Springing thoughts

Two days after the last snow left

I saw the tiny hint of life

in colour, purple, on the mud

which rain had flooded winter-long,

and thought of Spring.

Encouraged by the silent sun

the lack of wind, the sudden song

- a blackbird sitting on a pole -

in air so silent I could hear

the rush of wings above my head 

as pigeons - should I call them doves?

 - set off briskly over roofs 

and gardens, sodden mossy lawns

and foodless shrubs where dunnocks live

I stopped, for long enough to feel.

But what I felt was not the joy

that children feel when freedom calls

but rather that nostalgic pain

more keen with every passing year

that tells me each Spring takes us up

the path towards that distant peak

where only faith says flowers will bloom.

C.M.M 02/18

Lilacs out of the dead land

April is the cruellest month - you bet it is. These light, chilly days, the sudden glimpse of primroses by a burn or a lone violet amidst a tangle of dead bracken: all these bring a curious mixture of hope, cheerfulness - and the sense of life passing. It's the cyclic thing again; the more uniform mid-season times, like a perpetual Trinity season, perhaps, make one less aware of the passing of years, while the sudden exclamations of delight over the signs of the season trigger transience all too readily.

I can remember with unlikely clarity being fifteen or sixteen at this time of year. We used to take days away from the city in the moveable Easter holidays of that time - mostly train rides to Helensburgh or Milngavie or Balloch, with at least one remembered trip to Dunoon. We didn't have a car, and all four of us went together - there was no question of staying at home to swot for O-grades or whatever. But what I most remember is the sudden sense of self - the scent of my own, slightly tanned skin, overlaid slightly with the first perfume I had ever owned, combined, bizarrely, with the small horror of a new smallpox vaccination on the scar of my infant one - for that was the era of a sudden requirement to have a valid vaccination certificate if you wanted to travel abroad, presumably because there had been an outbreak of smallpox in the UK such as the one described here.

I remember I went with a friend to my first ever opera at this time of year, and within four days of vaccination. I saw Bizet's The Pearl Fishers, and during it my arm began to itch ferociously and I began to feel distinctly odd. When I read the possible complications of vaccination here, I don't wonder at the latter, but at the time it was a matter of a disprin and getting on with school work.

So - a sudden welter of memories brought on by a bright day with nothing else to think about. Larkin's description of the lighted rooms inside your head  slips unsought into my own head, and I nod yet again to the poet's adept nailing of the minutiae of life. It's as well that normal life is full of music and people and books and East Enders ... did I mention that in these days we didn't even have a telly?

Annunciation and burial

Funeral on Lady Day

for Neil McKellar

A bird is singing

in the tall trees

over and over the same

liquid notes spilling over

the dug earth. A requiem,

perhaps, for the soul that is

gone into the sunlit morning.

Quiet words. Dust. The green

of the grass of this spring

surrounds the stones

as an old man is taken

home and the angel announces

to the startled girl

that a new life will come and be

God and the bird is joined

by all his fellows in a

sudden chorus of pure joy.

C.M.M. 25 March 2011

Spring contrasts

 This morning was swathed in fog, here on the Clyde coast. It was cold, damp, grey and depressing. It looked as if it might stay like that all day, might continue to be a dismal backdrop to a comfortable life.

Around 2pm , there was a sudden lightening of the sky. By three o'clock the sun was shining, and half an hour later I was in this sunlit wood where the daffodils that lurk untended in the rough grounds of Toward Castle were golden among the brown tussocks.

Later, I walked by the calm sea. Peewits called in their creaky voices as five of them at least wheeled and dived above the fields. The sun gleamed on the water.

I felt my spirits rise.

But in Kuji City, it looks as if Spring will never come again. I found the Kuji City blog, and on it this image, among many others. There are videos that show a desolate road winding among piles of rubble. No-one speaks.

The silence is broken by what sounds like crows calling. It looks cold, grey and sad. I cannot begin to imagine what it is like to have lost everything so suddenly and so completely. And now it seems as if there is further horror to come as control slips from those dealing - how heroically - with the threat of radiation from the damaged nuclear reactors.

And I was depressed?

Out of the dark ...

It's amazing how a sudden change in the weather can make such a difference to life. Perhaps I should qualify that. When I lived in the city - and it's 37 years since I did - the weather was a backdrop, no more. I noticed if it wasn't raining, and can recall the peculiar smell of sun-warmed dust mingled with privet flowers in the late summer, but I have no recollection of prolonged gloom or subsequent depression on my part. Even in Dunoon, when I was at work, the main drawback of awful weather was the trail from the carpark to the main entrance - you could be soaked before you knew it - but I often felt how cheerful the yellow-painted English corridor was on a dark morning, and enjoyed the obvious delight my classes took in my similarly-painted classroom. It didn't really cross my mind to care about the weather - I was too busy, and didn't get out much except at weekends.

Now, however, it's different. This is the first winter I haven't gone abroad at all, and it's had an effect. The past week has been distinguished by a complete absence of sun - the rain hasn't fallen every day, but it's been dark. Some days it felt as if we were stuck on the edge of a huge ocean, as we could see nothing of the other side of the firth. Everyone you met mentioned it. It was hellish.

And then came today. The morning was like all the others - grey, misty, a hint of drizzle in a slight breeze. Until suddenly the wind got up and the clouds rolled back. The photo above was taken about 5pm, and shows the high tide completely covering the beach below the shore road at Toward. We walked along here, and out the Ardyne, and I felt like a new person. A squadron of oystercatchers flew overhead on some important mission; their cousins shared a field with the sheep and a scattering of  curlews. The waves were brown and green in the low sunlight, and it was almost unbearably bright, as if we'd been in a cave for a week. The light reminded us, oddly, of the shore south of Monterey in California at the same time of year, though there were no tales of mountain lions to terrify.

And then the sun set and it was dark again. But the effect remained - and with it the thought that, as Larkin said, "It will be spring soon, it will be spring soon."

Must be Spring!

Must be Spring!
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Today reminded me of why I used to say I hated early March - that promise of warmth that turns out to be a chill wind; the clouds that whisk over the blue; the bleak dusk where before there was cosy darkness. Reminded me, that is, until we were heading back from a brisk walk along Loch Striven-side - in itself an antidote to bleakness as we watched a swathe of rain pass us by on the far side of the loch with only a sprinkling on our shore.

The wind had dropped suddenly, as it often does at the end of an afternoon, and in the sudden silence we heard ... a clucking sound. Not exactly chicken-like, but a sort of contented purring. It came from the ditch - the only bit of the ditch with water in it - and when we looked we could see that the muddy water was alive with movement. The photo shows the cause, but I'm too ignorant to know if this couple are frogs or toads. Someone can doubtless enlighten me.

Whatever they were, they were making the most of the afternoon - and they cheered me up no end.

If winter comes ...

I associate this time of year, rather oddly, with looking at houses. Specifically, houses and flats in Glasgow in January 1970, with a view to buying somewhere to live after our wedding that summer. One of the most heartening aspects of what was frequently a depressing process was the fact that it was still daylight after work, and that we weren't always looking at these houses in the dark. The photo above was taken this afternoon in the slightly snowy Bishop's Glen - at about 3.45pm, I think. That's what the light actually was like - I've been fiddling with exposures but wanted the real thing as well.

But later, I had to go down to the shops. At 4.40pm the sky had cleared and it was still light - light enough for the big cumulus that had passed to have a bright whiteness about it against the pale sky. A bright star - presumably a planet - reminded us that night was coming, but I felt that same lift of the spirits as I did on the house-hunting days. And by the second half of February - birthday-party time when my boys were small - the sun will still be visible at coming-home-from-school time and Spring will be on the way. Cheers!

Lambs and exams

Lambs
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

It's absurd how the climate works in these parts. It seems no time at all since we were still bemoaning temperatures of 7ºc and huddling in the wind and rain, and now it's like being abroad - 27º when I took this photo. I was laughing at these lambs, who seemed to have abandoned their mum to play with the gang; they formed what I was thinking of as the Toddler Group and were butting each other and - yes - gambolling. On the same walk I clocked several swallows, some agitated oystercatchers and a couple of butterflies, and the other day I heard my first cuckoo of the year and a woodpecker.

It is, of course, what we used to call exam weather, and I was recalling the sensation of emerging from the gloom of the assembly hall in Hillhead High School to the smells of a city spring - dust, cut grass, diesel fumes - with the feeling that life was going on without me. I seem to remember taking exam leave very seriously, swotting away in solitude at home before going back to school for an orchestra practice. I used to experiment with cigarettes in our empty house (my parents were both teachers) and then spend an age trying to disguise the smell, but there were never any friends around to distract me because we were scattered over Glasgow and it was too hard to meet up. Besides, I never had any money. What a strange life, now I come to think of it.

We all did rather well, mind.

At the violet hour?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Funny how I always misquote Eliot's opening line to myself: I tend to think of the violets which grow out of seemingly dead ground at this time of year. Today on Loch Striven there were great swathes of them along the verge, as well as tiny bright clusters like the ones in this photo. There were also multitudes of primroses and huge banks of acid yellow gorse - two contrasting yellows which couldn't have been more different.

Loch Striven is magical in spring. There are pheasants everywhere, the wee dowdy females pursued by strutting males in all their glossy greens and reds, emitting these startling croaks which sound almost mechanical in origin. Long-legged waders with curved beaks stalked the water's edge, and an oyster-catcher revved up to his penetrating see-saw squawk.

And because it is the school holidays here, there were people - some on foot, but even more in cars, resolutely driving to the road's end and back again: each one giving us two chances to dive for the verge and watch to see if they acknowledged us.

And I walked along trying to remember bits of The Waste Land and thinking of the waste of trying to teach me to appreciate it at Uni. I'd do a great deal better now - even if I do substitute violets for lilacs!

Joys of Spring

Not one of my best efforts, this photo, but full of Spring nonetheless, in the ?person? of a scarpering bee, which until I approached with my phone was busily doing what bees do in the catkins whose furriness matched his/her own. (I think I ought not to anthropomorphise a bee, but once you start ...) Anyway, it was a glorious afternoon; the temperature climbed, albeit briefly, into double figures, and I found myself tempted to enjoy the late afternoon sun with a little pruning. Bad move. The sun sets and you're left chilled and stabbed with tiny prickles as you collect the debris. But I feel that pruning is something that lets you be outside purposefully at this time of year - maybe one of the reasons why I don't do it in November.

It was a good day in another way. The young woman who was at the checkout in the supermarket (a) packed my bags as she scanned them through (this happens elsewhere, but seldom in our local) and (b) told me that I was responsible for her wanting to write. She'd been in my class at some point - I could remember her, but recall a sullen indifference, studiously maintained. Now she's a smiling and helpful person with the confidence to pay a spontaneous compliment. Some days I used to moan that teaching was a mug's game. Not today.