This morning, I stole a few moments outside whilst at work. First thing, whilst checking the pupils in to school, I closed the gate and decided to walk the slightly longer way back indoors.
The strength of the web is tested by the dew hanging heavy on its threads. But it holds strong.
That little extra bit of time, two minutes at the most, provided me with some deep breaths of fresh, cool air and some sights that lifted my spirits.
This was off the back of an anger filled drive in, in the dark. Chewing and grinding my teeth through some annoying situations that had become ‘issues’ over night and into the morning. They seemed very important at that time.
A seagull launches itself off the back field and heads off to the basin.
But this bit of time outside, cobweb spotting, watching the gulls on the back field, was enough to relevel my perspective. That other stuff was important, but important enough to get angry about?
I went back inside, off loaded to a trusted colleague, and moved on. I had a repeat lesson this morning that it’s important to take a bit of time out, appreciate what’s around me, and then move on.
Work days start very dark at the moment. The bright, warm spring and summer sunshine is a distant memory or a destination far off in front of us. It depends what my perspective and mood is each day.
We saw this post on our walk on Saturday. At first we thought it had been spay painted as a marker. But on closer inspection, it was a bright orange lichen called Mustard Powder Lichen (Chrysothrix candelaris). It forms a crust on the wood.
This morning, after a strong coffee and other rituals, I crunched across the chippings on the driveway to the car. As I unlocked it from a few feet away the indicators and headlights flashed so brightly that it made everything else around disappear.
The robotic whir of the wing mirrors unfolding finished at exactly the same moment that my footsteps did. And as I reached for the door handle, I stopped. Still. For a few seconds. I held my breath. Stood statue-like. And I listened to the beautiful, understated dawn chorus of the winter morning twilight. A robin was taking the lead and some fieldfare were providing the backing vocals. It was sublime.
I have really neglected my meditation of late, and must get back on to it. It gives me some calm focus time, some peace and space to just be. That few seconds this morning holding the cold, wet car door handle, waiting for my eyes to readjust to the darkness was a timely moment of calm.
Then, in the car with a smile on my face, driving with full headlamps on down and around the lanes. And, what I initially thought were autumn leaves, blowing across from hedgerow to opposite hedgerow, turned out to be small birds. Finally, as I approach the small railway bridge something lifts from the ground and flaps away to my left. It struggled to get off the ground and was much bigger than the others. A flash of white to its broad underwings or body or both. I couldn’t see exactly what it was, and as frustrating as that was on one hand, on the other, the mystery was tantalising.
I struggle with Monday mornings, and they have been particularly challenging of late, but once again nature came to my aid. Just when I needed it most. It couldn’t do a spectacular display in the darkness, which was dim at best, but it was enough. Was I looking for it, or did it find me?
Simple pleasures. Baked beans on toast (with a cheeky swirl of HP sauce), a cup of coffee and a jigsaw started.
10.32 am. It’s very wet outside and due to get wetter as the day progresses. But the football is back and I am about to referee two matches back-to-back in Wivenhoe. A short journey from home. The tea shed will be closed (Covid) so I’ll be taking a flask.
It’s going to be good to get back on the pitch (again). Some exercise for the body and the brain. Not that the brain hasn’t had a severe workout over the past few months! I do note, whilst typing this on my phone, that my wrists have a slight belly-shelf to rest on. That needs to be worked on, and what better opportunity than Christmas and restricted access to activities?! Ah well, today will at least go some way to helping.
Looking outside, I’m aware that the bird good has run out. Obviously not being around has meant I have let the side down. I heard Robins (multiple) chirping outside the bedroom window this morning, they’re doing their bit, I must do mine. I’ll restock supplies this week.
When the weather is as saturated as it is right now, everything hangs heavy with a sense of melancholy. The trees’ branches are the lightest they’ll be all year and yet they look sad, brought down by the nation’s mood. The grass has grown just long enough to bend over at the top and in places fall completely flat. We need a breeze and some dry, cold sunshine to sweep a meteorological arm across the deck. Clear the air and the downbeat mood. It will come, just not today.
11pm. Fantastic afternoon on the football pitch this afternoon. I get so much from these games and I actually feel that I’m pretty good at it. Now, I have always been pretty confident but have tended to undersell myself. But the feedback I get from managers and players is encouraging. Plus, I keep fit, both body and mind. It’s also a fantastic distraction from everything else that’s going on. I’m really not too sure how long we will be playing as I (and most people) predict a further spike in Coronavirus cases in January and February, after the festive period has done it’s worst.
This evening I started a jigsaw and watched some telly. Specifically, Countryfile, on BBC One, was based along the southern coast of the Stour estuary, which this summer became the latest extension of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) which starts along the Suffolk coast.
Among other things, it made me realise how much I am missing the birds. Busy life, work and home, means I can’t spend time sitting and watching. Redshank, Dunlin, Godwits are the winter stars of this place where we live. We walk along the Stour virtually every weekend but I must start bringing my binoculars with me. And hopefully, once we stop for the Christmas break, I will get out there with a flask and bins a little else to get some time with the waders.
Slept in till after 9 am this morning. This term is always a challenging one, and the lead up to Christmas requires energy and enthusiasm. But the tanks are certainly running low as we end the penultimate week before the festive break.
The oldest south wall of the nave dates from around 1200. The tower was rebuilt in the 17th century. It is a pleasingly old church, reassuringly situated overlooking Manningtree and the Stour estuary.
Adora and I went on our dog walk this lunchtime and we started under grey skies at Lawford church. It’s a lovely building that is becoming increasingly familiar to us as we start and end our walks in the car park opposite. It also sits alongside the Essex Way.
But today we headed done the hill towards the station at Manningtree and on towards Flatford. Walking alongside the river Stour it was clear that the water levels were higher than normal and we could hear the gushing from the Judas Gap weir (I need to find out why it has that name).
The fields in the Dedham vale flooded which provides welcome food for gulls and waterfowl. Inturn, it enriches the soil.
The fields on the other side of the path were flooded and ducks and gulls were making full use of the new sodden habitat. Invertebrates make their way up through the soil and grass to float on and in the shallow water. A relatively easy and plentiful source of winter food.
The downside is that one of the footpaths we were planning to use was flooded as a drainage channel at the bottom of the hill had flooded and burst over the top. So, a slight detour and we were back on route. Walking gives opportunity to see the landscape in a totally different way to when driving through it. All of the senses are being used, so not only do we see it, we also smell it, hear it and feel it to.
There is an eerie feel to flooded fields. It makes for feeling stranded or threatened and hides things we would normally be able to see.
As we eased into the final third of the walk, so the weather turned from drizzle to rain. But it was a lovely hour and a half spent chatting with Adora and enjoying watching Mabel having fun exploring new hedges and verges. Then back home to a toasted sandwich and cup of tea.
Today is the countdown of one hundred more posts until the end of this one year account.
I was thinking just last week, with the vaccines making everyone all excited, that it would all just peter out in good time without much of a drama. But, of course, this is a global pandemic and there are still a few twists and turns around the corner. Perhaps.
Basildon has become one of the highest infection rates in the country.
There’s a row brewing about the unequal world wealth distribution that has meant the richer north and west have pre-bought the majority of the vaccines. Probably at an eye-watering price meaning the poorest on the planet are once again at the back of the queue. Through no fault of their own.
Then there’s Brexit and, what looks like, destination ‘no deal’ looming on the ever nearing horizon. Talks have failed too achieve a result and even the attempts of the prime minister has failed to get a sensible, beneficial trade agreement. No deal is going to be catastrophic for many lives and livelihoods across the country, but unsurprisingly the greatest threats come in the north.
Finally, we are just a matter of days away from the Christmas break where multiple families have been given the ok to mix indoors over the Christmas period. This will inevitably mean that we will have another spike which lead to the most recent lockdown. This week, I have been extra conscious of protecting our staff and their Christmas breaks. And as cases rise across London, Kent and Essex I want to get to the end of the year without an official ‘outbreak’.
I have occasionally referred to finding pleasure and satisfaction in the more simple things in life. And taking time to notice what’s happening around me by just looking and listening with just a little bit more care.
Tonight, I took a call from our next door neighbour to inform me that the water level had risen again in her downstairs loo.
The Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Not my image.
“It’s coming up again, Jonathan, sorry.” I explained, as always, that there’s no need to apologise, and that indeed it’s good that she notices. So, I trudged out into the dark with a bright torch and got the waterproof gloves from the greenhouse.
Lifting the manhole cover it was clear that the water was very high and the waste pipe had clearly blocked somewhere along it’s hundred-plus year old route. Shining the torch down, I attached the first two rods to the corkscrew attachment and fed it into the steaming water and into the pipe.
Around a dozen rods later I had reached the blockage and started working at removing it. The first down pipe started to appear in front of me as the water level started to slowly fall. Then, it quickened until it was all gone.
But as I began unscrewing each rod from the next, that’s when I heard them. This was the quietest part of the job and my ears had acclimatised to the outdoors. A different skill is needed to hear clearly outside, the lack of walls means I fell like I need to squint my ears to hear further. It takes a while for eyes to get used to darkness, so why not ears for outdoors?
There must have been about half a dozen Fieldfares chattering away at each other in the apple orchards at the bottom of our garden. It was pitch black as night has set in buy it was only about 6.15pm.
I had listened to a chap talking on the radio this morning about night migrations and how we have learnt recently that so many migrations come in whilst it is nighttime. Birds use the daytime to feed but will often ‘drive at night’. Noc-migs are very common among the thrushes, finches and other songbirds. Not so the larger birds who need daytime thermals to aid their flights. They also don’t feed on the wing like swallows, which needs insects to be up and aboit.
Fieldfares come in their thousands to the UK in the winter, staying till March. And I am sure that’s what I heard this evening after a tired drive home, whilst rodding the blocked drains. A simple pleasure where and when I least expected one. It pays to listen hard and be open to what is occuring in the background.
The book I’m reading at the moment, yes another ghost story, makes mention of the lychgate at the local church in the story.
I have really never paid much attention to lychgates before now. I have never noticed them before, I’m not a church goer and even then, the focus tends to be on the church itself.
The rather grand lychgate at St Mary’s church in Ardleigh village.
Before reading the book I certainly never knew that they were erected in the past to shelter the corpses before they could be buried. Later they became more elaborate with slated rooves seats for the pallbearers.
The word ‘lych’ derives from Saxon word for corpse. It can be found in street names such as Lyke Way, Bier (burial) Road and so on. Even Corpse Roads exist. These were the routes that burial processions would take on their way to the cemetery.
Folklore suggests that the gates would hold the spirit of the last corpse to have ‘waited’ there and wouldnt be released until the next body arrived.
Frosty spiders webs on the railings at work today.
Another very foggy and frosty start to the day. A day of battling through to make the tricky situation we are all finding ourselves in manageable. It’s hard to focus on much else at the moment. And the aim, I have resigned myself to, is to just get through.
For once, I am not looking to shake things up or change things round. I just want the next seven days of work to be as calm and uneventful as possible. I think I could talk for the whole teaching profession right now by saying “Give me seven days of boring. Please.”
But that doesn’t take away what a fantastically noble profession teaching is. None of that is erased. Indeed when I look at what we have coped with this year and the massive contribution we have all made to the greater good. The world’s teachers can hold their heads up and puff their chests out.
I saw this in the lychgate at St Mary’s church, Langham.
I received a copy of my mum’s revised care plan this evening from the care home she lives at. On the whole, the carers there are an equally amazing group of professionals that do a job that I would struggle with. There were a few lines in the plan that made my brother and sister and me realise what stock we come from.
Mum, despite her age and dementia, likes to sit at the dinner table to eat her dinner. She has admirable manners and is courteous. Traits that we all recognise in ourselves that have developed in us because they were modelled so naturally by our parents. They are the most important teachers.
The first vaccinations were delivered to UK citizens today. A 90 year old woman in Coventry had the first of a double dose that is split three weeks apart. Thousands of others followed today across the country. The UK was the first nation to start vaccinating.
I used to find Monday’s blog post the most tricky, as the weekend was over and the day started and ended in darkness. On Saturdays and Sundays, I see more daylight and more of the outdoors.
Another image of the Birch Polypore fungus from our short walk through a small woodland yesterday. It feels like such a long time ago. A very pleasing image.
But now I have learned to allow the weekend to spill into the beginning of the week. Monday, for my blog at least, has become the third day. Not only does this lengthen the weekend, but it also shortens the week. For my blog at least.
It has been another crazy-busy, mind-cracking day. It started with very tough decisions to make at work and ended with where I am now. Sat in the car park of the hospital waiting for Dad to come out after having his CT scan.
Bark stripping probably by Muntjac deer. About a metre from the ground and quite ragged (deers lack sharp front teeth to ‘cut’ through cleanly). In the winter more animals will feed of bark e.g. squirrels, mice and rabbits.
And it has also been very cold and foggy. But one of the remarkable features of foggy days is it forms a perfect monochrome backdrop for everything else. In fact, I noticed, for the first time, that fog makes everything else look black and white.
I have appreciated today the colours that spring and summer provide us is contrasted by the shades and shadows of light and dark in the late autumn and long, cold winters. Ice, snow, fog and skeletal trees. Silhouettes of birds in the sky and on wires. I am starting to like it.
In the woods today, I saw a number of trees that had fallen and were being propped up by the other trees around them. The ‘community’ of trees showing through again.
I have always been a glass half full person, always. But this is a testing time. I don’t believe it’s changing my inner self but it is putting pressure on my outlook, even though I know that it’s temporary. The problem is that this ‘temporary’ feels never ending.
I woke this morning to news of more positive tests of Covid19 of colleagues and friends. Then there’s the family matters, I feel I can’t talk about what to do next with Dad’s situation. I feel wary of putting too much in writing on this blog. I didn’t start writing it as an emotional remedy to life’s trials and tribulations. It was just to record a year living here alongside Coronavirus.
But there was that phase during the summer, when I was able to appreciate everything around me, where there was a sense of calm and clarity. Even though the pandemic was in full flow. That feels very different now. The craziness of the whole situation across the country is inescapable, and it’s impacting home and work. Alongside this is worldwide drama, is the national and local versions of its effects. On top of that are the usual trappings of simply living.
Close up of Birch Polypore (Fomitopsis betulina) fungus on a fallen tree today.
But we walked today, and enjoyed the sunshine and the fresh air. Then, when we got home, the Christmas lights went up outside the house. Small pleasures.
Tomorrow brings another working day, delicately balancing expectations and emotions. Meanwhile, everyone is tired. And I take Dad to get his scan.
The Bald Birder 