Dreich weather and a sonnet: Argyll Weather

I haven't written a sonnet for 37 years. At that time, I thought I might be halfway through my allotted life span and wrote my first attempt at a sonnet about being at "life's watershed". You can hear the iambic feet, can't you? This afternoon, it being utterly miserable outside, and dark by 3.30pm, I thought I'd make my Christmas puddings and then - maybe - write some cards. Then I got a message from a good friend that he'd been shown a poem of mine on a window of St Andrew's bus station. In St Andrews. There was a photo - it's there, right enough, in black letters on the glass. Extraordinary.

In the comment thread that followed, others joined in. One of them threw down a challenge. "Write a sonnet about Argyll weather. Walking in the rain". This wasn't an entirely random challenge - I'd pointed out that I didn't participate as much as I might in the poetry scene because I was always walking about in the rain in Argyll.

Reader, I tried. Once the puddings were burbling and the (extensive) washing up done, I sat down with my preferred poetry-writing tools (the back of an envelope and a biro) and a copy of Edwin Morgan's Glasgow Sonnets for inspiration.

This is the result. I've dedicated it to my friend Jim Gordon, whose fault it was.

Argyll Weather

A Sonnet for Jim

The rain drifts in grey curtains from the hills
and turns the loch’s black surface into lace
before a random wind takes up the chase
that now obliterates the day it kills.
The burn beside me gurgles as it fills
and overflows. There’s water on my face,
the path I followed gone without a trace,
enthusiasm drowned in sudden chills.

But as I turn to make my sodden way
to shelter, warmth …dry feet … a sudden gleam
appears. It’s like another day.
The wet rock all around me starts to steam
and birdsong cuts the air as if to say
This is Argyll. Things are not what they seem.

C.M.M. 12/17

A kind of madness ...

It's a sort of madness, I suppose. This need to be out of doors, preferably away from streets and cars and - if I'm honest - other people. This compulsion to walk fast enough, far enough, or maybe high enough to be tired, to warm up, to feel hungry.

Yesterday was not one in which I could accomplish this - a trip over the water to an appointment in Greenock and a subsequently late lunch meant that daylight had almost gone, and the rain was battering down once more. But today?

Not as promising as you might think. We drove out of Dunoon into a blizzard; the hill where we planned to walk couldn't be seen. But there was a glimmer further west, the merest hint of blue in the sky. I felt all would be well. And it was. Actually, we had one or two fierce snow showers in our faces as we walked, and an arboretum wasn't exactly a sensible place to start in the aftermath of a gale. There were branches and twigs all over the track; four conifers had fallen in a straight line, each one miraculously not hitting any of the trees among which they toppled; one huge eucalyptus was down while another swayed at a crazy angle. We could hear the wind roaring through the tree-tops, and there were alarming creaks all around. There were two daunting moments when we had to duck under half-fallen trees on the track. (One, two, three ... Why? What will that do? ... Make sure we have no survivor guilt.) But then we reached the lookout point, and the sun was out. It was quite sheltered, and the tall deciduous conifers to the left of the picture were swaying in unison as if conducted. My shadow, and that of the lone tree beside me, were clear on the far side of a small gorge - you can tell how far by the tiny figure beside the tree, which is yours truly.

By the time we got home it was 2.30pm. We'd eaten nothing since 9am. I felt legless with hunger. But I felt so much better than I have for days. It's a sort of madness, but it's my madness.

Cloudy morning

I started writing this before the current spell of dry weather, when I was longing for it to look and feel like summer. As the solstice is rather cloudier than anything we've seen in the past week, it seems a suitable time to finish it off and publish it...


As I step outside
the damp, birdsong air opens wide
freeing my claustrophobic brain
from the confines of waking thought
and the fears of night. Why do we
close ourselves in grey, these days
that threaten rain? I want to
sing with the birds in the promise
of the new light, the freshness of green - to forget 
to fear the darkness that awaits 
at this day’s end, at all our ends.

And in the rain-washed morning
a hidden bird repeats why
not, why not, why not?

© C.M.M. 06/14

Stormy anticipation

It's more or less dark now, this Christmas Eve, and I can no longer see the waves crashing over the pavement of the East Bay in Dunoon. I can, however, see the lights of our lifeline Western Ferries as a ship makes the crossing to The Other Side (we always think of it with capitals; somehow it seems to emphasise otherness...) after being off for several hours over high tide, and I can tell even without looking that the winds have eased off a bit.

 I have been fascinated for several hours now by this interactive map , of which this is a screen grab - taken just now, as the storm moves off to the north east. At the height of our cut-offness, we were, it appeared, living in the windiest part of the globe and I felt small and vulnerable stuck up here in my study looking out over the turbulent sea.

But now I can start to feel the excitement of Christmas Eve building in me as I contemplate the shock of leaving a warm house to head further up the hill to church, the thrill of the dark church and the candles, and the privilege of singing with our quartet that will open the Midnight Mass. For the past 39 years this has been my Christmas - the tension and the joy in the darkness - and only when it is over can I relax.

Kids, get that champagne on ice!

Grey May thoughts

The weather remains thoroughly and dispiritingly wintry - for winter in these maritime parts is just like this: raw winds, smirring rain with the odd downpour, grey skies, temperatures stubbornly below 10ºC (didn't get above 7º yesterday). The good weather came before the trees or the psychology were ready for it, and hasn't returned - so none of the joyous sense of life renewed has come to cheer as yet. And it's past mid-May. I think of all the songs, madrigals, rejoicing in this month - Now is the month of Maying, O lusty May - and have a wry smile.

And today we're celebrating a 60th birthday in what I think of as the younger end of my generation. At least two friends have just passed this landmark, one I look back at from what was supposed to be the sunlit uplands of retirement (never mind). Others are on the point of celebrating the Ruby wedding that we passed two years ago. And some are ill unto death. Life is very short, and I want the sun to shine.

I hope there will be champagne. That's all.

Back to the stone age?

Photo: Campbell Bryson

I'm indebted to (brave/foolhardy/dedicated) local photographer Campbell Bryson for the photo that  I'm too much of a wimp to go out and take for myself - this huge tree, blocking Argyll Street in Dunoon, is very close to home, but as I write the rain is once more battering down and I'm here instead of out there and .... and ....

And this morning brought home to me yet again how precarious our comfortable life is. We woke in the dark, some time before 7am, to hear an ominous crashing above our heads - and then there was a flash outside and the whole of Dunoon went dark. The torches were downstairs, and I found myself feeling my way to the kitchen to find one - walked into the long-case clock on the way - before trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep again. Daylight revealed our neighbour walking across the road carrying a long piece of ridging from - his roof? our roof? Could have been either, for his house and ours and the one at the other side of our block are all missing yards of the stuff, with the remaining bits sticking up at crazy angles. And now, as I said, the rain is back ... Let us not think on't.

The lack of power was interesting. We have a couple of gas fires, so the demise of the central heating pump wasn't quite the catastrophe it might have been, but there was no hot water and I had to boil water for tea on a little camping stove. We'd thrown out our stove-top kettle too, so it was in a pot ... And then there was the matter of the toast. I made toast. Barbecue tongs and the gas flame after the water boiled. Quite quick - but different texture and a tendency to go on fire. Better than the raw bread, however.

All this took so much time - and even with the decision not to wash up until we had hot water, the business of dealing with the wee stove, finding a suitable pot, refilling same, finding more candles ... it was almost time to think of doing it over again (for coffee) when the power came on. But not once had I thought of how I was missing my computer, nor wondered what I would do with the day - and I realised that the ordinary business of living could fill your entire waking life with activity if you had to boil every drop of water for drinking, washing, bathing, if you had to light your way with a candle or replenish an oil lamp.

As it is, I bet we have water coming into our roof-space right now, soaking wood and dripping dismally. I'm not going to think about it any more. I've just heard that the place we rehearse with 8+1 has lost part of its roof altogether. Maybe we could worry about that instead ...

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."

Wild things

This wild and wooly day happened to coincide with a fairly long-standing arrangement to visit Edinburgh, so having chipped the ice from the windscreen this morning we set off in the sunshine across the calm Firth of Clyde to do just that. The journey took us just over two hours, door to door, and we arrived in time for coffee. Yeah, yeah - we'd heard the weather forecast; we knew it wouldn't last ...

We leave Newhaven as the wind begins to drive rain in our faces. We've enjoyed a lovely lunch, hugged our grandchildren, heard the new drum kit. It's 3.30pm and we reckon we'd better head for home. We are not even past the city boundary when we learn that Western Ferries have gone off - Cal Mac don't seem to have been running since mid-morning. The traffic is already nose to tail as we edge out onto the M8 and towards Glasgow.

In the four mile traffic jam before the Kingston Bridge we decide we're driving home over the Rest and Be Thankful, via the Erskine Bridge because we've ended up in the wrong lane to go along Great Western Road. By now, the motorway is flooded in the low-lying bits, and great gouts of water fly up from under wheels and crash onto our roof. Every so often a gust hits us with the force of a giant fist. We have heard the same news bulletins till we could repeat them verbatim, but we keep Radio Scotland on for the traffic updates as we whizz over the Erskine Bridge in a lull and on towards Loch Lomond. And it is as we embark on the lochside road that I realise we are listening to Get it On. Now, I have only just clocked this programme, thanks to Ewan, and it strikes me it might while away the drive if we make a request. I entrust this task to my pal Di, in the back seat with her iPhone. Ask for "I remember you", I instruct - they're looking for songs that should never be covered, and it's sure to come into that category.

And so it is, best beloved, that forty minutes later, after we have braved the dark battering of the Rest and the long run down Glen Croe, as we hurtle through Strachur, we hear a message for "Di and Chris, driving home" and find ourselves singing along with Frank Ifield at the top of our voices. What fun. The miles have sped by and we're as jolly as a school trip on speed. We don't even care that it's taken us four and a half hours to get home.

Pity Mr B (driving) has to spoil it all. He announces that he feels like the coach driver - on a Saga outing.

Ah well.

Offspring of a poem

The poem that grew out of writing the previous one is now here on frankenstina.

Cool!

It certainly is a distant land, this Eastern realm. We left Dunoon yesterday in 21º of warmth, and two hours later the car said 13º in the shade. (OK, Mal's sheltered garden was really warm, and after a glass of bubbly I wasn't caring - happy birthday, Mal!) And today it's greyish and still cool, so that coffee and croissants in Ocean Terminal seemed a safer bet than sitting outside. (I learned the French for greyish quite early in my career - there was an old horse called Grisatre in a book we had to read in S2, Jean Bonnard, Petit Ecolier)

And talking of French, it's fascinating to watch the development of a bilingual child. At 21 months, she counts un, deux or one, two, apparently depending on who's listening. She knows all her features in French, and nose in English (it's running just now). She was trying to say mouillé about her damp face, but I'm afraid I corrupted this by saying mingin' (her mouth was rimmed with jam at the time) and now she's saying mingin' with glee. And she says mine firmly in a passable Edinburgh voice and clutches the desired object equally firmly, just in case there's any doubt. And I expect her to break into the Marseillaise when we set off on a walk, though so far she shouts marcher rather than marchons.

All great fun, and totally knackering. She's just fallen asleep and I feel a little peckish again. A spot of lunch, I think, before la petite wakens again...

Take action

This jolly little map indicates that we're having interesting weather. In fact, the red - which the astute will notice extends over the homeland of this blog - carries the caption "Take action" on the Met Office site I referred to yesterday. I've never actually seen the red over our neck of the woods since I started using the site, and was sufficiently intrigued to check its recommendations. They're actually pretty basic, to do with tying down the garden, putting the car indoors and not leaving your bed under a shoogly old chimney stack. (And if you're wondering: the last instruction is the least tampered with by my attempt at whimsical paraphrase)

What it doesn't warn you of is the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning or insanity induced by the shrieking of the CO alarm. A sudden down-draught from the chimney obviously caused a blow-back of gas-fire fumes; this particular chimney has always been subject to strange currents of air and used to fill the room with smoke in the old days. We've solved the insanity problem by removing the alarm to the hall and we've dispersed the fumes by opening a window - even though that is one of the "don't"s in the Met Office list.

There are compensations, however: I had a jolly time watching cars vanishing under the waves on the shore road at high tide, and noting that not only had someone left a white van parked on the seaward side of the road but also there were people obviously sitting in their parked cars with the lights on enjoying the thrills. I imagine they don't think of all the stones cast up by the waves.

Now it's dark, and we can't see much. The wind has fallen strangely silent in a way I find ominous; I fear it may be a case of reculer pour mieux sauter or something more scientific like the eye of the storm, for more and worse is promised. When I was a child in Glasgow, all I worried about was the possibility of being brained by flying slates off the tenements of Hyndland and Broomhill or the fanlight at the top of the close where we lived being shattered by a chimney pot, but these worries actually existed more in the minds of my parents. I found it exhilarating. Now I know that the worst storms wait till midnight to terrorise us and wreck our sleep, having first silenced the telly so that we have nothing else to think about.

I shall go out in the lull and tie down the garden. Or something.

Evensong

The gloom has descended again. The rain has returned, and the wind is already driving the sea over the prom in great white flourishes. According to the excellent Met Office site the weekend is going to be fiercely windy, though apparently not unremittingly wet. And just at this time of day, just as darkness (as distinct from grey miserableness) falls, I'm aware of the power of dusk to evoke memories, emotions.

Larkin knew all about that - the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening -
in his poem The Old Fools; I used to enjoy awakening that realisation in the minds of Higher English students and seeing the lights come on as they made it their own. And I think of the bleakness of the time just before the evening meal in hospital, and how I wept when my no. 1 son left at the end of hospital visiting time the day before no. 2 son was born and I stood looking at the dark road as the car disappeared and felt completely bereft. There's something about the dying of the day which speaks to us of the final dying of the light, and the telly's not yet assumed its cheerful dominance of the evening and the book has been set aside to save some of it for later (oh, the horror of having nothing to read!) ... enough.

Usually these moments are combatted in my life by physical activity - the walk regardless of the weather, the tea with a friend at the end of a hike. But today I have swum vigorously before spending the morning in mental activity. Surely enough to keep me going? I shall think instead about a question which came up as we discussed the sermons latent in a set of lectionary readings. (Not a current set - Year C, if you're wondering). For it's a fact that as often as not the gospel rakes up a current issue, and for an amateur preacher (for want of a better expression) that's dangerous territory. If you follow this blog, you'll understand when I say that Jesus' refusal to let his followers call down fire on a Samaritan village that wouldn't receive them made me think of the the current situation in Palestine. So I'm looking forward to the session where we discuss how we deal with the bee in the bonnet that starts to buzz in response to the Gospel.

It's almost dark now, and I can forget the weather for 15 hours. And in the dark, there will be no bombers, no flares, no sirens, no death from the skies. What's a spot of rain?

Sic transit dies ...

I'm glad today has darkened into evening - it's barely been more than crepuscular all day and after the fun of watching the waves drown the rash cars venturing along the front this morning (above) the tide receded and I had to work. And after hours at the computer writing the minutes of a meeting in November - I should'a done them immediately - I was left with a numb behind and a numb brain. I feel marginally better after a walk in the dark - it's still quite dramatic out there, with the shingle roaring under each breaker.

And I've finished my book. The Private Patient by P.D. James has been a companion for the past week or so, in the quieter aftermath of the Christmas socialising, and I feel the regret that I always feel by the time the relationship comes to an end. There are hints towards the end of the novel that Adam Dalgliesh wonders if this case will be his last as he moves into a new phase in his life; I wonder if the author herself wonders how many more novels she will write.

This one has all the hallmarks of a successful mystery - the closed environment, the limited cast, the revelation of past complications and red herrings. But more than any of these I relish the depth of characterisation of the regulars - Dalgliesh the poet-detective, Kate his number two - which is sketched in with economy and a light touch. And I enjoy reading a book where I don't have to worry about infelicities of style or syntax: James is in full control of both.

Actually, the euphoria of the found music has made today bearable despite weather, minutes and THE END - heaven only knows what it'd have been like if we'd still been searching.

Compost and survive?

I was thinking about recycling this morning. How it has changed our lives! The government have just produced green guidelines, and I was reading them at breakfast, a sort of mental checklist in the background. And this is what floated, like scum, to the surface of my thought ...

Now that the nights are drawing in, the clocks about to change for winter, we live once more in the grimly white light of energy-saving bulbs - and that's after the sad twilight of their warming-up period.

I rush neurotically in and out of the garden to save half-dried sheets as a sudden squall of rain/hail/sleet bursts from what was blue sky only minutes ago. I think of saving electricity by leaving my towels outside, but the rain wins and they come in, wetter than ever, and have to be spun again before I can do anything with them. Black marks for using even more power. [Note: it's really hard to follow this injuction about hanging out washing when you live in the West. It only works for about 5 months of the year, and not in the monsoon season]

There is a permanent pile of discarded paper just inside the back door. If it's windy outside, the paper blows irritatingly into the kitchen when you open the back door. If you're not careful, it can cause a nasty fall as you stand on it and go skiting over the lino. Ditto discarded poly envelopes from the million catalogues we haven't sent for. Plus point: I have become an expert at dismantling tetra paks and other composite packaging. Minus point: This is a skill I never sought.

There is an alarming double row of bottles beside the step into the pantry. If the number rises above ten, you stand the risk of tripping over them as the row infiltrates the already restricted floor space (see remarks about paper, above)

A little bin for peel, dead lettuce leaves, tealeaves and coffee grounds now occupies precious shelf space next to the sink. If it is raining (see above) it is unlikely that anyone will take it to the compost bin because of the long and rather soggy grass en route. When you lift the lid, there is a pungent smell of garlic and festering onion skins.

I have to conclude, I suppose, that there is a virtue in all this suffering and mess. On a day such as today has become, recycling and composting are a bane. But I have a sneaking feeling that the persistent beastliness of our weather has more than a tenuous link to the alternative.

Purging dead blogs

The sharp-eyed will notice I've at last got round to updating my blogroll. There are other blogs I read sporadically, but at least I've covered the most active of my bloglines. I've purged a couple of blogs which have gone cold, though I still look on my feed reader to see if there are any signs of life. I am always absurdly pleased when I discover that someone has blogrolled blethers - something you tend to find from your stats, if you look into them.

That's something I shall be checking tonight; Statcounter seemed to throw a wobbler yesterday. I hope it recovers soon. And, still in Cyberia: I'm amazed by the people who turn up on Facebook. Do we all sign on because we're desperate for company - or merely to see what everyone else has been talking about? Anyway, I rather like the quick overview of what my friends (in the online sense, as two of them are my children) have been up to.

And finally I have to say that I can't believe the weather the rest of Britain seems to have been having. All that rain! We're supposed to be the wet place - and we weren't.

But it's raining now...

Sun!

Look! "They" were right - it is a beautiful day. The sun is shining and there is no wind. Everyone is walking about with sapsy smiles, greeting strangers with weather comments and casting off their SAD right, left and centre. I'm sure the natives of this land would be more optimistic and cheerful if we could have this weather as a winter norm - and as for the effect of a glassy sea for the ferries (you can see both varieties in this photo) to run on.....

But let us not be get carried away. We'll pey for it ... you'll see.
(NB: Spelling of "pey" a deliberate attempt to replicate pronunciation)

A landmark

I notice from my stats that blethers is within 50 visits of its ten thousandth visitor. It'd be pleasing if this landmark could be reached tomorrow - and interesting to see where the hit originates from.

And it'd be almost more pleasing if tomorrow's weather forecast turns out to be accurate and we see some sun in this benighted realm.

Salt sea foam

The stygian gloom and the gales are still with us, and the sea looks nothing like the pic I posted yesterday. Rather, it is a grey, turbulent beast, with great curtains of spray whipped off the top of the breaking waves and blown wildly off to dissipate in the wind. Today, walking along the coast road, I was bent into the wind and saw nothing but the road at my feet until I'd had enough and turned my back on the gale. Liberated from the rain that had been pelting my face like lead shot, I was able to look at the surf pounding in on a south-ish gale, and from this comes my question for today:

What do you call the froth left behind on the shore by the receding waves? Like the froth on an abandoned cappuccino, it blows away in little puffs, shredding itself among the rocks. And what causes it? What is it made of?

I would love there to be a romantic, literary sort of word for this - but will settle for science.