Erica's Place

JOURNAL ENTRY

20^th May, Tuesday

“The yellow flag are out.
Unfolding the origami of their petals
From the squashed chrysalis of their buds.

Yellow iris arrives flat-packed
To be assembled without sound
Held only by a dance of air and light.”  

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The sharp smell of petrichor, damp earth and vegetation that have lain in the sun for days. A night that swims with a swirl of scents and a freshness that only spring rain can bring. The moon will not rise for another hour or two - and so, with the owl, we must make do with starlight and the gentle rustling of rush and sedge.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the fragrant darkness of a night in May to you, wherever you are.

Welcome! I am so pleased you are here. I was hoping you could make it. I don’t think rain is on the cards tonight, but from time to time the sky looks brooding, so why not come inside, the kettle is on the boil, the biscuit barrel has been restocked. Welcome aboard!

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS

Almost overnight, the familiar light and colours along the towpath seem to change. Gone the thickening of the early spring haze of greens covering the scrubby patches of bare earth turning brown to the livid flush of new green growth – studded with the coloured palette of jewelled petals of the harbingers of late spring and early summer. Gone are the long airy sweeping vistas of first grass growth, and young rush and sedges that fringed the clean lines of the canal’s edge.

Now, on each side of the towpath the great move sunward has begun.

[READING] – John Betjeman ‘Upper Lambourne (verse 1)

So wrote John Betjeman for the beginning of his poem ‘Upper Lambourne’ But it is not just the ivy that climbs with the sunshine. Nettle cow parsley, sorrels, hogweed, reed, rush, sedge, flag, and hemlock are chest high and higher. Mats of goosegrass and bramble, ivy and vetch weave and sinuously climb with it – clinging, clambering, higher, higher. Onwards and upwards is the great unheard cry – raise our hands and heads to heaven – the sun, the sky, the light.

In places, the canal is entirely screened from me. Where the week before, I could watch the couple of duck pairs and the trio of unpaired drakes. I no longer can see even the canal. A thick tangled wall of nettle, bramble, blackthorn and a few beech and hazel saplings totally block my view. On the other side of the path, travellers joy, bramble and nettles grow in profusion, great billowing green clouds of exuberant life. Each day, perceptibly growing higher and higher. The path grows narrower, literally hedged in by growth. A growth that now, in places head high. 

Maggie and I now walk in a world unfamiliar to us. She can still hunt out her favourite places to sniff and catch the news, but it entails snuffling through and sometimes into the hedge-growth. I am more disadvantaged. I can guess where the rabbit holes and badger scrapes are, where the tunnels under the wire fencing are, but it is a guess. Later, the tunnels will become more visible, but now, it is sort of disorienting. I have known this stretch of path – on and off – for around 5 years. I could certainly make a good fist of walking it blindfold, by the feel of the path and the shifts in scent. In fact, in the blind of night, I have done just that, but nevertheless, I am taken by surprise. I had forgotten – forgotten it could feel so dark, so enclosed down here – even at the height of the daylight.  I find my sense of shock and disorientation rather hopeful. I am glad that this little stretch of scrubby towpath can still grab me by the neck and make me pause with surprise and wonder.  

Miles Hadfield’s descriptions of how May is experienced in post-war England is charmingly spot-on.

[READING] 

 The language may change, and perhaps routes of access, but the spirit and heart remain the same. Particularly at the weekends, long trails of walkers stride purposefully each alone in their heads, or amble and chatter caught in bubbles of conversation. And then there are the cyclists that whirr and zizz in colourful gnat-threads, sweeping and swerving like swifts on the wing around the rambler, the ambler, the twitcher, the forager, botanist and mycologist, the hiker and the biker, the little families geocaching and squirreling in the undergrowth, the joggers, the plodders, the vloggers, the bloggers, the expert, the leader,  the Instagram feeder, those taking their dogs for a walk and those being taken for a walk by their dog, the couples, the lonely, the families, the solitaries, the ones who have come to forget, the ones who have come to remember. They’re all here. They are all welcome. My home is their home too. This is where we belong, even if some don’t quite know it yet – or recognise their names in the shimmer of birdsong and light. Like the flowers around, they too have their season, their first blooming – when the towpaths are still tacky and the sun can’t quite chase away the chill and then the flourishing and then the gradual diminishing, to the slow, quiet months – where the towpath seems to breathe easier and sleep a while.         

But for now, we’ll pause and let them pass on by – there is enough here for everyone to drink their fill. And like swallows they are gone. A flash of motion and colour – that somehow, in some way has served to make this day the richer. The young drake mallard, gives his tail a wag and then closes his eye and drifts in the sun.

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

ERICA’S PLACE

One of the things that most people who knew Mum remembered her for was for her seeming never ending supply of scones. I probably need to pause at this point – being aware of the sharp intake of breath just now. I am fully aware of the controversy concerning the pronunciation of scone or scone – and you are right, I am being entirely inconsistent, I always refer to pine cones as pine cone and not pine cons. However, in my defence, I always say ‘the last one has gone’ and not, the last one has, gone. And, if we are going to get all purist on this – I also say ‘the dishes are done’ but would never dream of saying the 'dishes are done '. 

So, I will note that there is a level of disagreement – no lets call it a glorious range of expressions – for its pronunciation and that, from what I have found from reading various articles on it, in the US scones tends largely to be the preferred term while in Britain it tends to be scone – however, I also recognise that even here there are regional differences. For example, here in the Midlands, scone seems to be preferred. Nevertheless, scone is how Mum pronounced it, and that is how I was brought up to say it – and so, I am going to stick with it.

Now, what I was trying to say was that, one of the things that most people who knew Mum remembered her for was for her seeming never ending supply of scones – and the coffee and chat that went along with them.

Although, she was probably the most sociable and socially outward looking person in our family – she absolutely loved meeting people and chatting. She was the type of woman who would board a bus, sit down and then engage in conversation with an absolute and total stranger four or five rows back. For an introverted, socially awkward, acutely shy ten-year-old, it was the most excruciating experiences in my youth. I would try and sink down into my seat, my neck retracting into my shirt collar like a tortoise, while shouted comments bounced back and forth over the heads of the silent and glum passengers in between. Barry in the Fens, who drove that route, at that time, and in those very same buses, in all probably could have overheard those conversations. As far as I was concerned, much to my mortification, the entire world could hear them. So that was the type of woman my mother was. However, strange to say, one of the things Mum hated with a vengeance almost to the point of morbidity was entertaining. I have to say that, it too is something that I share with her. Drop in for a cup of tea or coffee and stay on into the night, I am fine with. But the thought of sitting down with dining plates and forks and knives and chit chat over the hors d'oeuvres, sends me quivering into such a frenzy of sweaty panic and dread that some only associate with the sounding of the last trump and the final reckoning.

Actually, it is one of the things that I find a little surprising when I read Mum’s journals and she refers to enjoying entertaining and being entertained by friends. It just doesn’t quite equate with the Mum I know. Possibly from their time in the caravans, by the time she was living on the Kathy, hospitality was much more relaxed and focusing more on friends dropping in for a cuppa and a bite to eat. Throwing dinner parties on a boat is just not possible – a bankside barbecue is the closest you can get – more importantly friends, relations and acquaintances, didn’t expect anything more than to perch on the edge of a bunk with a mug of tea and chat. Mum relished the knowledge that they hadn’t arrived – trudging over muddy farm fields – out of obligation or the piquant promise of some exotic menu. They had come because they wanted to come. No compulsion, no sense of social duty. And what is more they came with few expectations beyond a nice cuppa and company. And they were welcomed and accepted precisely on those terms. It’s what she loved most. That informality of putting on the kettle in the Kathy’s little galley, and chatting while it boiled, of laughter or sympathy as she quickly threw together some drop-scones.

Why spoil a lovely evening with friends or those who will become friends with all the unnecessary stress and bother of formality and all the prescribed etiquette that goes along with it?

Later on, when Dad got into making his own wine and homebrew beer (the scent of hops still sends me reeling back to the kitchen of my childhood), this pattern continued. Mornings, Mum would ply friends and neighbours with coffee and scones, while in the evening, a drop of homebrew or ‘let’s see if the old parsnip has cleared any?’ Dad’s homebrew was locally renowned for its potency! It was only in later life that I realised that the antiphonal response to ‘cheers’ at the first quaff, we not actually ‘Wow! This is strong!’" Seasoned drinkers who by now where almost inured to the effects of draught beer at the local, on leaving our house, could be seen merrily staggering up the street, praising the virtues of dad’s homebrew.

What’s more, a coffee or an evening with homebrew beer and wine, never really necessitated the convention of reciprocation that a formal evening meal seemed to require – beyond, of course, the usual, “Oh you really must drop in on us sometime.” And it wasn’t because Mum or Dad didn’t like going out, they just both resisted this sense of obligation placed either on them or on others.

Later in life, when they had moved into a new area, and the house formed part of a cul-de-sac of other new builds. All the residents within this small cul-de-sac had quite a lot in common and quickly formed a very supportive and friendly community – helping each other out, etc. It wasn’t too long before, as is the nature of these things, that invitations to ‘dinners’ started to be sent. And, as is also in the nature of recently retired professionals, informal, notional, rotas began to be drawn up in people’s minds about when and who will be hosting the future dinners. Mum (and Dad), but Mum – unsurprisingly - hated this type of thing. It wasn’t helped by Mum having developed a ferocious allergy to onions and any food with essential oils in it – which blistered her skin so that her arms and face looked as if they had been severely burnt. However, they felt trapped by it.  I can’t remember whose idea it was – I think it was Mum’s – to suggest, when her time came, rather than host yet another dinner party (yawn, haha, how many more can we have?), why not everyone all come round for breakfast? Fortunately, every one agrees and it apparently was a huge success and everyone commented how much more relaxed it all was than the dinner parties. After that, it was agreed that it would be far nicer and easier to just drop into my parents, from time to time, for coffee and scones.

But that was Mum. Even as a child, I was used to Mum’s friends dropping in for ‘elevenses.’ To keep costs down, she started to make scones which quickly gained fame near and far. So much so, that I was aware that when Donna and I started to seriously date, she felt under huge pressure to try to make some scones herself and it almost became, for her a rather nerve-wracking rite of passage when she dropped by one weekend for elevenses with her own batch of scones – which gained Mum’s seal of approval as far as scone production and also girlfriend material!

Looking back, I can now begin to see how much that informal but warm-hearted attitude to hospitality and sense of open-handedness to those around has influenced my view on life. The sense of creating a welcoming space, a place to chat – laugh, to, in Mum’s words, ‘put the world to right’ – Oh and boy did they do that. There were times when during the school holidays, I would join them – when I heard the biscuit tin being opened. I would listen to the ping-pong of conversation, news, ideas, views, being batted back and forth over the net of my head. Conversation swung from how old Bill’s doing after his operation (not so good I’m afraid – one of my aunt’s had something similar and she died.” “Did she really?” “Oh, it was so tragic really, she only had one leg, after all?” “No!! Poor soul.” I would reach out a hand towards the biscuits. And then it would move to how the tomatoes seem to be so much slower this year and then jump to what the government is doing wrong and then suddenly switch like a flea jumping on a hound dog’s back to the price of coley in the local fishmonger’s has shot up and did you hear about poor old Dr Dyer? My fidgeting would catch someone’s eye, and then conversation would turn to what are they teaching in school today and my ears would burn red.

Conversations whose significance was held in their inconsequentiality. That was Mum’s genius. Her ability to create a small space in a busy world to share company, without any thought of reciprocation. ‘They take us as they find us, dear’ she would say. ‘If they think the carpets need vacuuming or the stair banister dusting, too bad.’ This is our home which we love and we welcome them into its heart in all its rather chaotic, unkempt and slightly threadbare reality. She spent her life creating a home not an exhibit to be marvelled at. I am fortunate in that Donna lives by a very similar philosophy.

And actually that, when I come to think about it, is the total epitome of this podcast. A space where you and I can share some time over a cup of tea or coffee or something else. It is not going to change the world, but it might make it a little more bearable, a little more understandable, perhaps? A little warmer and less lonely. Times of no expectation, no need to dress up to be people that are not quite you, to just be welcomed as you stand, as you are. And most of all, with no expectation of reciprocation or expectation of return – how radical and subversive is that???

It has only just struck me that Nighttime on Still Waters is nothing more and nothing less than my version of Mum’s elevenses – minus the scones (unfortunately!)!

I think it is because of all these associations and resonances that I was struck so forcibly by Mind Shamble’s poem that he recently sent me -and in particular the title: ‘Erica’s Place.’

You know, I think Mum would have loved that – (and what a great title for these podcasts ‘Erica’s Place). Her philosophy of life runs deep. A place of welcome. A place of company. A place of the meeting of minds – but also hearts – and with no sense of obligation or expectation. You are here, because you have been invited. I want you to be here and to feel at ease. Nothing more is required. Welcome to Erica’s place.    

‘Erica's place’ by Mind Shambles (2025)

Living, feet from the meandering flow,
carrying wise old swans and
mischievous ducks,
passed weathered mooring ropes,
lines of gently swaying trees,
stood smartly for inspection,
and off, round the bend.
Smoke, rises from the stubby metal chimney,
pausing to flit about, briefly,
before chasing the current amid
fallen leaves and dandelion clocks.
A soft putt-putting sound,
wafts on the breeze from
somewhere round-abouts,
a hint of summer bird song
mingling with the whistle of
the old kettle, dances through
the towpath's dappled shade.
All is well.
This place, holding back the
flickering modernity,
full of angst, anger, ambivalence,
clamouring for attention,
but not here.
Here, just for this moment,
all is lost to the current,
as we sit, moored steady,
warm cup in hand.

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG