A Little Book About Trees, by Tim Burr

Tim felt at once they were not a receptive audience. There were few truly earnest faces among them, while others pretended, thinking perhaps he had more authority than he did, when in fact he had none. Worse, he felt empty of a sudden. It had seemed such a little thing at the time, just to come along and talk. But an audience’s attention isn’t guaranteed, especially not a captive one like this. He’d have to work at it. Then having won it, he’d have to come up with something worth saying, and fast. What he’d planned to say, aided by these stilted notes he clutched in increasingly his sweaty palm, just wasn’t going to do the job.

It had started as a joke. He’d written a little book about trees called, well, “A Little Book About Trees.” It had taken him all of an evening, and he’d posted it online, like he did with his other stuff. And like all his other stuff, some of it going back twenty years, he’d not given publishing a second thought. Maybe someone would appreciate the joke and leave a wry comment. There were some real wags out there in cyberspace. But then the impossible happened, and a publisher emailed him. This really doesn’t happen, ever, he’d thought, and especially not for a title like: “A Little Book About Trees” by Tim Burr. I mean, the publisher knew it was a joke, right?

The publisher wasn’t one of the big six, of course, but a small, local press, who handled history and nature. The book would be a good fit, he said, after cautioning Tim there’d be hardly any money in it, but he’d like to print the book anyway, if Tim had no objection. Well, Tim had no objection. It would even be funny, he thought, seeing it on the shelves. Trees weren’t exactly his forte. He’d simply blagged the information from a dozen places around the web and put it into his own words. Then he’d illustrated it with his own photographs. Literature it was not. Poetry it was not. And of all the things he’d ever written, this, he felt, was the least worthy of anyone’s attention.

What he had that he felt was of infinitely more value was a dozen epic novels of a romantic and metaphysical nature. With all his heart, he still believed in them, but they sat up on his web-site with the rest of his stuff, and hardly anyone read them. Still, he wondered if one thing might lead to another, and then, well,…

With publishing, there also comes marketing, so Tim found himself on a bit of a promotional book tour. Or rather, he had a ten-minute phone-in slot on the BBC local radio station. Then there was a morning in a bookshop with a pile of his books for signing. He dressed up in tweed for that, but no one got the joke, just like they didn’t get the Tim Burr bit, and no one was buying the books either. Tim didn’t mind that so much, and even understood it, having by now seen the cover-art foisted upon him by the publisher’s graphic designer. It looked like it had been dashed off in half an hour, which was fair enough, this also being about how long it had taken Tim to write the book.

That said, the book did go on to sell a thousand copies, which just about broke even. You’ll still see the occasional one in publishers clearance, but it’s fair to say Tim’s brief moment in the spotlight faded back into obscurity. So it goes, thought Tim. It never did lead to anything else, and nobody got the joke.

But then there was this teacher who taught English to adolescent students. She was the sister of a friend of a friend of Tim’s, and she’d arranged a speaker to come into school for the annual Book Week, but they’d cancelled at the last minute. This was an esteemed professor, author and arts critic, who sounded to Tim like the real thing, except he was too busy, and also rather rude having cancelled at so short a notice. So, there was a desperate trawl for anyone who might know someone who knew someone half resembling a writer. And that, to cut a long story short, is the only reason Tim was standing there now.

“Just talk a bit about writing,” the teacher had said.

Simple enough, thought Tim. Except, right now he couldn’t think of a thing to say. And he wondered if part of the reason was he knew nothing about writing after all, or if he did, he’d forgotten it, and his dozen novels of a romantic and metaphysical nature meant nothing in the scheme of things. So there was no point trying to enthuse such a reluctant, and by now fidgety crowd of youngsters over the wonder and the mystery of the literary creative arts, when Tim was losing the plot of it anyway, and when the surest route to the high-street bookshelves turned out to be a spoof title called “A Little Book About Trees”, and a subject he knew nothing about.

The teacher, a trim, middle-aged lady with a permanently harassed expression, and greying hair, was starting to look less harassed, and more worried. Was Tim all right? I mean, he was a writer, wasn’t he? And there was nothing writers liked more than boring the pants off others about their writing. So go on, Tim, just say something. Anything.

There came a titter from the back of the class. In Tim’s day there would have been spitballs to follow, but they did not seem an overly violent bunch, and he took comfort from that.

“So,…” he said, a little too loud, and while it got their attention, it didn’t stop the kids from looking at their watches. It was a half hour slot, but there was a risk this was going to be the longest half hour of his, and their lives.

“So,” he said again, softly this time. “How many writers have we got in the room? Put your hands up.”

Tim put his hand up. No one else did.

“All right, he said. “Let’s call it something else. Who keeps a diary?”

He put his hand up. Glances were exchanged. A dozen hands went up, shy at first, but helped by the hand of the teacher.

“So, you were having me on,” he said. “I’m not on my own after all. There are lots of writers.” Titters again, but this time he felt they were with him, and he relaxed. “Can you tell me this, though,” he said: “Would you ever show your diary to someone else?”

There were no takers for that. “Why write it then?” he asked. The atmosphere had changed. Already they were five minutes in, and he’d barely scratched the surface. “That’s a mystery, isn’t it? Let’s think about that.”

Then he remembered why he was a writer, and realised he’d just woken a dozen kids up to the fact they were writers too. And those who weren’t? Well, by the time he was done, he’d have shown them they could be writers as well if they wanted. He was doing none of them any favours, of course, because it was an odd thing, to be a writer. But the blood-writers among them would know that.

And they’d do it anyway.

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A wet day on the Ribble Way

The Ribble at Marles Wood

I’ve just come a cropper on the Ribble Way. I seem to have discovered the knack, this year, of navigating rights of way that no longer exist, other than on the OS map. I’m using the latest mapping, and GPS. X marks the spot, and yes, it looks like there was a path through here once. I see shadows of its former self in the lie of the land. But it’s adopted now as part of the expanding grounds of this big old house. Mystically speaking, I’m standing in a liminal zone, then. We’re somewhere between the deep past, and a future in which the path isn’t even a memory in the most venerable and crustiest of walkers heads. Technically I’m not trespassing on private property, because the map says I’m not, but I doubt the owner would see it that way. After some desperate manoeuvres in the undergrowth, all efforts end in barbed wire, and I concede defeat. This is becoming a habit.

The path has been unofficially rerouted. I’ve missed the opening, which I discover a little higher up the lane. So, I drop a pin on the GPS to remind me of the location where the path disappears, should I ever come this way again. I’ll not bother reporting it. It’s not my patch, and I’ve got a few reports on the County Council’s PROW website already. I’ll be getting a reputation as a pedantic nutter. Besides, the re-route is as plain as day if you know what you’re looking for, which I didn’t. But here we are. On we plod.

We’ve got a moody sky and light rain today. Pendle hill was the plan this morning, up the Big End from Barley. But it looked like it was promising a soaking, so we came off the A59 and worked our way along the little lane to the car park at Marles Wood. I was there in the summer, delighted by the stretch of the Ribble, upstream to Dinkley Bridge. It was the same today, very picturesque, though looking less autumny that I would have thought for the time of year.

Just down from the car park, we encounter the Ribble at its most lovely. It emerges from a rocky ravine overhung by woodland, before taking a wide bend into open country. There were cormorants and egrets fishing from a distant clutch of rocks this morning. I remember trying a photograph there in the summer, with the big camera, which didn’t come out very well. I’ve got the smaller Lumix today, which usually makes light work of murky conditions. We’ll see how it does.

The walk goes upstream, takes in the Dinkley Bridge, then downstream along this section of the Ribble way to Ribchester, before looping back to the car. I’d given up on it in the summer, in the heat, made do with the Marles Wood stretch, and I’m glad I did. I’m far less enchanted by this return leg on the Ribble Way, but only because my pride is dented. I don’t like mucking about in mud and brambles around farms, and posh houses. I’m sure the occupants don’t like it either. But a little friendly signage would go a long way towards helping everyone out. I have the impression the wealthy find the footpath network annoying, even a little socialist, and would rather have it done away with. Or is that the politics of envy talking?

Ribble Way signage, resting in the mud.

Speaking of signage, I come across a fallen footpath marker a little further on. I’m getting the impression the Ribble Way isn’t a well walked route, or not well liked by landowners. Anyway, we muddle through, make it finally to a line of fishermen by the bridge at Ribchester, where the air is suddenly funky. I’ve no idea what other narcotics smell like, but cannabis isn’t exactly discrete. If it’s ever legalised there’ll be an outcry against the smell alone. Odd, but I’d never have thought to combine whacky baccy with fishing.

The rain is coming on heavier now. I had planned to take the rights of way that cut up through the environs of New Hall, then up the valley side, into the woods – more new ground for me. This might be straight forward, or it might involve another mysterious re-route. With the weather coming on, I’m in no mood for that, so take a short-cut and brave the traffic along the Ribchester Road. A pleasant diversion for a wet day, about five miles round, and worth it for the section between Marles Wood and Dinkley bridge alone.

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A lone cop on the skyline

A run to Malham. Midweek, mid-morning, busy as hell. The village sits at the apex of a triangle of some of the most iconic landscape features in England. So, on the one hand we shouldn’t be surprised by its popularity, and on the other, if we don’t like it, we should learn to avoid it. But I like it – how can one not? So here we are again.

The day will leave me pensive, but it doesn’t start out like that. I’m here in company with my son, and the day is for enjoying. It’s a fine day, clear blue skies, but there’s an edge to the air, and a chill in the shade. We do the features: Janet’s Foss, Gordale Scar, then come out atop Malham Cove. It’s a well-worn tourist circuit, easy to follow. You just have to be careful on the Cove, and mind the edge.

For those who don’t know the Dales, Malham Cove is a vast, curving limestone pavement with exposed drops of several hundred feet. It’s a stunning spectacle, easy to get to, and therefore always busy with enthusiastic visitors.

We see the cop early on. Odd that, a cop, atop Malham Cove. Never seen that before. Then the Air Ambulance flies in, this fragile little yellow whirligig, and lands at the cove bottom. The crowds on top gather to the edge to watch, mobile phones held high. Exposed heights give me the willies, so I’m way back, watching the cop, and from whose body language I’m writing the story in my head. I hope I’m wrong, but it looks like someone has fallen. And to fall from the cove, I can think of no survivable scenarios.

The helicopter is taking off as we reach the cove bottom. There’s another audience here, filming with their phones. A 4K record of the event seems inappropriate. How to assimilate this? I imagine the last few seconds of a life, slipping from the edge on an otherwise lovely, sunny day. I did not see the fall, but I feel it.

As we leave the valley of the raised phones, we look back and see the cop. He’s on the skyline of the eastern face, looking down. It needs no photograph. The image is burned into the mind’s eye. The east face is the most treacherous. There is a lovely sward of close-cropped grass on top. It dips gently, tempting one into closer acquaintance with the drama of the cove. But it ends in a slip and sudden free-fall.

I’ve read how people often come off there. The cops go up to look for personal effects, the bodies are brought down to await the undertaker. The emergency services make their reports. There is a paragraph in the local newspaper. The earth turns. The gathered crowds pocket their phones. Life goes on.

This is my second attempt at writing. The first, my muddled subliminal self, deleted as being somehow ill-considered. I mean, what’s the difference between standing there with my phone out, and recording here with the imagery of words? I hope there is a difference, and that it means something more than mere voyeurism.

Amongst all the venerable mountain-men I have known, there is this belief, that to have died on, or going up, or coming off a mountain, is infinitely better than to have been hit by a car, or to have languished long in an old folk’s home. I am tempted to share that belief, and to hope I will share also in the imagined cleanness of its fate. But then I remember that lone cop, on the sky-line of Malham Cove. He seems to ask: are you sure you mean that?

Thanks for listening.

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Keeping the shine

So, today is Monday. It’s cold and rainy. I’m ironing. I’m bleeding the radiators. I’m replying to a flurry of overnight comments on the blog. I’m pondering the next chapter of “A Lone Tree Falls”. Retirement is bliss, even on rainy days. Then the phone rings.

It’s a very well-spoken young man who’s concerned I’m missing out on loft insulation deals. I don’t quite get the angle, but anyway, he says my house has come up on his database as having a certain type of insulation. It doesn’t conform to the current regulations – tut tut – but not to worry. It means I can claim for,… well,… something,…

“If we could confirm your details, sir? Name, address, postcode?…“

Now, I know very well what type of insulation I have, because I’m the one who put it in. So what I want to know from him is how come he knows so much about it. I’m a little more assertive than I usually am, but there are issues of privacy at stake here:

“If I could stop you there and ask: exactly – and I do emphasise the word ‘exactly’ – how you came by that information?”

I surprise myself. I seem to be settling in for a crossing of wits here, when I could as easily hang up. That’s what I normally do, though with a polite “sorry, not interested”, thereby extending courtesy even to ne-er-do-wells whose aim is to raid my life savings. Did I get out of the wrong side of bed or something? Where is your patience, Michael? Where is your joy of living?

Anyway, the line goes dead before the young man can explain himself – a fault at his end, I presume. But never mind, all is in its place again. God is in his heaven, and the scammers are sweating the phones.

And I have more important things to be thinking about, such as November 3rd 2019. Why? Well, that’s the day I took this picture:

It was a Sunday, the first dry day, after weeks of heavy rain. The gentle undulations of the meadows had become lakes, and in the early light of that morning, they were as beautiful as they were unexpected. I don’t know why the picture strikes me now, as it has languished on the memory card for years. Perhaps it’s more the date, marking a time just before the time everything changed.

My diary fills in the details:

I had bought a new lens for the camera, and was trying it out with this shot. I had also bought “the Ministry of Utmost Happiness” by Arhundhati Roy, from my local thrift shop. I was lamenting how I’d probably never get around to reading it, that it would languish on my TBR pile, which turns out, thus far, to be true. My hall table was also full of leaflets extolling the virtues of the Labour-party. I was delivering them in batches, around my patch, for the local party office. It seems I too was caught up in the heady Corbynism of those distant times.

Then, the day after I took the picture, I sat down with my boss and took pleasure in giving him a year’s notice. Of a sudden, I tasted freedom. I was as excited by that as the thought of an imminent, and long needed, change of political direction. Yes, politics featured large in my thoughts in those days, which I find embarrasses me, now, because it doesn’t feature at all these days. In fact, quite the opposite, I find I view such matters with a very cold eye, or perhaps that too could be called political thinking? But let’s not go there.

Covid was not even a rumour in November. The first cases would appear in China in the coming weeks. But it would be March before Britain, after believing itself immune, would be on its knees. Suddenly, I could not travel even to the next village without fear of curtain twitchers dobbing me in. As for our health service, it proved to be so ill prepared, hobbyists were in their bedrooms, churning out face-masks for doctors and nurses on their 3D Printers.

But back to the photograph. I wasn’t overwhelmed by it at the time. Perhaps it was because events overtook us, and everything that came “before” seemed no longer relevant in the world. Then I tried a different crop, and it seemed to speak to me a little more.
I remember the season came on with a record-breaking wet. The year after was the same. The water table rose, filling the hollows, spoiling crops of winter wheat and oilseed. Migrant birds enjoyed their new-found wetlands. But then each spring, came a drought that baked the land, first to iron, and then to dust.

The photograph tells me the world was beautiful then, as of course it still is. But I detect also now a more deeply entrenched fatalism among its people. There is a growing acceptance of the ruin, and all the casual corruption, and that there’s nothing we can do about it. It just is. And, as if by metaphor, while once upon a time we could avoid those of low character by avoiding a particular part of town at night, now they come at us in our homes, down our telephone wires, wherever we are, and there’s no protection, other than our wits. But such a wit as that risks also tarnishing the spirit and rendering it blind to the beauty of the world. It will make us cynical, it will tempt us over the threshold into the hell of a collective nihilism. And then we are lost.

We need a powerful formula to keep the shine on things, and to keep believing it all means something. For myself, I trust it is sufficient never take our eye off the beauty of the world, never to let it be diminished in our souls, that therein lies the path to truly better days.

Now, please excuse me, the phone is ringing again. Perhaps it’s that young man with his explanation.

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Some little known facts,… about sheep

Green Withins Brook, Anglezarke

Today, I’m off over the Western Pennines, my usual haunts of Rivington and Anglezarke, a sort of willy-nilly ramble, just seeing where the mood takes me. It takes me up through Leverhulme’s terraced gardens, then along the rough old turnpike towards Will Narr. So far, so predictable, then.

I’ve got the camera, of course, but it’s a bright autumn morning, high in contrast, so it’s going to burn the highlights. To cope with that I need to shoot exposure brackets. And for that I’m going to need a tripod for stability, which I can never be bothered with. So I bump up the ISO up to 800, and keep my fingers crossed, snapping happily by hand as I go. The results aren’t great.

While we’re over this way, I check out a blocked footpath I reported to the council about six weeks ago. It’s still blocked. I wasn’t really expecting it to be cleared – councils are strapped; it was more that I wanted to be sure I’d not missed a way through, something that was perhaps just a little overgrown and easily remedied. But, no. The way is definitely blocked, by wire.

By chance, there’s this horsey lady, on the other side of the obstruction. Her lot – her and the other horsey folk, that is – are responsible for the obstruction. She’s surprised when my head pops up, looking for a way through, which is understandable, because not many people are likely to walk this way any more, on account of the impassable pathway. I’m trying to catch her eye to ask her if the path has been diverted, and where to, but she isn’t for engaging. She turns and walks away. I imagine she looks a little sheepish.

And speaking of sheep, later on, a sheep comes thundering towards me, on the moor. It’s being chased by a dog. The dog’s pretty much on it, a maniacal glint in its eye, when the pair of them whistle past me so close I can feel the draught off them. Like a fool I try to catch hold of the dog’s harness, but it’s going like a rocket and I don’t stand a chance. Had I managed to catch hold, it would have pulled my shoulder out, or had me over, and possibly torn a lump out of me as well – its blood being up that way. Sometimes, though, your instinct exceeds your abilities.

The owner appears, effing and jeffing like a proper boss, but, like the horsey lady, he doesn’t want to catch my eye. Indeed, it’s like I’m not there at all. But then he looks the sort who’d rip your ear off for sitting on his newspaper, so I’m content not to pass the time of day. The sheep has escaped by now, having led the dog, and now its master, into a bog. It’s standing on the dry side, watching, ready to bolt. It was a close shave, and I’m sure the sheep is shaken, but all the same, I can’t help thinking that was cunning.

It’s not the first time I’ve had a sheep come at me like that. The other time, it was being chased by a bullock, which frightened the life out of me as I could actually feel the ground shaking. So anyway, while the hills turn blue to the sound of the boss trying to catch his maladjusted mutt, by now up to his knees in bog, I head off, wondering if there’s something about sheep that we’ve overlooked.

A common feature of the British uplands, they’re credited in certain quarters as being one of the most destructive creatures known to man – at least when they’re farmed the way we farm them. Amongst other ecological catastrophes, according to the writer, George Monbiot, you’re likely to see more bird species in your back garden in five minutes than you will all day on a sheep farmed upland. This seems to be true from my own experience too. Also, much of the green baize, manicured nature of the Dales and the Lakes, which admittedly looks so attractive to us now, is, in ecological terms, better described as a monocultural disaster, wrought entirely by these woolly-backed ruminants, and the economics that drives our management of them.

But taken as a species, we underestimate the nous of the humble sheep. They’re clever enough to recognise faces, both human and sheep, and they’ve been known to defeat cattle grids by rolling over them on their backs. In certain tests of cognitive ability, they can outwit a chimp, and easily leave a dog standing. They have near 360 vision without turning their heads, and most remarkable of all, to me, is they can smell with their feet.

But how about this? You’re being chased by a predator. What’s the best way of throwing it off? Well, you could try veering close by an alternative source of prey, possibly one that’s slow-moving, and so an easier target, like, well a dozy human being. I’m speculating, of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me, given my experience in the wild, so to speak.

Anyway, further along, with the guy still shouting after his dog, I find the path has been settled by a herd of cows with calves. They’re pricking their ears at the commotion behind me, and checking me out with furtive glances to see if I’m anything to do with it. I make soothing noises, and they’re happy to let me pass without breaking their composure. But I wouldn’t like to risk negotiating these dun-coloured beauties with a dog as mad as that. On the lead, they’re likely to flatten the owner as well as the dog – both being tarred by the same brush as potential aggressors. Off the lead, the dog would either have to get the hell out of there, or be trampled to a pulp. A sheep has its nous, a cow has its collective, and its tonnage

In the end, the guy and the dog somehow survive the gauntlet of the cattle, but then it’s off the lead again. There’s a family picnicking at a pretty little spot, by the stream at Lead Mines Clough. Their placid pooch is mooching around beside them, but suddenly finds itself prey to the hound from hell, which comes barrelling at them like a torpedo. I can’t bear to listen to the yelping and screeching, so crank up the pace, put as much distance between me and the commotion as possible.

I’ve wondered about keeping a dog. I understand how a decent, placid little hound might be good company, but I guess I’m just not the type who could be troubled with licking one into shape. I’m more of a cat person, really, but I’m allergic, so don’t keep one of those either – or at least not any more. For me, the best company by far, on a day out, is a like-minded, fellow human being, or, failing that, just one’s own self, and a camera.

I manage only one picture I’m happy with. I took it at a pretty little spot by Green Withins Brook, near the source of the River Yarrow. It’s somewhat soft, because of that high ISO, but it’s inspired me to head back with a tripod sometime. Hopefully on that occasion I can avoid aggressive boss-men with their bonkers dogs, and the machinations of crafty sheep.

Really, they can smell with their feet.

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Not even the ghosts

I don’t get into town much these days. It’s a habit left over from the various lock-downs we’ve had. If I’m heading out at all, it’s for a walk somewhere nice, and where the fact the arse is coming out of England’s trousers doesn’t show quite as much.

But I needed herbs, and I remembered the old herb-shop. It’s one of the few independent businesses hanging on from the once upon a time, though they no longer prepare as many of their own potions. Instead, it’s mostly corporate branded stuff, and quite expensive. I could have got them off the Internet much cheaper, but that’s one of the reasons the old town’s in the state it’s in. Other reasons would include the fact there’s no money here any more, and what jobs there are pay very poor wages.

The number of empty shops now is disheartening. The only businesses moving in are drinking dens and betting shops. Meanwhile, the cafés and coffee shops are closing down, as the town trade dwindles. I could get a beer from any number of places, around whose doorways stand huddles of tired-looking men with pint-pot stares, but I’d struggle for a cup of tea, and no wonder. This is not the sort of place you’d linger to watch the world go by any more. This is Middleton, from Saving Grace, it’s Middleton, from Winter on the Hill.

Decline was obvious years ago, but it looks like they were still the good years, and we’re going full Apocalyptic, now. Yet it was a nice town, and prosperous. We used to dress up to come here. I’ve seen images like this before, but they were all provincial towns in the Soviet Union, just before the wall came down. The west was puffed up and smug in shoulder pads then, not realising it was our turn next.

Having got my herbs, I take a mooch around, and wind up in B+M Bargains. It occupies the space that was once Woolworths. It’s odd, to feel nostalgic for Woolies. I’d take the kids there for lunch in the long ago, slip them a fiver, and set them loose in the toy aisle. Then we’d top it off with pick and mix – oh, heady days!

The Argos store has gone. So has WH Smiths. Still, at least B+M is bustling. If there’s any sort of vibe at all, it’s here, among the bargains. Except there’s this one old lady complaining bitterly to her friend how she’s had a wasted journey. The shop didn’t have what she wanted, and the whole thing has ruined her day. I know, the shops rarely have what you want now, other than the most common and basic items. For anything else, you have to go online and chance it.

There are kids rushing around, stocking shelves. I’m thinking they could give her chapter and verse on ruined days, indeed ruined lives, and a future promising even less than what little they’ve got right now. But they’re not complaining. Those who have the most to complain about, tend not to. The old lady carries on, finding more to grumble about, and seeking someone to blame for it. She trails her negative energy around the store like a smog.

B+M are selling solar motion-detecting lights for thirteen quid a-piece. Winter coming on, I’ve been thinking about getting some of those. They’re useful for lighting the way around the outside of the house. But for twenty-five quid I can get four of them from that online place – you know, the one that treats its workers appallingly.

The B+M versions are of a brand that’s been around since the year dot. The online four-pack will be of unknown origin, and most likely only two of them working, and then none after the first winter. What to do then? Do I pay for the one? Or do I chance-it, go online and support a business model that’ll be the ruin of us all when those are the only kinds of jobs left for human beings to do?

Then, strangely, I’m thinking of this girl I used to know. I fancied her rotten, and she knew it. She also knew I’d not the guts to do anything about it. I think she enjoyed my discomfort and the moon eyed adulation. The last time I saw her was 1982, on the Zebra crossing, here in town. She was coming one way, I was going the other. She was dressed to the nines, like everyone else, that Saturday afternoon, yet, like in one of those daft perfume ads, she was the one who stood out.

She gave me a look in passing that left me speechless, but which would later launch a million words in search of connection with the deeper meaning of what I felt for her, and the world in general. I used to go back to that crossing, the same time on a Saturday, thinking to recreate that moment, and maybe this time do something about it. But, like I said, I never saw her again. And it was all a long time ago, when everything seemed much newer, and fresher, and not so,… derelict.

The crossing’s still there, though the shops either side of it are empty. I use it on the way back to the car, remembering of a sudden how she looked that day. Funny how this should be coming back to me now. Then I look up, and guess what? No, she not there, because not even the ghosts come here any more.

Anyway, unlike that sad old girl in B+M, my trip wasn’t wasted. I got my herbal stuff. And I got my motion sensing light as well, because I only need the one, and the rocket guy can do without my business for once. It’s a small step for a man, as someone once said. But those were heady days. And certainly, here at least, among the more material aspects of contemporary provincial English reality, there’s nothing quite so aspirational as that any more.

Thanks for listening.

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A couple of erratics, on the Dales High Way

Pot Scar and Smearset ridge

I’m sitting on a big piece of limestone that was once part of a dry-stone wall, here on the Dales High Way. It’s been in the sun, and it’s nice and warm. The wall has eroded to no more than knee height but the line of it is distinct enough, and leads the eye unerringly up the green fell side, to a crown of limestone crags. Just here, it’s been brought down flat, and the path runs through it. We’re a mile out of Feizor, heading for Stainforth, but the view has pulled me up and sat me down. The scene, the air, the sun, and this faultless blue sky, all of it makes for a feel-good day, as most days are in the Yorkshire Dales.

As the days shorten, and good weather becomes less frequent, the light takes on a magical quality. The sun is rendering the line of crags from Smearset Scar, to Pot Scar in bristling detail. I’ll never do it justice with the camera, not the way I see it and feel it, right now, but I’ll give it a go anyway, maybe a little higher up the valley. But, for now, we’ll just rest awhile, and soak up the atmosphere. Who knows when we’ll pass this way again?

Our peace is disturbed by a large walking group coming over the ladder stile, a little way off. They number around thirty old guys with craggy faces and outdoor complexions. We exchange greetings as they pass. This is Yorkshire, so greetings are hearty and often delivered with a touch of dry humour. Then comes the tail end guy. He’s a tall, bearded and somewhat distinguished looking gentleman, a good few minutes behind the rest. He comes up to me and then he stops.

“An erratic, you know?”

I admit, that’s not what I thought he was going to say.

“Em,…”

“The rock I’m standing on,” he clarifies. “Gritstone, you see?”

“Really?”

“Glacial erratic. Erratified even further by whoever put it in this drystone wall.” His accent, like his compatriots, is Yorkshire – but posh Yorkshire.

“Well spotted. You’re a geologist, then?” He does have the look of a geologist – don’t ask me why I think that. He nods. Yes, he’s a geologist.

He looks at me, and something registers with him. “Ah,… you’re not part of our walking group, are you?”

“No, they went that way.”

“Oh,… well,…. em,…. nice talking you. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”

“I shall. You too.”

Actually, I have a bone to pick with him and his mates. They’d taken over the little tea-room in Feizor, leaving me nowhere to sit. That makes it the second time I’ve walked over from Stainforth with the idea of getting a brew, only to be denied it by ravenous crowds. It’s a popular tearoom, though Feizor itself strikes me as being one of those pretty little places that only comes into existence for a day, and only once a century, if the moon is right.

The weather has been appalling all week, and I was doubtful today’s forecast of fine weather would materialise, but it did. Then, the fuel shortages that rattled everyone last week seem also to have passed over, at least in the north-west. Anyway, we filled the tank, and here we are.

The little blue car is down in Stainforth. We had a good run over from Lancashire. Confidence in the old girl is restored, after the mystery of the loose wheel-nuts – though the mystery itself remains unsolved. In fact, she went like a rocket, though mainly on account of aggressive tailgating by monstrous, thundering hardcore wagons. They’re an intimidating presence on the route from Clitheroe to the limestone quarries, near here, and always put me in mind of that old film, Hell Drivers, but with much bigger wagons.

So, we managed to keep our tails from being trodden on by the Hell Drivers, and we parked on the National Trust car-park at Stainforth, (£4.80, card payments accepted) and we set off for Feizor. I was in Stainforth, back in August, and failed then to get a decent shot of the impressive falls on the Ribble, here, due to holiday crowds. It’s quieter today, and, what with heavy rains, I’m thinking they’ll be worth another visit. But as I cross the little bridge over the river, I see the falls have been colonised by a large group of photographers and film-makers. All we’re likely to get there is a shot of the backs of their heads. So, we plod on.

Penyghent, from Little Stainforth

At Little Stainforth, we go north, along the narrow road. The views across Ribblesdale to Penyghent from here are stunning today, crackling with detail in an extraordinarily clear light. The meadows are a lush, soft green, and the sun, struggling for altitude now, is picking out the crags and the wiggly lines of dry-stone walls. We sometimes forget man is part of nature, that when he’s not busy destroying it, his presence can add something special to the land in reducing some of its bleakness. The enclosures do have a lovely, pleasing quality to them – natural stone, all higgledy-piggledy, following the contours. I suppose, however, if we were to replace them now, it would be straight lines and barbed wire.

So then we pick up the path that takes us west, over the fell. Smearset Scar is an imposing lump, as you come up from Stainforth, but it’s all bluff, at least if you approach it from its northern face. From the south and west, it’s more precipitous. At a modest 1200 feet, it still manages to impress, being dramatic, and airy, with tremendous views all round.

As a lunch spot, we can do no better than this. Eleven forty-five, on a midweek morning, not a soul in sight, and we’re on top of the world. This time last year we were still working, and doubting we’d see the end of it. Now, none of that is our problem. I’d wondered if I’d still be waking in the mornings, thinking I should be heading out to work. I was warned I might have trouble switching off in retirement, but I think the major part of me had switched off long before. Or rather, I had already moved on, in my head, to what I’m doing now. I’ve not thought about the day job at all, except on mornings like this, to appreciate the freedom to simply be.

On Smearset Scar, looking towards Pot Scar

So, from Smearset Scar, the feet are naturally drawn westwards, along the ridge to Pot Scar. This is an area without any substantial paths, though it’s criss-crossed by what looks like the tracks of a farmer’s quad bike. There’s probably a simple way down though the crags, directly to Feizor, but I’ve yet to find it, so we rejoin the path coming over from Stainforth, disturbing a fox in the process, which bolts to a hidey hole on a limestone pavement. The path swings south, through a nick in the crags, and brings us down to the tea-shop in Fiezor.

Feizor

Unable to get our coffee, without what looks like a long wait, we make do with a swig from the water bottle, which is what I remember we did last time, and we start on the climb back towards Stainforth, along this lovely bit of the Dales High Way. Then we pause, on a rock, by another rock, which our new friend points out is a glacial erratic. The area is well known for them. Some, the Norber Erratics, are spectacular lumps of stone, up on the limestone pavements around Ingleborough. They were deposited here by retreating ice sheets, and probably came from the Lake District. The word derives from the old French erratique, and from the latin erraticus; it means, literally, “wandering, straying, roving.”

Anyway, we say goodbye to our geologist friend, give his walking group a good fifteen minutes start, then follow them back to Stainforth. The encampment of photographers and film-makers is still there at the falls, so we’ll give it another miss. I wonder if they’re photographing salmon leaping. October, November, after rains, I’ve read are best. Good luck to them, but I prefer to keep moving on my days out, keep wandering, roving. That makes two erratiques then, today, on the Dales High Way.

So, now it’s time to join the Hell Drivers, on the road back to Lancashire, and see what we’ve got in the camera. On past performance, it’ll be mostly blurred, I suspect. Others, I’ll be wondering what on earth I thought I was looking at. But, with luck, one or two will have some potential as a reminder of another good day, in the Dales.

I wish I’d taken a picture of that rock, though!

“An erratic, you know.”

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The Bamboo House

I am taking shelter in a bamboo house which stands above a road, on tall stilts. Access to it is by ladder to a trapdoor. The road leads off into the distance, both ahead and behind me. To the left and right are impassable ranges of forested mountains. People are processing along the road towards me. There are many of them, like a column of wartime refugees. As they pass under the bamboo house, some try to climb the ladder, wanting to get in. At first, I resist, preferring safety in isolation. But then I relent, open the trapdoor, and lower my hand to help the people up.

It’s a fragment of a dream I’ve been pondering for a few days, and it’s not making any sense. I’m also out of the habit of remembering dreams, and this fragment is the best I could rescue from a much longer dream sequence. I like to write dreams down, and mull them over. Sometimes they chime with my preoccupations, but even when they don’t, I enjoy them for the surreal imagery they serve up. Once you fall out of the habit, though, it can take several days for the dreams to start sticking again. And we’re not exactly there yet.

On the one hand then, this could be a dream about dreaming, and my neglect of it. You know? It could be an allegory about my looking to haul the dreams up into consciousness again, like I haul the people up. But the people do not strike me as representing dreams. They are people in distress, escaping a crisis, from what appears to be my future. Since all dream elements are aspects of the dreamer, what aspects of my future self might they be? What aspects of my self are migrating from a future crisis, to the past, which is (currently) my present?

I fear I am missing a significant punch-line here.

In other, not unrelated, matters, I have been pursuing this apparently new-fangled thing called “the meaning crisis”. Various learned authors are pontificating on it, and I’ve been hitching a ride with them, looking for answers, doubling down on my reading. And I’ve been listening to lengthy lectures on You-Tube. It is the main talking point for the so-called Intellectual Dark Web.

The meaning crisis is something afflicting the western world in particular. But any nation that becomes “westernised” will inevitably fall victim to it. It sounds very serious, and has to do with the individual’s loss of meaning in the midst of material plenty, including such technological wonders as the Internet and Android telephones. But then it strikes me of a sudden, I’ve been writing about this for twenty years. What seems to have happened is I’ve forgotten all of that, and allowed myself to be bedazzled by charismatic intellectuals into thinking the meaning crisis is something new, when it isn’t. Its effects are simply more prevalent now.

The Jungian school of psychoanalysis bottomed it a century ago, Jung himself describing mankind as hanging by a thin thread, that is the psyche. The poets, particularly the Romantics, nailed it too. I came to the gist of it, intuitively, through my reading in the late nineteen nineties, as my own psyche began to mature and to pick up on these things. Through that maturation, I began to see materialism not as a panacea, but for the spiritual poison that it was. I explored it in my first novel, the Singing Loch. I was clumsy and naive, though, and fudged the conclusion. I’d not a clue how you went about solving a problem like that. The clever men who write books about it now don’t know either. I think we have a better idea of the causes, not least from our understanding of Jung. But knowing the calibre of bullet doesn’t help you, when it’s aimed at your head.

A good metaphor, is the right-left brain dichotomy. The left hemisphere of the brain deals with what’s in front of it. It’s logical and mechanical, and it jumps to conclusions. Our ego finds its most natural home there. Meanwhile, the right brain hemisphere is more holistic, deals with ambiguity, and is the source of our creativity. It’s more nuanced, and can bring intuition to bear in situations of complex ambiguity that will stump the left brain. But in a materialistic society, the left brain dominates. Indeed, it shapes society in its own image. Thus, our world becomes unimaginative, superficial, materialistic, and pointless.

This is the nub of the meaning crisis.

The left brain should not be in charge. The right brain is the better master, and without it, we’d be sunk. The left brain’s proper place is as the right brain’s gopher. But the gopher has staged a coup to the extent we don’t even know what the right brain is for any more.

The left brain also killed God. This was sometime in the Victorian period. Neitzsche called it out, and said we’d never be able to wash away the blood. We can interpret this as meaning that when we stop believing in God, we discover we need a material replacement. So, the left brain presents us with any number of man-made ideologies to choose from. The downside is, the history of the twentieth century teaches us all those ideologies end in terrible suffering. The twenty-first isn’t shaping up any better.

A little before his death, Jung had a vision of the end of humanity. His daughter wrote it down and left it in the care of his associate, Marie Louise Von Frantz. If we take it in the context of its times, we were in the midst of the cold war, only a few years away from the near nuclear catastrophe of the Cuban missile crisis. Perhaps he had projected himself into an alternate future, where that particular incident went badly. I don’t know. But the thrust of his thesis was always that man is the greatest danger to himself. And his greatest danger is his inability to deal with his own shadow.

One of the great psychological conundrums concerns the most evil acts in history – there are plenty to choose from, but it’s basically this: what is it that can drive basically good people, into doing very bad things. What is that transforms the ordinary baker and candlestick maker into the mass butcher of men? It has to do with the shadow, at both the personal and the collective level. And we only spare ourselves the shadow’s excesses by realising everything we label as evil, is actually a part of us. Refusing to accept that, and to integrate the shadowy parts of us into our awareness, it takes very little for us to begin acting out what we say we are not. A group is labelled as “other”, thereby dehumanised, trumpeted in the collective-shadow-tabloids as vermin, and we too are but a heartbeat away from killing.

Religion is important in tempering the shadow. Or rather, it’s not any more. Religion is easy. You learn the lines, and you pay your lip-service once a week. Anyone can be religious. It’s the spiritual journey that tames the shadow, and spiritual matters, once upon a time the purview of religion, are more difficult. We can’t ignore the spiritual in us, though the left brain has been trying to eradicate it.

It was the Jungians who demonstrated the need for human beings to grow, spiritually. How we deal with that en-masse is a complicated business, but religions used to handle it reasonably well, until the left brain of religion decided it was all about power and influence, and to hell with that airy fairy business of the spirit. But ignoring the religious function – the spiritual function – the need to grow, people lose direction, become sick in the head, start believing in stupid things, and then they start killing each other.

The spiritual path, however you define it, is about dealing with the personal and the collective shadow. The modern psycho-spiritual types call it “shadow work.” But who has the time and patience for that, when the most pressing issue for many westerners now, is how to pay the rent, or the gas bill?

Jung hoped enough would wake up to spare the total extermination of the species, but we seem a long way off. It’s not exactly talked about, let alone taught at a level aimed at capturing the popular imagination. And of course any mention of Jung, even sixty years after his death, is still enough to trigger the shadow-splenetic of all manner of left brained intellectual and cultural punditry.

But what has all this to do with my dream of the Bamboo House? Well, given that this is an outline of my current thinking, it’s a fair bet it has something to do with it, because such is the stuff that dreams are made of. I trust another dream will come along and clarify it, that is, if I can stick around long enough to remember the punch-line.

Thanks for listening.

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