You can see Darwen tower from a long way off, and from various directions, all over Lancashire. Built in 1898, it’s been under repair for some time now, embedded in an exoskeleton of scaffolding. It was also wrapped in pale green polythene to prevent the workmen from freezing to death, in such an exposed spot, and this also made it even easier to pick out from the most improbable of distances. I noticed recently, though, the scaffolding had come down, so decided to head over for a walk, and to get some shots of the renovated structure.
I was thinking I might also be able to coax myself up it, though the very top of the tower can make my legs wobble. It commemorates two notable events, one being the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Vic, the other being the opening of the moors to the public after a series of successful mass trespasses that wrestled them from the grip of local toffs. But whatever the reason, Darwen is proud of its tower, and rightly so. In these straightened times, it’s good to see it being looked after.
A friend and I once drank a toast from the top, in birthday remembrance of a friend who was recently departed. That was mid-winter, with gale force winds and pouring rain. We could not even see the bottom of the tower, and it felt like being in the basket of a hot air balloon in the middle of a cloud. We used delicate, diamond cut glasses, and sherry poured from a pewter hip-flask, though the alcohol was considerably diluted, I recall, by the rain dripping off my hat.
By contrast, today is a warm, about nineteen degrees, while a high of twenty-two is forecast, for later on, with humidity off the dial. In other words, it’s one of those muggy days that raises a sweat. A poor night’s sleep has also left nothing in the legs, though I recall I’ve used this excuse before. Starting from the Royal at Tockholes, we tread a familiar route, through the farmyard at Ryal Fold, then across meadows, and down into the sylvan ravine of Sunnyhurst woods. Here, a pack of feral school children are raising a din while tearing branches from the trees to beat each other with. I was thinking of settling here for lunch, but decide not to linger, now, and head on up through the Lynch Gate. Then it’s by the Sunnyhurst pub, and on to the more tranquil environs of the moor.
I note the Guardian newspaper this morning reports the flight intended to offshore seven asylum seekers to Rwanda, at a reported cost of £550K, has been torpedoed by a last minute appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The Daily Mail is furious, and demands to know the name of the judge who has dared hold the UK to the letter of the law, this I presume, so they could be beasted on social media. On whose authority the Daily Mail acts, I have to wonder. As I understand it, the UK is not only a signatory to the ECHR, it is one of its architects, this being in 1959, and a possibly more enlightened age. I find all this unsettling, this denigrating of the laws, and the law-keepers. One cannot help but sense a dark cloud passing over the sun, chilling the earth.
As we mount the path to the tower, clouds of flies roar from piles of horse-shit, and mountain bikers careen downhill, doing a hundred miles an hour. Mid-June on the moors sees the foamy white blossom of heath bedstraw, wrestling with the shiny green of wimberry. Then we have the broad brush-strokes of cotton grass, bobbing about against the yellow ocre, and the russet of the moor. There are still buttercups, but also the more delicate yellow petalled tormentil – used in herbal preparations – and as with all such things I wonder how the ancient apothecaries worked its properties out, and who was the first to try it.
Approaching the tower, we discover it’s actually still a building site, ringed by fencing, so we are unable to climb it. I think I am relieved. As for photographing, we have to choose our angles carefully to minimise the remaining ugliness. But I have to say the tower itself is looking very handsome indeed, with all its fresh pointing.
It feels odd, this time of year, approaching midsummer, now, and the longest day, when the summer seems hardly to have begun. Slowly, the days will shorten. Then we must make hay while the sun shines, and the clock ticks down once more to winter gales, and dark at five.
In America, they are calling witnesses in the hearing over that terrible January 6th insurrection. It seems clear there was great wrong doing in high places, yet already a feeling said wrong-doers, even if found guilty, will avoid punishment, and might indeed be left to try their hand at insurrection again. There is a sense of the meek, and the law-abiding being powerless in the face of something clever, but darkly ruthless. And then there is another school shooting, and seemingly nothing to be done about that either.
Darwen moor is beautiful this afternoon, the cotton grass running up the low rise of Cartridge hill, picking out the contours and the hollows in between, adding shape to the landscape as a painter brushes in highlights. There is a slight haze, but plenty of fair weather clouds sailing like galleons in formation, their sails full of a billowing jolliness. There are curiously few birds. I see larks, but they are keeping their heads low, and there is no rapture about them, as if the mugginess has put the same lead in their wings and as it has put in my legs.
There are notices about heath fires. The moor is very dry, now, and I note the rushes in even the worst of the bogs are showing pale brown, and look brittle, like they are dying back for want of a drink. The paths are dusty, the moor is wide open, and hot, but mercifully less humid at altitude. We come to the little oasis of Lyon’s Den, a green fold in the upper reaches of Stepback brook – cool shade from trees planted around the ancient dwelling, which is now just a pile of mossy stones, while the trees live on. Here, we try some shots against a dynamic sky, and wonder about the small lives that were passed here. We imagine ourselves born into those same times, and wonder what we would have been, what we would have made of ourselves, if there would have been the same pathways out of humble beginnings.
And then we’re back at the car, ready for coffee, and a rest from the heat. We click the radio on to hear the government’s ethics advisor has resigned, after coming under pressure to approve of something unethical and, in his words, “odious”. There is some doubt if he will be replaced. In the history of our islands, all of this strikes me as a very grave state of affairs. We turn the radio off, dislike its company these days, and drive home. Mid-June on the moors. They have the most colour, I think, and the cotton grass is especially beautiful just now.
In Wordsworth’s manifesto of the English Romantic movement, there is a rejection of the high flown language that passed for poetry prior to 1800. The emphasis is on plainness of speech, and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, of finding a richness of spirit and meaning in the very poorest of places. And when we view an object or a scene it is not simply the contemporary reality we see, more the multiple layers of its existence in time, as granted by imagination and history.
But then I opened the back and saw a list of dates, microscopically inscribed by hand. The earliest one is April 1918, the latest September 1923. These could be service dates, they could be dates when the watch was pawned, but either way it was suddenly starting to tingle with its own history, and my imagination was filling in the blanks. So I took another look: the ceramic dial was in good condition and that nickel case would polish up well. The mechanism was awash with what looked and felt like engine-oil, but otherwise looked okay. It had a somewhat sturdy jewelled balance and lever, and the hair-spring was still a pristine spiral, just aching with potential. Usually that spring’s a rat’s nest and the watch is gonner. Given its history, and the times it had known, could I not do something with it? (I know, I say that with all the old watches I rescue from Ebay)
By now I’ve had it ticking in my pocket all day and it’s not lost a minute, so I’m thinking to myself I’ve misjudged it; it just needed a bit of care and it’s back working valiantly again just as it was about to be written off as scrap. And I’m thinking too it’s a very English thing, actually, that maybe English Levers like this one are indicative of the spirit of Albion: far from perfect but generally reliable; they’re like an MG sports car, a little basic, certainly obsolete, and outclassed by just about everybody else, but there are still plenty of them around, still attractive to a discerning audience. So I take it up again, thinking maybe, like my dad’s old Swiss-made GSTP, this is a watch I could actually use.
It’s got to be the ugliest clock I’ve ever seen. Worse than that it was broken – fully wound, yet not even the hint of a tick when shaken, and the hands were dangling loose. Cosmetically it was in poor shape too, tarnished, with rust leaking through the gilt, and I really didn’t care for that ormolu filigree decoration at all. Who in their right mind would waste money on such a thing? Okay, so I would, but for £1.50 from the charity shop it was hardly a ripoff, and I’d get some pleasure from tinkering with it, even if it was only to learn a little more about how these things were put together. Such knowledge is pointless of course, because nothing is put together like this any more. But then much of what we pick up in life, even the stuff we think is really, really important, turns out to be pointless in the end.
I found this little Raketa alarm clock at the weekend. It was on a junk stall,and the seller wanted £1.50 for it. It’s an old clockwork model, and wasn’t running. You can buy a new alarm clock, pretty much like this one for a couple of quid these days, a modern battery version – so £1.50 for a broken clock might not seem much of a bargain, but I like stripping and cleaning old clocks and seeing if I can get them going. Human beings aren’t always logical creatures and our emotional drivers are usually too complex to explain to others. Indeed, if we have to explain them at all, we’re probably wasting our breath and better finding someone else to talk to.
So, seventy five years from now no one will be interested in the date of manufacture of my first generation iPad. Even I don’t remember. 2010, perhaps? All I know for sure is I’d only had it six months and it was already obsolete. Such is the march of consumerism. I still use it though, resisting the inevitable upgrade because like most people I’ve less money now in real terms than I had when I bought it.
More days of endless, heavy rainfall leave the meadows sodden, rich veins of silver showing in the furrows and the ditches. Long days and nights are spent listening to the rattle of the rain against the glass. And then this afternoon, with just a few hours before it sets, the sun slides clear and the meadows take on a lush, luminous green beneath streaks of lapis blue and brilliant white. I pull on my winter coat and venture out, spirits lifting, but it’s a shy sun, dipping in again as soon as I curl my fingers around the camera for a headline shot.
It’s a meditative walk, this walk across the moss beyond my gates – seizing the opportunity of oxygen before the promised rains return tomorrow. My birthday.
Time to move it on, he says with a shake of his wise old head, time to let the trade decide its fate – restoration or scrap. Time for the punter to buy a newer commuter mule, less miles on the clock, less of a money pit. But this continuing investment in the need to earn a living has me wondering if it would not be cheaper to stay at home, to retire, to fade out, to fizzle into the white noise of all that rain hurled against the glass, these dark winter nights, to begin the glide to death, and the inevitable return to earth among the ooze of squishy carrots and potatoes? Strange thought indeed.
The Rivendale Review 