June 30 Wild June ended much as it had begun: sitting with Eddie under the vastness of the Norfolk sky. It was evening, the violet hour. It was quieter now than it was 30 days back. The cuckoos have departed. The warblers raise their voices only occasionally. A song thrush was singing well but without… [Read More]
Kites, fretboards and the Gary Player dictum
June 29 There is a musician in the house. That sometimes means we have beautiful music coming through the wall. More often it’s scales and arpeggios. My old son Joseph is practicing again. Hands whizzing up and down the fretboard like creatures with an independent life. There are two reasons for practicing. The first is… [Read More]
Cousin Caterpillar… one day he’ll wake with wings
June 28 An errant throw from Eddie and the Frisbee, a flying saucer gone out of control, somehow passed through the hedge and alighted on the margin of the road beyond. In the moment of landing a shard of vermillion was released, fizzing from the tangled bank. There was a fractional lag in response while… [Read More]
Crouching naturalist, hidden butterfly
June 26 There’s a moment in the classic Chinese martial arts films when two great warriors oppose each other, armed with swords sharp enough to sever silk. They meet in a great clatter of cutlery and shrill whoops – and then together, as one warrior, they rise twenty feet into the air without for a… [Read More]
The most beautiful bird in the world
June 25 We were having evening drinks in the garden when I saw the most beautiful bird in the world. It was singing hard on the exposed and topmost branch of the oak tree, the one in the garden that’s dying back. The bird was lit with the soft light of the declining sun, and… [Read More]
Time to salute the meadow beige
June 24 It was right in the heat of the day – not an expression you use on a routine basis in this country – but I went out anyway. I had a feeling. One day there are none of them at all, the next day the place is full of them. It’s one of… [Read More]
Telling from one side of the sky to the other
June 23 Another yowl from the sky. A buzzard. Of course it was a buzzard. When I moved to East Anglia more than 20 years ago, you never saw or heard a buzzard. Now they’re the most obvious bird of prey. And they yowl. They are the most gabby of all birds of prey. Most… [Read More]
I fell into a burnin’ ring o’ fire
June 22 Evening drinks. A custom we introduced for lockdown, and a good one. And better still, a present for me: four bushes. Chilli bushes no less: two Ring o’ Fire, one Apache and one Hungarian Hot Wax, one or two young fruit already visible. The fruit of the chilli brings joy to humankind: and… [Read More]
A few thoughts on beans and the World’s End
June 21 I remember Peto’s Marsh when it was beans. Rotten beans, they were: a crop doomed to be ploughed back in as a dead loss. You don’t need to be a crash-hot farmer to work out that a marsh is a suboptimal habitat for beans. Not a bean in sight these days. Cindy, Eddie… [Read More]
Ode to an oystercatcher
June 20 We were about two hours from the solstice, the moment at which the earth starts to rock back the other way. From tomorrow the nights would begin to get shorter. The long retreat from winter is over, the slow advance towards the new winter begins. It is a solemn moment, tinged with sadness…. [Read More]