remembered its uncanny echo of Milton’s Sonnet 19 on his blindness “When I consider how my light is spent”, that ends –“They also serve who only stand and wait.” – there’s a real spiritual point to standing still and waiting, that challenges our cultural obsession with success, hard work, achievement.
So we’d run out of milk when we got home and I wandered down to the supermarket to get some. Sadly, since the fire at Green Park Station, the milk vending machine has been disconnected. As I walked back in the sunshine a loud argument was being conducted across me on the street. “I’m effing desperate, I am” screamed a woman at the obviously sick man who was just in front of me. She was forging on, head down in that characteristic junkie walk. He shouted back – “It’s just here at the end of the block”. I knew in a second that they were off to meet one of the several dealers who work this area and use the corner as a rendezvous point. Sure enough as I followed them to the end of the road they were there, with a mobile standing on the corner; she was still shouting needlessly into the receiver. Then two, three and four people turned up to join the queue. They have the hunted look of those who have been shriven by their lives, bent over like the trees on the ridge of Freezing Hill, parchment skinned, incoherent bog burials.
The deal was a messy affair in several acts. She borrowed some crack from someone in the queue and stormed over to the privacy of the bushes at the edge of the green where she shared a pipe with her benefactor and walked back miraculously calmed. Arguments broke out – there was shouting and swearing until the dealer cycled up and then for ten minutes noisy negotiations broke out. People stormed off and returned chastened; shouting, more shouting, a big man was throwing haymakers at an invisible enemy. There were dangerous looking dogs barking. Eventually she got her drugs and sat calmly in full view, injecting into her neck. She wandered off again into the woods and returned with a bicycle. It was sad; so appallingly sad, to see these ruined lives.
Blaming the victim is always cheaper
Where do you even begin to find a way through this mess? There’s a strong association with mental illness, homelessness and alcohol – any or all of which could be tackled if we chose to resource it, but blaming the victim is always cheaper. In a world without the prospect of employment, drug dealing looks like a rational choice where the most successful and profitable business are centred on greed and entirely disregard the consequences. The street is a dangerous place so getting a dangerous dog is a rational response once again. I was having a conversation with a financial advisor recently and he told me that if you’re simply interested in making money and don’t give a hoot for ethical investments, then oil and weapons are the star performers. The tanks, guns and landmines are just flying off the shelves. The same old saw comes back every time – “We have seen the enemy, it is us”.
And then I remember A F Woodman who was the music teacher who introduced me and so many others to music – the “brandy of the damned” – according to George Bernard Shaw; and I remember him shouting at me “I know you can hear it, Pole – but are you listening?”
I’m listening!
A Day Lily in our container garden outside the flat
Pen y Fan hiding in clouds from the Monmouth and Brecon canal on an icy February morning in 2017
Just out of interest, Bannau Brycheiniog translates as Brychan’s Kingdom; Brychan being the fifth century king of this mountainous area. I’ve written frequently about this place because I love it to the core of my being. It’s a National Park but by no means a huge one; near to the Eastern border with England, more or less defined by the River Severn; a contested border which includes the Welsh Marches and Offa’s Dyke. A wayward and wandering line that’s been fought over for centuries as armies marched back and forth from Roman times onwards in search of gold and latterly for slate and coal, but whatever the quarry, the spoils were taken out of Wales and only the spoil heaps were left. The reversion to Welsh place names is one more skirmish between the Welsh and the colonisers; less spectacular than the burning of holiday cottages but no less fiercely fought for.
But we’re not here to pursue old rivalries. We’re here at the foot of the Bannau to rest and recuperate from hard work on the allotment and to adjust to a change in medication that’s left me feeling as if I’m recovering from the Flu. We have close friends who now live about 1000 feet up in the hills above Llangorse lake and we’ve been coming to this area for more than 30 years and watched as they worked a smallholding while working full time, and improving the cottage from an abandoned bothy to a family home.
So yesterday we lazed in the sun and then in the evening we went with our friends over to to the Three Horseshoes in Groesffordd for a meal and a couple of pints of a local light beer. Needless to say we had a brilliant evening because our interests overlap almost completely and predictably we talked about growing food, keeping animals, the relative merits of lamb (3/10) hogget (7/10) and mutton (10/10). We talked about beer and vegetables and favourite recipes and families and we all reassured ourselves that we hadn’t changed a bit in decades and laughed as if we would all live forever. We took one of the outdoor sheds with a spectacular view between the roofs of the village, across the valley to Pen y fan. The food was excellent and almost too unusual for pub food, we left with a couple of good recipe ideas and feeling that the expense of eating out was justified. The Three Horseshoes, predictably next door to a long closed smithy makes a good living in the most inaccessible spot, hidden deep in the middle of the village where it’s almost impossible to park. We chatted to the owner and he said it was because of their good reputation – and he was right. A delightful and affable landlord who thinks enough of his chefs to name them on the website.
We arrived home (at the campervan) as it was getting dark and sat outside watching the stars come out and listening to the evening sounds. To our great joy there was a wheezy snuffling and a couple of hedgehogs appeared, paused to take a look at us and shuffled off into the hedge again. We haven’t seen hedgehogs for something like 10 years. Way across there were tawny owls and all the usual roosting birds. It felt as if the thin thread holding us down to time and place, had broken and we were wandering in a more ancient time which came with all its literary associations.
Firstly, of course, Buckland Hill which is just down the road will be known to any lover of Tolkien who stayed here at Buckland whilst he was writing Lord of the Rings. We’ve walked miles of Offa’s Dyke, and I’ve loved Geoffrey Hill’s “Mercian Hymns “ set in the time of King Offa and which gets less difficult as I get older and feel the music rather than concentrate on the words. Madame has just finished reading A J Cronin’s “The Citadel” which is partly set just across the hills in the mining valleys. And then on an impulse I dug Bruce Chatwin’s book “On the Black Hill” out of the Kindle Library this morning. This has been one of my must-reads for decades, and I’ve actually got two paperback copies at home. Each of the three I’ve bought while we were up here and never got past about chapter three for the oddest reason. There’s a real “Vision Farm” below Offa’s Dyke facing Capel y Ffin and we once had a long and hard walk up Hatterall Hill, along the dyke and down past The Vision (you’ll need to take a map and a GPS to find the track down) and after crossing the Honddu river, back up past the ruins of the church built by Joseph Lyne, Father Ignatius, back along the opposite ridge and then dropping down the steep path turning left at a hawthorn tree, to Llanthony Abbey.
But I mentioned the fact that I’d always abandoned “On the Black Hill” after a couple of chapters, for an odd reason. It’s simply that the writing is so rich I never want to move on with the narrative, and so each page is an object of meditation. I finish the first couple of chapters and it’s if I’ve eaten a huge banquet and don’t want or need to eat for a week. Obviously this is a bit disruptive to the narrative flow. Cheap fiction does the exact opposite, using a narrative torrent to hurry you across the ludicrous improbabilities of the characterisation. Give me Bruce Chatwin any day, but I’d love to have the stamina to finish it.
One of my parishioners had a Welsh farmer as a distant relative, and she told me that this irascible man had married in a local church, started to drive his bride to the new marital home in the pony and trap . Somehow, on the way they’d had a fierce quarrel and she had got down from the trap and walked back to where she came from, leaving the bridegroom for good. A very Chatwin-esque yarn. I wonder if he’d heard that story independently?
Liquid sunshine they call it here. We thought we’d make a brave dash for some decent weather but the weather didn’t read the forecast as usual, and instead of drifting over Swindon it hung about here for the sole purpose of testing our resilience; but if you listen very carefully you can hear the sheep … Continue reading “The glory that is Pen y Ffan”
It’s in there somewhere …..
Liquid sunshine they call it here. We thought we’d make a brave dash for some decent weather but the weather didn’t read the forecast as usual, and instead of drifting over Swindon it hung about here for the sole purpose of testing our resilience; but if you listen very carefully you can hear the sheep on the hill, coughing. We’re immediately alongside the Monmouth and Brecon canal, which is the first place I ever saw a kingfisher – like watching a jewel burst out of the bank. The canal is well known for its red colouration – I’ll take a photo later on the way to the pub. Today when we crossed at Talybont and the water was the colour of a robin’s breast. All due, apparently, to the puddling clay they used in construction.
The rain has been continuous here in the Bannau Brycheiniog (it gives me great pleasure to give the Brecon Beacons their proper Welsh name; all the more because it’s described as some kind of woke thing and Rishi Sunak doesn’t agree with it at all.) All together now – “Bannau, Bannau, Bannau” – doesn’t that feel good?
I’ve been wondering – being interested in words – what the fine line is between ‘Inhumane’; ‘Inhuman’ and ‘subhuman’. – I mean how many virtues would you have to lack to become subhuman or even non human? Or are virtues like the magnetic field of the earth’s core, flipping from time to time. I mean honesty and compassion – they’re so yesterday. Anyway the glory of Pen y Fan is concealed behind a curtain of cloud today so if someone reading this feels able to pop up to the top and bring the real ten commandments down, because the ones that Moses brought were obviously fake; all that woke leftist claptrap about loving your neighbour and not killing people – even lying through your teeth which is an artform gets banned. Good old Boris could break all ten commandments in half a day without breaking a sweat.
Tomorrow is going to be grey but dry, and Thursday is going to be hot. I’m hedging my bets by bringing plant and fungus books. The canal is a great place for wildlife and we decided to risk a high-season break at the last minute, but we had to buy time to come here by working overtime at the stove, preserving the fruits of the allotment.
Tomas Dadford, who built the canal, took the cheapest route, following the River Usk and reducing locks to a minimum. So there’s the main road, the river and the canal, all following the same contour at different heights. There are places along the towpath where you can get lovely views over the Usk valley, and when we camped here a couple of winters ago there were also stupendous views of Pen y Fan. All very elemental.
Today we started to make a container garden outside our block of flats. We’ve been talking about doing it for months and then our neighbour, Wes, plonked a couple of containers down and the blank wall just came to life. After that it was a no-brainer and we bought and borrowed some pots and brought things down from the allotment to make a start. This is a community project that just seems to have spread right down the street. The majority of front entrances now have displays outside – some of them really beautiful. I put this photo up on the residents’ app a few minutes ago and got 5 likes within minutes so maybe others will want to join in.
We’re massively lucky to live right in the centre of Bath, but this is also an area of great deprivation with a lot of social housing and – as I’ve written before – big problems caused by drugs and alcohol, with ambulances being called almost daily. On the plus side we have a big patch of green outside which, in hot weather, becomes a favourite venue for parties and barbecues. I have an entirely personal theory that the nicer we make the area look, the better people will behave, so this is our street campaign to make this area family friendly and welcoming. There are no rules, no committee, no chief executive and no competitions. Occasionally we organize, but more often than not some kind of street party just happens spontaneously. One of our neighbours will sit out on the broad Georgian pavement with a bottle of wine and before you know it there are half a dozen of us. Most of us live in some kind of social housing and we have a tremendous mix of musicians, teachers, nurses and even a couple of retired professors along with the retired and unemployed all with different and interesting backstories.
I titled this piece “For want of a nail … ” because this traditional rhyme brings home one of the most critical issues in our society. The neglect of tiny things can often have catastrophic consequences. Loneliness and isolation are endemic, especially among older and poorer people and the cost of neglecting it is prodigious. In the current environmental crisis we are losing species every day and we have absolutely no idea which of those losses will prove critical, so every little wildlife garden we create, every journey we make using public transport, every action we take to build stronger communities, every small act of kindness could just make the difference.
Covid had a terrible effect on community life and just about every voluntary organisation has suffered. Many people are still scared of crowded places and it will take a long time to mend the damage. These small instances of community action are also acts of resistance against the ideology that preaches that there’s no alternative to the neoliberal economic orthodoxy that loads the burden on to the poorest and most vulnerable families. The mere existence of functioning neighbourhoods and communities that are maintained by the people who live in them and share their experience and good fortune freely are anathema to our Gradgrind government.
In many ways living here feels like a return to the sixties and seventies. There are very few advantages in being old, but one of them is the experience of communal living at its best and worst, and understanding that if something needs doing you can just do it. It’s amazing what can be achieved without grant support and official recognition. But if we wait for the politicians to change things it’s all over for human life on earth.
OK so there’s nothing much to see here; no great rarity except for the fact that I’ve never, ever noticed it before – and I don’t mean I’ve never noticed it here in Bath, I haven’t noticed it anywhere. I was stomping alongside the pavement below Royal Crescent in a barely suppressed rage caused by a third futile visit to the pharmacy trying to get the drugs that were prescribed for me six weeks ago. Nothing unusual there, then, but what was noteworthy was the fact that the moment I noticed this tiny stranger (the flowers are barely 3mm across) my mood changed dramatically for the better.
Look! it’s almost invisible
There’s a big family of wildflowers known as the Apiaceae. They used to be known as Umbellifers but nothing stays the same for long in botany – so think Cow Parsley, Hogweed, carrot; that kind of plant with the flowers gathered in a sort of umbrella shape at the top of each stalk. They can be a bit of a baffling family because it’s so easy to get them wrong. They flower at different times in the season and you rarely get to see them side by side so you can compare them. Over the years I’ve learned to identify quite a few of the common ones – often by looking at the seeds with a hand lens; but with this particular flower I realized that somewhere deep in my memory and in an unconscious act, all the plants I knew by name had passed rapidly through my brain and in an instant I knew that I didn’t know what it was.
So I took some (terrible) photos – not really knowing what I was looking for – and then very roughly identified it at home, starting with Google Lens (feel free to hiss) and then with three or four books I’d got a ballpark idea of what I was looking for. Then armed with one or two key points – the leaves and stalks turn red as they age; the leaves, when crushed, have an unpleasant smell; the seed capsules are very prominent and green and so on. This morning I went back and checked once more. Perish the thought that I’d dare to criticise the experts but the leaves, when crushed, didn’t smell so much of petrol but was more like the smell of the Woundworts. There were traces of red on the lower leaves and some stems which matched the descriptions in colour and shape; so yes I’m satisfied that it was Stone Parsley. A quick search on the BSBI Atlas database revealed that it had been recorded previously in this part of Bath, so it wasn’t rare – it was just rare to me – and I felt the day had been vindicated.
I remember the first time I ever encountered the difficulties of being sure about members of this family of plants. When I discovered that I might have to look at seeds with a magnifying glass, my heart sank and I carried the sense that this was an impossible task for decades. But slowly I learned how to look properly and now I can approach them in the knowledge that close attention to detail is all it needs, and if that doesn’t yield a name, then I am allowed to phone a friend.
Why am I writing this? Well I have so often been put off by well meaning people who will give a Latin name but not talk about the process which leads to it. Being entirely self-taught I am never confident of pronouncing the names I do know, but years of exposure to multiple different pronunciations of the same name by equally competent experts assures me that if I go ahead and mispronounce it with confidence, most people will be filled with doubt that they’ve been saying it wrong. It’s a kind of bluff that usually gets me there.
Of course doing field botany can be difficult and occasionally intellectually challenging, but it’s also tremendous fun; especially if you’re out with a bunch of experts who are also good company and best of all, good teachers. From time to time I like to bang on a bit about the way that so many people assert – without offering any evidence – that nature is good for us. Well perhaps I could offer the idea that mindful and alert walking in nature cheers me up, stimulates the mind and is good physical and even spiritual practice. It can even stop me brooding about the state of the NHS.
Luckily the threatened rain held off all day yesterday so our time with the grandchildren, while their mum was at work, was at least dry enough to go over to Dyrham Park for a bit of fresh air and subtle natural history. I’ve been going there for over sixty years – when I was young and before the National Trust acquired it I was a bit of a trespasser. I used to cycle ten miles or so culminating in a fearfully steep hill on my old gearless Raleigh bike, and climb over the wall into a different world. Much later on Madame and I would hire horses at the stables and ride through the park only more or less in control of their ill-tempered behaviour. I remember one particularly evil horse called Copper who knew every low branch in the park and took off at a full gallop hoping to unseat me. I was never a natural rider!
The field now called Whitefield was directly adjacent to the hill and the wall and so, although this is just a faint memory, I must have laid on my back there and watched the clouds passing overhead; one of my first experiences of what came to be known as oceanic feelings, although at the time I was too young to have known anything at all about Rolland and Freud – but as a result the place has always been very special to me.
Back, though, to Dyrham Park in 2023 and the creeping sense that the 21st century hunger for what the copywriters call “experience” as they tack it uneasily to any old event; has infected even the National Trust . What might once have been going to look at a garden is inflated to “Having A Garden Experience”, as if somehow the having of anexperience adds a new layer of gravity and depth to it. This shift of emphasis also leads to the awful domain of the curator whose superior understanding of almost everything from art to gardens and Egyptian mummified remains compels them to lead us by the hand through the world and – where there’s not quite enough interest to it – to put the missing bits in. We buy our tickets at the entrance and get our biodegradable bag of ooohs and aaaahs to spend on the way around.
Wild Carrot
This is especially troubling in relation to nature and wildlife because being driven around a wildlife reserve behind a tractor with a rather loud commentary is in no sense a substitute for lying on your back and watching the clouds, listening to the birds and getting a Cider With Rosie view of the lowest level of plants; in amongst the roots and stalks. To be clear, there are no tractors or commentaries at Dyrham Park but some of the most lovely footpaths have been winter proofed with intensely white crushed limestone in order to direct the visitors around the park without getting their shoes muddy and – what’s worse – the edges of the paths have – in some of the busiest areas – been sown with wildflowers mixes that feature plants which would not normally be seen there. In high summer they’re extremely pretty but there’s no signage to assist visitors in understanding that this is a thoroughly unnatural display. In fact these wildflower displays might even nudge visitors into thinking that ecological destruction is not really happening because they’ve seen fields that are absolutely full of life. Yesterday we even spotted Cornflowers, alongside Poppies and other all-but-extinct pests of arable land; virtually poisoned out of existence by intensive agriculture in their natural habitat. There were huge drifts of Wild Carrot looking rather out of place but stunningly beautiful architectural plants in their more usual setting. This was a trick that the planners tried to use to greenwash the development of the riverside in Bath. Sadly, but inevitably the wildflower mix only lasted for one season and then were outgrown by the usual thuggish natives.
The awful truth is that there is just one area of genuine wildflower meadow in Dyrham Park and that’s Whitefield now fringed on two sides by a road and an expanded car park, and yesterday – after a lovely display of wildflowers and orchids in early spring – now bone dry and looking all but dead because the truth is – beyond the fences – the curated scenery of the pay to view park mocks the climate destruction and extreme weather conditions that are causing increasing extinctions of some of our most rare plants. Worse still, it’s outside the boundary of the park and is used as a dog walking area. This was brought home to us yesterday when – as we always do – we took the grandchildren to their favourite part of every trip there; playing in the stream that flows down from a spring below Whitefield, following the road down to the big house. But it wasn’t there; it had dried up completely. Whitefield looked more like the South of France in August. Notwithstanding the rain running down the windows as I write this, we’re in drought and we’ve been in drought for months.
Roesel’s Bush Cricket plus youngest grandson.
But nothing dampened the enthusiasm of the grandkids for hunting grasshoppers and crickets, and I even managed to work in a brief lesson on grass ID with the oldest. We play natural history games constantly in the hope that some of this invaluable knowledge will rub off on them. I was blessed by a Grandfather and a Mother who did the same with me and it enriched my life. I wonder if we’re not our own worst enemies when it comes to understanding and teaching about climate change. Dyrham Park, beyond the gaudy displays and formal gardens has got some really good plantlife. With three children to look after it’s hard to spend time riffling through the grass; but yesterday offered a feast of grasses apart from the usual suspects like Cocksfoot, Perennial Rye and False Oat grass. There were Timothy, and different Fescues, and some very fine grass – probably clinging on after the departure of the deer. There was Yorkshire Fog … oh and I could go on, but my point is that if we want to encourage people really to treasure the environment we need to encourage them to give the time and energy to move into a deeper slower and more personal experience of the natural world.
I used to have an inspiring teacher who taught us how to read literature better by way of what he called CAT sessions. CAT stood for close attention to text. We could spend an hour unpacking a single sentence. Natural History deserves its own CAT sessions. Yesterday I noticed something about the Wild Carrot flower that I’d never seen before. I’ll put the photo below, but if you look carefully you’ll see a red flower in the centre of the umbel. I’d never before given it the close attention it needed and when I checked it got even more interesting because no-one really knows what it’s there for. I think I must have assumed it was one of those bright red beetles sometimes known as bonking beetles. Some suggest it may be to attract pollinating insects but who really knows; but simply noticing it reminded me how poorly I often attend to the smallest details of wildflowers.
Back home we fed the children with hot dogs and afterwards the oldest told us that they’d had hot dogs the day before, and then when we delivered them back home they asked what was for tea and their Mum said – Hot Dogs. Three days running – poor souls, they must love us!
Wild Carrot – Daucus carota – plus mysterious red flower.
A Mallow beside Whitesands Bay – but which Mallow? definitely a three pipe problem which, for a non smoker, is a bit tricky!
This post, which is a bit of a change from my usual more lyrical writing, came after spending a couple of very happy hours going through my photographs and doing a bit of ID searching and cataloguing while I went along. I know it sounds very nerdy, and I suppose it is, but it always gives me intense pleasure – especially when I discover that I have already photographed a plant which I’ve only just learned how to identify. My collection of thousands of photographs is more than a library catalogue because each one recaptures a plant, a time and a place; it lights up my memory of events and places that might have happened years ago.
It was the appalling thought that these irreplaceably beautiful reminders of our vulnerable earthiness might not be available to our grandchildren that made my hackles rise. Field botany; the finding and mapping of plants is overwhelmingly done by volunteers like me (in my very small way). The more data we gather the more it becomes obvious that the rate of extinctions is accelerating and that more and more of the plants described in literature will no longer be found in a ruined environment. This is not an act of some invisible and spiteful god but the inevitable consequence of the deranged relationship of the wealthy countries with the earth. I use the word deranged thoughtfully because it seems to me that it’s only what’s known as cognitive dissonance – our ability to obscure and tolerate the yawning chasm between our beliefs and our aspirations – that stops us from rising up in rage against this cruel extractive and exploitative regime.
… Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.
Juvenal 2nd Century Roman poet – in Satire 10; 77-81
When Juvenal wrote this he was not so much criticising the Roman elite as raging at the way the mass of people preferred free food and lots of violent and bloody spectacle rather than engage in their civic duty and responsibility; and – sadly – it’s not difficult to see a parallel between the declining Roman Empire and our own times. Our society is in terminal decay with corruption, greed and institutional lying, obscured by the salacious reporting of sexual scandals in the media.
So at what point does our capacity to believe Mother Julian, that “all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well”, break down? When will our hearts finally rebel in the face of the incontrovertible evidence of catastrophic climate change, economic collapse, and hunger? How much longer can the final demands pile up in the hallway before we – the people – demand better? The bread is becoming unaffordable and the circus is a seedy porn show so – something has to break soon.
But just when we need visionary leaders, we get lumbered with two main parties who seem to be neck and neck in a feeblest platitude competition; staring into the abyss with their political telescopes firmly planted on their blind eyes. Personally I wouldn’t vote for either of them if the only other candidate was a dead sheep. The present electoral system has been so rigged by the powerful that without urgent reform the lights will go out while they’re still organising the agenda for a preparatory discussion among five of their mates. But we need not (must not) resort to cudgels or any form of violence. Bernard Lonergan came up with a list of seven virtues which we should try to live out ourselves in order that we can demand them from our politicians. As I write them out I’m astonished at how naive they sound and yet … here they are from Wikipedia:
“be humble, be hospitable, be merciful, be faithful, reconcile, be vigilant, and be reliable”
Bernard Lonergan
Or to take a more traditional approach – and I’m sorry that both these examples come from Christian teaching:
Justice; Temperance; Prudence; Fortitude
Or to take a Buddhist view of the virtues:
loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity
I could go on but suffice it to say that almost all religious faiths, not to mention atheism and agnosticism will come up with a very similar group of virtues. This isn’t something that confines itself to the religious or those capable of believing six impossible things before breakfast; and here it might be wise to remember that there’s abundant scientific evidence that those who do easily believe those six impossible things are utterly immune to evidence – which only seems to strengthen their belief; as witnessed by those groups who withdraw to the desert to await the end of time who, when it fails to materialise, blame themselves for calculating it wrong: or indeed those brexiters who say the problem isn’t that it was a terrible idea but that it was badly implemented!
Politicians have one point of vulnerability which – even with the help of the largely supine media – they cannot conceal. If we refuse to vote for the charlatans, the delusional, the liars and half-wits and lend our votes to the most virtuous (people displaying the qualities I’ve listed above) then it’s sending a clear message to them all that we demand change and won’t tolerate backsliding on promises at the behest of paid lobbyists. Neither of the two main parties in the UK meet those criteria and so I’m happy to say I won’t vote for them but I will vote for the candidates who embrace earth-first policies and are prepared to change the electoral system so that it can deliver the policies we need to avoid catastrophe. He have to elect leaders who walk the walk and not merely talk the talk.
Maybe the Ragwort and the Cinnabar moth stand more chance of surviving than we do!
