Partridges
the parlous cost of lists. It were all a joke
from top to tip, belittle it for mercy. Stamp.
Wicker. All its legs.
The bottle fury.
& all that begging his superior
For all that
tippling and the onduline grim
carry-on magnificence with all those shining leaves
hood mistaken for plastic in the gloom, those weeks
serving clouds and the inspire glittering.
The traction is no tableaux.
Forgiveable, and soaking.
And she wanted to look beneath whatever the carry-on clued
snapped at hearthstones, stippled the paving with the print
of two brute heels. Never mind that the field started at her feet
in inch-thick plate that raised above her head to star the weald's
dark clouds with glass in glass. And it was impossible to walk.
Between ploughlines, two soft backs and lowered heads.
the pair whose little legs tucked and grains adhered to down.
Believing a skyline then particular was a way of moving
believing the blink after chat of whitened stones. Believing
chaff drawn down the line of the road accidental, and the
sileage mown. Believing fondly. Lone, and whispering
her parliamentary hides. Speak body. Welt combe. New
Halt. You can whisper birds for as many times as you like
but they are mute et svelte, et primaries wet as palms
alulas wet as thumbs, lovers of beets and ground.
How many those walked alfalfa. Toadflax and hairy bees
weak foci for the dispossessed. If I could plant plovers
in the sky. Or shake a westerly with landrails down.
And all its invented ghosts. And for all its clouds.
They run along the lines as tiny soldiers
all wintry & humane.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Colonel John Blashford-Snell, movie critic
This is inspiredradio. The BBC World Service's Rajan Datar decided to ask Colonel John Blashford-Snell what he thought of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
In case you had forgotten, here is Indy:
I think that's the right way around.
Anyway, I loved the interview so much, I had to transcribe it. They may remove the link, but for now, you can listen to it here.
To gauge whether, as some critics suggest, both Indy and Harrison are far too old to be tearing around pre-Mayan cities and Amazonian waterfalls, we thought rather than getting a film critic, we’d get the views of a real-life professional explorer. Colonel John Blashford-Snell is famous for many of his pioneering expeditions, like leading a team down the Blue Nile at the request of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1968, and navigating the entire course of the Congo in 1974. Today John is still active, and setting up future projects.
I asked him first if he actually enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Yes. It’s a fantastic sort of fantasy; it’s action-packed; it’s an adult fairy story. It’s a blend of … E.T. and science fiction and more modern sort of Cold War scenes, and the good old battle of Good versus Evil, of course, that comes into it. Once or twice it was a little difficult to follow the scenes because they move so fast—and a little bit short on jokes—but maybe that’s because it’s so fast-moving and there’s not a sort of boring second in it. And the stunts are absolutely amazing. I was much reminded of some of our own scientific exploration society quests that we’ve done in South America over the last few years.
We’ll come to that in a second. Some people have talked about the brand, the Indiana Jones brand, as being perhaps a little bit old and dated, and that goes for Harrison Ford too, I mean, has his ‘permascowl’ if you like, become a little bit wearing? Do you however, still exploring, still going on these big adventures—do you think he’s cracking the whip for Grey Power?
Oh definitely. I mean, a man at 64, 65, who can perform as he did was quite remarkable, I mean, his physical fitness and agility are quite something: outstanding.
In any way, do you have assignments that are as hairy, in a sense, as some of the scenes that you see in films like the Crystal Skull?
Well, yes, er, I mean, some of the, on the—a few years ago we did an expedition in Bolivia and, ah, Brazil; and that was actually looking for a lost city. It was Paititi in this case, the great city of gold. But Akator came into it, because we found—
—which is in the present film—the current film—
—yes, it’s in the present film–and I thought: golly, where did they get this story from? They must have read our book. One of the things about it was that we were faced with a bunch of neo-Nazis. They were real. And we were followed about by chaps with red armbands with swastikas on and that sort of thing. And this was in 2001. And so they created a lot of difficulties for us. And luckily the Bolivians equipped us with a wonderful Bolivian colonel, Hugo Cornejo, who was, um, built like Rambo, and his nickname was Rambo, and he dealt with the opposition..very effectively.
Well this is amazing because you’d think that films like this are in the realms of fantasy and bear no relation to real life. But what you’re suggesting is that actually real life can be like that…
Oh yes—I mean there were lots of scenes in it. The red ants. I remember being attacked by red ants. They weren’t as big as the ones in the film, but by God they can sting. I know, I was going to a dance a few weeks later after I’d been bitten and I was still scratching; and the girl I was dancing with said, ‘are you alright? Are you fit? Have you got a nasty disease?’ wondering why I was still scratching…
Did she hang around with you to the end of the evening?
No….she didn’t; she thought she might catch something from me.
But the snake was my only criticism. Because when he’s hauled out of the swamp by somebody throwing a snake … it was too rubbery and too long to be an anaconda. And if it was a real anaconda, two or three people wouldn’t be able to hold it, I can tell you; I’ve tried, and they are enormously strong. That was the only fault I would say, on the stunts.
I want to ask you about the authenticity of the archaeological references, you know; they talk about Mayan history; language and culture; hieroglyphics; and the geological references as well, to crystal and gold. I mean, how close are they to reality?
Well they have found crystal skulls; there’s a very famous one, which is Mayan, and the Mayan and Tiwanaku and Inca civilisations are still being uncovered to this day. I was involved in an expedition last year where we were actually looking for a meteorite that had crashed into the jungles of the Amazon. It wasn’t difficult to find, because it made a hole five miles across. And when we were digging, we kept coming across pottery. And we realised that this was pottery that had been from an earlier civilisation that had probably been wiped out by the meteorite, and I’m going back again next year to do another one like that. So there are a lot of references to archaeology which came though.
Now it does strike me that action films like this, ‘boy’s own’ action films, you it can either buy into it, and love it, or it can leave you cold. Can you accept that, can you see that there are two ways of looking at this film?
Yes, there are. I thought they were very clever in bringing in Shia LaBeouf, the young man, the mixture of the Hell’s Angel-cum-punk rocker; because obviously that brought in the younger generation, and made it more plausible. I felt rather sorry that they didn’t provide him with a sort of Incan Princess, because he didn’t seem to have a love life. And I think he provided a sort of degree of reality to balance all the old ones who were there; I’m sure the older generation like me loved seeing them all coming back.
Now, one very important character in the film is the hat, which is symbolic in many ways, and I know that you have actually designed a hat for explorers. Are hats that important?
Yes! Very much! I mean I designed one….It’s not quite the same as Harrison Ford’s hat, but: it was a small, folding hat, that contains a mosquito net that can be rolled down your neck to keep all the bugs and beetles off; it’s got a gore-tex material to keep out the water; and it has a brim that is filled with a chemical that which, when it gets wet from your sweat, goes cool. It cools your fevered brow. And it can pack up and go in your pocket. And I use it all the time. I used to use a pith helmet in the old days, but the trouble was I found so many South Americans were wearing pith helmets that occasionally, when I was saying to an aircraft doing parachute drops, “Drop it to me! I’m wearing a pith helmet!” they’d drop it to the wrong chap, because there was someone else wearing a pith helmet…
Which scene or moment in the film was for you the most gripping?
Oh I think the chase through the jungle along the cliff and then over the waterfalls with the Soviet amphibious jeep. That hasn’t quite happened to me, but I have had adventures on cliffs in South America, and I have lowered boats—not cars—boats over waterfalls in the Blue Nile. But I think that whole sequence, you gritted your teeth throughout and you didn’t quite know what was going to happen—the sword fencing, the great bulldozer crashing into the vehicle, the RPG7 fired by Harrison Ford—he seems to be a very talented chap—he’s a crack shot with everything he picked up! Whether it’s his whip or his pistol!
It’s called a film, John.
Yes!
The notion of defying death so often — was that for you constantly credible?
Well it gave me ideas, I suppose, for the future. Um, yes, I suppose, when you … things don’t go wrong, at, um, on an expedition, with quite the same rate. But they can go wrong very suddenly, and very quickly, and you need to react fast. Um, mentally fast, anyway. And of course nowadays we have the use of modern technology—satellite phones and all sorts of things to help you. But over the years films like that have inspired me, because it does actually — when you’re in the middle of the…you’re “Oooh! I remember Harrison Ford did this. We can do something like that” So let’s face it, it was good clean fun, and it was fantasy of course, but it’s entertainment in the classic Hollywood style.
In case you had forgotten, here is Indy:
And here is Blashford-Snell.
Photo: Nick Wilcox-Brown www.nickwb.com
Photo: Nick Wilcox-Brown www.nickwb.comI think that's the right way around.
Anyway, I loved the interview so much, I had to transcribe it. They may remove the link, but for now, you can listen to it here.
To gauge whether, as some critics suggest, both Indy and Harrison are far too old to be tearing around pre-Mayan cities and Amazonian waterfalls, we thought rather than getting a film critic, we’d get the views of a real-life professional explorer. Colonel John Blashford-Snell is famous for many of his pioneering expeditions, like leading a team down the Blue Nile at the request of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1968, and navigating the entire course of the Congo in 1974. Today John is still active, and setting up future projects.
I asked him first if he actually enjoyed Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Yes. It’s a fantastic sort of fantasy; it’s action-packed; it’s an adult fairy story. It’s a blend of … E.T. and science fiction and more modern sort of Cold War scenes, and the good old battle of Good versus Evil, of course, that comes into it. Once or twice it was a little difficult to follow the scenes because they move so fast—and a little bit short on jokes—but maybe that’s because it’s so fast-moving and there’s not a sort of boring second in it. And the stunts are absolutely amazing. I was much reminded of some of our own scientific exploration society quests that we’ve done in South America over the last few years.
We’ll come to that in a second. Some people have talked about the brand, the Indiana Jones brand, as being perhaps a little bit old and dated, and that goes for Harrison Ford too, I mean, has his ‘permascowl’ if you like, become a little bit wearing? Do you however, still exploring, still going on these big adventures—do you think he’s cracking the whip for Grey Power?
Oh definitely. I mean, a man at 64, 65, who can perform as he did was quite remarkable, I mean, his physical fitness and agility are quite something: outstanding.
In any way, do you have assignments that are as hairy, in a sense, as some of the scenes that you see in films like the Crystal Skull?
Well, yes, er, I mean, some of the, on the—a few years ago we did an expedition in Bolivia and, ah, Brazil; and that was actually looking for a lost city. It was Paititi in this case, the great city of gold. But Akator came into it, because we found—
—which is in the present film—the current film—
—yes, it’s in the present film–and I thought: golly, where did they get this story from? They must have read our book. One of the things about it was that we were faced with a bunch of neo-Nazis. They were real. And we were followed about by chaps with red armbands with swastikas on and that sort of thing. And this was in 2001. And so they created a lot of difficulties for us. And luckily the Bolivians equipped us with a wonderful Bolivian colonel, Hugo Cornejo, who was, um, built like Rambo, and his nickname was Rambo, and he dealt with the opposition..very effectively.
Well this is amazing because you’d think that films like this are in the realms of fantasy and bear no relation to real life. But what you’re suggesting is that actually real life can be like that…
Oh yes—I mean there were lots of scenes in it. The red ants. I remember being attacked by red ants. They weren’t as big as the ones in the film, but by God they can sting. I know, I was going to a dance a few weeks later after I’d been bitten and I was still scratching; and the girl I was dancing with said, ‘are you alright? Are you fit? Have you got a nasty disease?’ wondering why I was still scratching…
Did she hang around with you to the end of the evening?
No….she didn’t; she thought she might catch something from me.
But the snake was my only criticism. Because when he’s hauled out of the swamp by somebody throwing a snake … it was too rubbery and too long to be an anaconda. And if it was a real anaconda, two or three people wouldn’t be able to hold it, I can tell you; I’ve tried, and they are enormously strong. That was the only fault I would say, on the stunts.
I want to ask you about the authenticity of the archaeological references, you know; they talk about Mayan history; language and culture; hieroglyphics; and the geological references as well, to crystal and gold. I mean, how close are they to reality?
Well they have found crystal skulls; there’s a very famous one, which is Mayan, and the Mayan and Tiwanaku and Inca civilisations are still being uncovered to this day. I was involved in an expedition last year where we were actually looking for a meteorite that had crashed into the jungles of the Amazon. It wasn’t difficult to find, because it made a hole five miles across. And when we were digging, we kept coming across pottery. And we realised that this was pottery that had been from an earlier civilisation that had probably been wiped out by the meteorite, and I’m going back again next year to do another one like that. So there are a lot of references to archaeology which came though.
Now it does strike me that action films like this, ‘boy’s own’ action films, you it can either buy into it, and love it, or it can leave you cold. Can you accept that, can you see that there are two ways of looking at this film?
Yes, there are. I thought they were very clever in bringing in Shia LaBeouf, the young man, the mixture of the Hell’s Angel-cum-punk rocker; because obviously that brought in the younger generation, and made it more plausible. I felt rather sorry that they didn’t provide him with a sort of Incan Princess, because he didn’t seem to have a love life. And I think he provided a sort of degree of reality to balance all the old ones who were there; I’m sure the older generation like me loved seeing them all coming back.
Now, one very important character in the film is the hat, which is symbolic in many ways, and I know that you have actually designed a hat for explorers. Are hats that important?
Yes! Very much! I mean I designed one….It’s not quite the same as Harrison Ford’s hat, but: it was a small, folding hat, that contains a mosquito net that can be rolled down your neck to keep all the bugs and beetles off; it’s got a gore-tex material to keep out the water; and it has a brim that is filled with a chemical that which, when it gets wet from your sweat, goes cool. It cools your fevered brow. And it can pack up and go in your pocket. And I use it all the time. I used to use a pith helmet in the old days, but the trouble was I found so many South Americans were wearing pith helmets that occasionally, when I was saying to an aircraft doing parachute drops, “Drop it to me! I’m wearing a pith helmet!” they’d drop it to the wrong chap, because there was someone else wearing a pith helmet…
Which scene or moment in the film was for you the most gripping?
Oh I think the chase through the jungle along the cliff and then over the waterfalls with the Soviet amphibious jeep. That hasn’t quite happened to me, but I have had adventures on cliffs in South America, and I have lowered boats—not cars—boats over waterfalls in the Blue Nile. But I think that whole sequence, you gritted your teeth throughout and you didn’t quite know what was going to happen—the sword fencing, the great bulldozer crashing into the vehicle, the RPG7 fired by Harrison Ford—he seems to be a very talented chap—he’s a crack shot with everything he picked up! Whether it’s his whip or his pistol!
It’s called a film, John.
Yes!
The notion of defying death so often — was that for you constantly credible?
Well it gave me ideas, I suppose, for the future. Um, yes, I suppose, when you … things don’t go wrong, at, um, on an expedition, with quite the same rate. But they can go wrong very suddenly, and very quickly, and you need to react fast. Um, mentally fast, anyway. And of course nowadays we have the use of modern technology—satellite phones and all sorts of things to help you. But over the years films like that have inspired me, because it does actually — when you’re in the middle of the…you’re “Oooh! I remember Harrison Ford did this. We can do something like that” So let’s face it, it was good clean fun, and it was fantasy of course, but it’s entertainment in the classic Hollywood style.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Ah
Dr Hypercube reminds me that Charles Stross is the master of the first sentence:
The day war was declared, a rain of telephones fell clattering to the cobblestones from the skies above Novy Petrograd.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Quiz!
While we're talking of engineering, does anyone know what this is?
Clue: I took the photo in Idaho....
Clue: I took the photo in Idaho....
Downey!
It's cool again, thank god; cool and rainy and green. I'm wandering about the house in a snuggly knee-length white scottish wool sweater and a pair of dark green tights: I feel like an extra in The Animals of Farthing Wood, coffee in one hand, parrot preening on my shoulder.
Let me tell you about Iron Man. The movie, not the other stuff. I was bewitched by this movie. Its political intuitions are of course daft, and its special effects, of course, glorious. And Robert Downey Jr is perfect, perfect, perfect. What made me most happy wasn't the screwball dialogue between him and Gwyneth Paltrow, nor the cut-out cartoon fundamentalists, nor even the dogfight between two F-22s and a man in a supersonic gold-titanium exoskeleton with a HUD. Though — dude! Both great.
What I loved most of all were the scenes where Downey, as Tony Stark, was working. Building. Soldering. Tinkering with metal and wires and irons and components and 3-D cadcam displays. You've all seen movies where actors have to paint? Like Kirk in the Van Gogh movie? And it always looks fake and forced? Downey manages to articulate with his fingers the concentrated addicted brilliance of the genius engineer, and I have to stifle a giggle thinking that perhaps part of his facility with this kind of thing might be due to his long experience with the paraphernalia involved in taking an absolute shed-load of drugs.
There's a sweet Suicide Girls interview with him and Paltrow here
Let me tell you about Iron Man. The movie, not the other stuff. I was bewitched by this movie. Its political intuitions are of course daft, and its special effects, of course, glorious. And Robert Downey Jr is perfect, perfect, perfect. What made me most happy wasn't the screwball dialogue between him and Gwyneth Paltrow, nor the cut-out cartoon fundamentalists, nor even the dogfight between two F-22s and a man in a supersonic gold-titanium exoskeleton with a HUD. Though — dude! Both great.What I loved most of all were the scenes where Downey, as Tony Stark, was working. Building. Soldering. Tinkering with metal and wires and irons and components and 3-D cadcam displays. You've all seen movies where actors have to paint? Like Kirk in the Van Gogh movie? And it always looks fake and forced? Downey manages to articulate with his fingers the concentrated addicted brilliance of the genius engineer, and I have to stifle a giggle thinking that perhaps part of his facility with this kind of thing might be due to his long experience with the paraphernalia involved in taking an absolute shed-load of drugs.
There's a sweet Suicide Girls interview with him and Paltrow here
First steps
The erstwhile Kodak falcons are now Rochester falcons, and there seems to have been a concomitant lessening in quality of their webcam: it's always horribly overexposed. But they're still a treat to watch. Five eyasses this year. This, this morning, made me come over all soppy. Cropped with increased contrast from the Rochester Falconcam
Content-free!
Tom puts it characteristically succinctly, in his peerless Skills-bills:
Jenkins' conclusion? "Keep raptors in their place"
I literally have no idea what this means. Anyone?
More dumb ignorant shit this week, from Simon Jenkins in The Guardian.
Jenkins' conclusion? "Keep raptors in their place"
I literally have no idea what this means. Anyone?
Friday, May 16, 2008
Scribbles
The other day I came across a few pieces of folded paper. Bloody hell! Childhood drawings by yours truly. They are seriously troubling. So troubling, they're very funny. One is of a striped felt-tipped sea dragon with huge claws, rampaging across the page in a riot of frills and crests and teeth. Another is a hawk carrying a mouse, the tentativeness of baby Pluvialis' messy pencil attempt at childhood draughtsmanship quite outstripped by the bloodiness of the scene. There are even blood drips falling from the mouse's tail. Eww! And last, a picture of a battle. Thirty or so knights and archers, and appallingly-rendered Arthurian horses in black ink, with severed heads and arrows sprouting from eyes and shoulderblades, and big swords brandished high in an A4 sky.
I looked at them for a long while. I actually remember drawing them, and the memory of moving the pen is clear. What isn't clear is who the hell I was then. Now they seem to me to be the psychodramas of a very disturbed child. A child with tight lips, icy eyes and some kind of battle to settle. Anger problems? Hello?
I don't think I was this child, but it gives me pause. At this age, Viking longships and volcanos and dragons and dinosaurs and hawks and battles were my entire repertoire. But later there came pictures of girls with long dresses and animals on their shoulders—squirrels, perhaps — and birds sitting on their wonky heads, or hovering around them. That’s called growing up, right?
Drawing is magic, though. Really it is. I find myself skating bored over discussions of rock art's religio-mythical purposes. Drawing is magic. When it works, you bring all sorts of airy or chthonic things into the moving line without being in control of it, but still, being fierce with it. It's that half-in control, half-not-in-control delight where you and the subject of the drawing compete for existence. It's like hunting in all sorts of ways.
People who know me know that I draw birds all the time; while I'm on the phone, while I'm talking in cafés, sitting in seminars, on paper napkins in restaurants. Bits of paper, the edges of newspapers; receipt-backs. And it's true that most often, after completing these shorthand animals, I scribble them out so furiously that the paper tears.
I do all this quite unconsciously. When you draw an animal and it works, you conjure it into existence. Once you've finished the drawing, you have to let go of it once it's alive, and you don't want it to turn on you. You don't want the drawing to be your enemy. Sometimes it won't be -- sometimes the drawings remain decorative and never rise into life; they are merely the printed half-tone of a bird. These are safe and boring and discardable.
Sometimes the drawings are indubitably alive. I can’t explain this, bar to say that some birds become alive and some are never alive. The alive birds are the ones that make me happy, as if I’ve found them by accident; or they have found their own way into the world.
The ones I scribble out, furiously, are the ones in the uncanny valley. The ones that are monstrously not quite alive, but not quite dead, which makes them horrifying. I need to kill them before bad things happen.
My life is littered with pieces of paper with little birds on, and little scribbles where I've destroyed the ones that didn't quite make it.
This is why, if I do have a tattoo, it can't be by me. Also why it has to be a stylised depiction of a hawk, rather than anything attempting to be real. I don't know if this makes sense, but having a live animal on your back seems a very scary thing to have. Having a depiction, a design -- and from a different time and cultural milieu -- that seems safe.
I have probably just convinced everyone who's read this that I'm mad as the sea and wind. Not all of me; just my pen hand, right?
I looked at them for a long while. I actually remember drawing them, and the memory of moving the pen is clear. What isn't clear is who the hell I was then. Now they seem to me to be the psychodramas of a very disturbed child. A child with tight lips, icy eyes and some kind of battle to settle. Anger problems? Hello?
I don't think I was this child, but it gives me pause. At this age, Viking longships and volcanos and dragons and dinosaurs and hawks and battles were my entire repertoire. But later there came pictures of girls with long dresses and animals on their shoulders—squirrels, perhaps — and birds sitting on their wonky heads, or hovering around them. That’s called growing up, right?
Drawing is magic, though. Really it is. I find myself skating bored over discussions of rock art's religio-mythical purposes. Drawing is magic. When it works, you bring all sorts of airy or chthonic things into the moving line without being in control of it, but still, being fierce with it. It's that half-in control, half-not-in-control delight where you and the subject of the drawing compete for existence. It's like hunting in all sorts of ways.
People who know me know that I draw birds all the time; while I'm on the phone, while I'm talking in cafés, sitting in seminars, on paper napkins in restaurants. Bits of paper, the edges of newspapers; receipt-backs. And it's true that most often, after completing these shorthand animals, I scribble them out so furiously that the paper tears.
I do all this quite unconsciously. When you draw an animal and it works, you conjure it into existence. Once you've finished the drawing, you have to let go of it once it's alive, and you don't want it to turn on you. You don't want the drawing to be your enemy. Sometimes it won't be -- sometimes the drawings remain decorative and never rise into life; they are merely the printed half-tone of a bird. These are safe and boring and discardable.
Sometimes the drawings are indubitably alive. I can’t explain this, bar to say that some birds become alive and some are never alive. The alive birds are the ones that make me happy, as if I’ve found them by accident; or they have found their own way into the world.
The ones I scribble out, furiously, are the ones in the uncanny valley. The ones that are monstrously not quite alive, but not quite dead, which makes them horrifying. I need to kill them before bad things happen.
My life is littered with pieces of paper with little birds on, and little scribbles where I've destroyed the ones that didn't quite make it.
This is why, if I do have a tattoo, it can't be by me. Also why it has to be a stylised depiction of a hawk, rather than anything attempting to be real. I don't know if this makes sense, but having a live animal on your back seems a very scary thing to have. Having a depiction, a design -- and from a different time and cultural milieu -- that seems safe.
I have probably just convinced everyone who's read this that I'm mad as the sea and wind. Not all of me; just my pen hand, right?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Ink?
So I was thinking this is the perfect basic design for my first foray into evil tattooery. Shall be working it up into a colour version. Ooo I am bad.
Before you ask: left shoulder.
Question: blue/indigo back and tail. Yellow or orange eyes and feet? Red leash? Oh, decisions, decisions. Help me out, fretmarketeers!
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Monday, May 05, 2008
The Professor and The Cameraman
Soft but thrilling weather at the end of last week, here. Afternoon sun and shadow trounced by fenland light and fog into furry baize. En route to Wicken, great folds of pigeon-feather clouds coming in, and as Xtin and I opened the car doors when we arrived, the smell of sedge and mud and warbler-song and rain filled the vehicle from footwell to roof. Heavy rain, getting heavier. So we went straight to the cafe.
Wicken cafe is expensive, but by god, I love it. It's a shed, near enough, with a counter and melanine surfaces and thickets of tables and chairs and odd shelves with National Trust cookery books; and on a cold winter's day it fills with steam and fug from walkers and their afternoon mugs of tea. A few years ago it was run by a smashing Turkish chap, but no longer. I think he's in charge of the hangar-like full-on restaurant at a different National Turst property: at least, I saw him there a while back, and he enquired, somewhat mournfully, how Wicken was these days. "You must miss it" I said. "This" he said, gesturing into the cavernous cedar cathedral of coach parties and cream teas, "this is amazing, I love it. But I miss Wicken"
I do too, if I'm away for long. Xtin and I go there whenever we can. It's a creepy, wonderful place. Britain's oldest nature reserve, bought by some nutty posh etymologists a century or so ago. I've written about it before, so won't harp on. But it's a sprawling mess of reeds and dykes and pools and paths, with acres of carr forest and new grasslands being returned to their wetland glory. It's not pretty. It's flat, muddy, and featureless, and packed with wildfowl in the winter, and warblers and woodcock and hobbies in the summer, and is bristling with dragonflies; it's a treasure of a place.
Every so often, at Wicken, I bump into parties of student biologists from the Department next to mine. And sometimes I bump into Professor D, because he also uses the fen for fieldwork. He is often carrying a stuffed stoat in a wire cage to freak out the reed warblers, and he always carries a pair of binoculars. Of course. He is a behavioural ecologist, a fellow of the Royal Society, an astoundingly big brain, a Very Important Scientist, and also an absolutely lovely, lovely man. A chance meeting with Professor D. always leaves one feeling inordinately well-disposed to the world. He's just that kind of chap.
So when Xtin and I walked in as the rain began to pattern the ponds outside, I was especially happy to see him sitting at the near table in the empty cafe. And there was someone else with him. A chap in a realtree fleece tucking into a nosh of baked potato and beans.
Ah! I knew this person! He is a now-eminent wildlife cameraman; I met him about ten years ago back in Wales when he came to film peregrines for a documentary. And Xtin and I joined the Professor and The Cameraman for a natter, which included several cups of tea, two icecreams, and on Xtin's part, a toasted tea cake. He was there to film cuckoos, which are, in fact, Professor D's species of expertise, and they'd been there since four in the morning doing just that.
This meeting has FREAKED ME OUT. Because as we sat there and talked about jobs The Cameraman has done, and how he's just back from exotic location A filming this species, and is about to go off to exotic location B, to film a different speices, and how much his life is sitting in hides or going out looking for things, planning things, arranging everything around weather and season and oh how goddamn happy he seemed to be about what he was doing, I remembered something.
It was back in Gloucestershire. The summer before I came back to University. I was working for Jemima Parry Jones. My boyfriend of nigh-on three years had left me for a swedish intern a month before — how clichéd is that?! — and was a mess. I was also getting bored. Isn't that awful? Every day I flew display birds—everything from burrowing owls to tiny African peregrines to bloody great eagles — which was fun; and I worked with a lovely bunch of people — Jemima is an absolute treasure, btw — but my brain had gone to sleep and I wasn't happy.
It was an idyllic spring. Every other day we'd take parties of people out into the May countryside of the Forest of Dean and hunt rabbits with Harris hawks. That afternoon I was sitting with three 'pupils' on a sunny bank under an craggy singleton oak. The pasture far below us was bright with tiny wild daffodils, and the hawks were slope-soaring in a warm breeze that held them up just above and before us, white-tipped tails spread, eagley heads prospecting for bunnies. It was the lusty month of May, and it was a glorious, treasurable day. if Elgar had been there, he'd have got out some manuscript pages and a pencil. If Auden had been there, he'd have started composing on the spot.
I was miserable. Ya de ya. It's hard to countenance this, now, but I was. I was bored. I watched the hawks, keeping an eye on what was going on. But I was stuck. I was counting time. I was coming back to Cambridge to start a Masters in four months, and I couldn't wait. Bah bah another day's display, another day's hunting.
I was brought up short. I'd turned to check on the punters and saw that the chap sitting next to me was in tears. They'd made slick trails down his cheeks, and his eyes were swimmy and bright.
"Are you all right?" I asked him cautiously.
"I am" he said, with a catch in his voice. I thought the moment had passed; he turned back to watch the hawks.
But then he started speaking again. In a low, urgent voice. "You have the best job in the world" he said. "I've worked in my job for thirty years, and I've never liked it. I always wanted to do something else. But it's too late now. You come out here, you fly these birds, and you're out in the sun and rain and you're doing something you really LOVE. You are so lucky. I wish I could have done something like this when I was your age. My life would have been very different"
"Excuse me" he said, wiping his face with a handkerchief.
Right then, I swore never to stop being mindful of the moment. I'd forgotten, though, it seems to me. I've spent the last seven years in libraries, in offices, in cafes, drinking coffee and trying to write a PhD. Talking with Professor D and The Cameraman made me realise how much time that has been.
Yes there have been good things; great things! Great friendships, rewarding research; books published; a home; of course. But I am not an academic, I know now, and happily.
What I hadn't fully realised is that I've been hanging on to a whole pile of assumptions about the way to conduct one's life that I've kind of passively soaked up from my university surroundings. I think an awful lot of them are wrong. I know they are.
Xtin and I had our walk, free of rain. We heard a bittern booming, found dredged freshwater mussels, watched marigold-eyed tufted duck drakes being monstered by coots on the mere. It was a good, long walk. I've spent a Bank Holiday weekend back at my mum's house being a grumpy bugger. Partly because I'm freaked the hell out by the vision of inertia my sorry recent life has been.
So: time to start grasping for the things that don't just make life good, but make the good life. Goshawk's one of 'em. Roll on the next.
Wicken cafe is expensive, but by god, I love it. It's a shed, near enough, with a counter and melanine surfaces and thickets of tables and chairs and odd shelves with National Trust cookery books; and on a cold winter's day it fills with steam and fug from walkers and their afternoon mugs of tea. A few years ago it was run by a smashing Turkish chap, but no longer. I think he's in charge of the hangar-like full-on restaurant at a different National Turst property: at least, I saw him there a while back, and he enquired, somewhat mournfully, how Wicken was these days. "You must miss it" I said. "This" he said, gesturing into the cavernous cedar cathedral of coach parties and cream teas, "this is amazing, I love it. But I miss Wicken"
I do too, if I'm away for long. Xtin and I go there whenever we can. It's a creepy, wonderful place. Britain's oldest nature reserve, bought by some nutty posh etymologists a century or so ago. I've written about it before, so won't harp on. But it's a sprawling mess of reeds and dykes and pools and paths, with acres of carr forest and new grasslands being returned to their wetland glory. It's not pretty. It's flat, muddy, and featureless, and packed with wildfowl in the winter, and warblers and woodcock and hobbies in the summer, and is bristling with dragonflies; it's a treasure of a place.
Every so often, at Wicken, I bump into parties of student biologists from the Department next to mine. And sometimes I bump into Professor D, because he also uses the fen for fieldwork. He is often carrying a stuffed stoat in a wire cage to freak out the reed warblers, and he always carries a pair of binoculars. Of course. He is a behavioural ecologist, a fellow of the Royal Society, an astoundingly big brain, a Very Important Scientist, and also an absolutely lovely, lovely man. A chance meeting with Professor D. always leaves one feeling inordinately well-disposed to the world. He's just that kind of chap.
So when Xtin and I walked in as the rain began to pattern the ponds outside, I was especially happy to see him sitting at the near table in the empty cafe. And there was someone else with him. A chap in a realtree fleece tucking into a nosh of baked potato and beans.
Ah! I knew this person! He is a now-eminent wildlife cameraman; I met him about ten years ago back in Wales when he came to film peregrines for a documentary. And Xtin and I joined the Professor and The Cameraman for a natter, which included several cups of tea, two icecreams, and on Xtin's part, a toasted tea cake. He was there to film cuckoos, which are, in fact, Professor D's species of expertise, and they'd been there since four in the morning doing just that.
This meeting has FREAKED ME OUT. Because as we sat there and talked about jobs The Cameraman has done, and how he's just back from exotic location A filming this species, and is about to go off to exotic location B, to film a different speices, and how much his life is sitting in hides or going out looking for things, planning things, arranging everything around weather and season and oh how goddamn happy he seemed to be about what he was doing, I remembered something.
It was back in Gloucestershire. The summer before I came back to University. I was working for Jemima Parry Jones. My boyfriend of nigh-on three years had left me for a swedish intern a month before — how clichéd is that?! — and was a mess. I was also getting bored. Isn't that awful? Every day I flew display birds—everything from burrowing owls to tiny African peregrines to bloody great eagles — which was fun; and I worked with a lovely bunch of people — Jemima is an absolute treasure, btw — but my brain had gone to sleep and I wasn't happy.
It was an idyllic spring. Every other day we'd take parties of people out into the May countryside of the Forest of Dean and hunt rabbits with Harris hawks. That afternoon I was sitting with three 'pupils' on a sunny bank under an craggy singleton oak. The pasture far below us was bright with tiny wild daffodils, and the hawks were slope-soaring in a warm breeze that held them up just above and before us, white-tipped tails spread, eagley heads prospecting for bunnies. It was the lusty month of May, and it was a glorious, treasurable day. if Elgar had been there, he'd have got out some manuscript pages and a pencil. If Auden had been there, he'd have started composing on the spot.
I was miserable. Ya de ya. It's hard to countenance this, now, but I was. I was bored. I watched the hawks, keeping an eye on what was going on. But I was stuck. I was counting time. I was coming back to Cambridge to start a Masters in four months, and I couldn't wait. Bah bah another day's display, another day's hunting.
I was brought up short. I'd turned to check on the punters and saw that the chap sitting next to me was in tears. They'd made slick trails down his cheeks, and his eyes were swimmy and bright.
"Are you all right?" I asked him cautiously.
"I am" he said, with a catch in his voice. I thought the moment had passed; he turned back to watch the hawks.
But then he started speaking again. In a low, urgent voice. "You have the best job in the world" he said. "I've worked in my job for thirty years, and I've never liked it. I always wanted to do something else. But it's too late now. You come out here, you fly these birds, and you're out in the sun and rain and you're doing something you really LOVE. You are so lucky. I wish I could have done something like this when I was your age. My life would have been very different"
"Excuse me" he said, wiping his face with a handkerchief.
Right then, I swore never to stop being mindful of the moment. I'd forgotten, though, it seems to me. I've spent the last seven years in libraries, in offices, in cafes, drinking coffee and trying to write a PhD. Talking with Professor D and The Cameraman made me realise how much time that has been.
Yes there have been good things; great things! Great friendships, rewarding research; books published; a home; of course. But I am not an academic, I know now, and happily.
What I hadn't fully realised is that I've been hanging on to a whole pile of assumptions about the way to conduct one's life that I've kind of passively soaked up from my university surroundings. I think an awful lot of them are wrong. I know they are.
Xtin and I had our walk, free of rain. We heard a bittern booming, found dredged freshwater mussels, watched marigold-eyed tufted duck drakes being monstered by coots on the mere. It was a good, long walk. I've spent a Bank Holiday weekend back at my mum's house being a grumpy bugger. Partly because I'm freaked the hell out by the vision of inertia my sorry recent life has been.
So: time to start grasping for the things that don't just make life good, but make the good life. Goshawk's one of 'em. Roll on the next.
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