The Dusts of Winter (Spring Cleaning)

JOURNAL ENTRY

 20^th April, Saturday

“A ring of coltsfoot heads has been placed
In the crevice of an oak-beam used as a picnic table.
They lie bleached and desiccated
Shrouded in fine cobweb and dust.
They look just like the vestige
Of some prehistoric ritual.

Perhaps some child placed them there
On a sunny day of picnic and leisure.
It is good to know
That we have not grown so far distant
From our forebears to have forgotten
Our need to be human.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

The waning April moon has a few hours yet to rise, but there's a thick blanketing cloud that has steadily built all day in the west and now stretches across the arc of night. It's set to be a dark night, and a damp one too if the forecasts are anything to go by. There's a whip of north-easterly wind to fluster the waters, and pull at loose mooring ropes. All else is quiet. 

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the night to you wherever you are.

Thank you for coming, I am really glad you could make it. Come inside before the rains start. The kettle is on there's a seat waiting for especially for you. Welcome aboard. 

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

I suppose the best description of the weather recently is typical April. Some chilling, hefty rain has added to already sodden ground. However, they are more short (or shortER) lived than before and are clearly some attempt, at least, to comport with our expectation of April showers – although, I think, once or twice it forgets the difference between shower and prolonged rain. That is not to say, we haven’t had blue skies, sun, heaping picture-book cloudscapes, and warmth. It is just that comments tended to have been more the type of ‘where has spring gone?’ than ‘isn’t this glorious?’ I suppose that is April for you. Promises and hints of warmth and sunshine amid the dampening chill and skies of grey. We’ve had hard frosts too, which bearing in mind we’ve had very few the entire winter, was something that attracted much comment. But then it is the time of Blackthorn winters and Buchan’s ‘second cold spell.’ One year, it must have been in the mid-1990s, I was working with traveller and gypsy children and had been allocated to a particular junior school. Unusually this particular placing turned out to be for quite an extended period. Normally, we’d be placed for a day or half-day at different schools, but this time I was there full-time and it turned out to last the entire month of April and a little into May. I started each day in a class of (I think about 7 year or 8 year olds), before then moving on to support other classes as the timetable suited. The first task of the day, after the morning register had been taken was to go out with a couple of pupils who the teacher had selected for that day (usually as a reward from the day before) to go across the field and take readings from a little weather station that had been put up. I can remember being amazed that every single day, the minimum temperature was in the minuses. In fact, if the world hadn't been white and crisp underfoot, and we hadn’t had to make sure everyone was properly attired in coat and gloves, I would have been convinced that there was something wrong with the thermometer! I also remember that on April 29^th the frosts stopped to be replaced by blazing and sweltering sunshine. We then went straight into a sticky heatwave that had me wishing for just a touch of the frosts from the previous month! Consequently, I am never at all surprised by frosts in April – or even May!

The swans have now settled down into nesting properly. The pen (the female) has now been sitting for five or six days. Before that, it was mainly the cob (male) who either sat on the eggs or stood beside it on guard while his partner foraged and fed. Although, earlier today, I watched them lying side-by-side, sharing the nest together. Apparently, seven eggs have now been counted and so hopefully they’ll now have some success with the hatchings. The male is getting quite aggressive and a couple of time has nipped my leg quite sharply as I have got off the boat. I’m not too upset, at the moment, they’ve an uphill job keeping predators at bay, and last year in particular, the cob has been disconcertingly reluctant to protect the nest.  

With all the comings and goings of late and now because of all the car problems we’ve been sort of forced to limit our movements – we did eventually manage to get a hire car – thank you to all who asked – and it does seem that our car is repairable, although the other party’s insurance still needs to okay the estimate – it has been so lovely to revisit all the old haunts and familiar favourite places that I have had to neglect so far this year. And it has been particularly good to be able to do it at this time of year, as bluebells, cowslips, coltsfoot and vetch star and spangle the towpaths and banksides. Spear-straight, black-tipped reeds pushing up amongst last year’s die-back and pig’s-ear sheaved cuckoopint are everywhere.      

I’ve even spotted some cuckoo flower, such a delicate orrery of blushed pink flower heads dancing on their tiny wire-like stems. I’m told by all the books that it is not particularly rare, but like the cuckoo itself I am increasingly finding them hard to spot. So, it was nice to find quite showing. Actually, I know it best by the name Mum used for it, lady’s-smock. I can remember her listing them off with all the other Spring flowers we were passing as we drove, as a family, along the lanes. To me, they were just a confused splash of light colours and yellows. Lady’s-smock stuck in my mind as it was such an unusual and rather romantic sounding name. It also felt good on the tongue. The Wildlife Trust’s website rather tantalisingly adds that ‘the name may have alluded to certain springtime activities in the meadows!’ The mind rather boggles. The plant prefers damp and wet soils, which might explain why it is so prevalent this year. Locations not conducive, I would have thought, to the images that spring into my mind from such an enigmatic suggestion. I looked it up in Vickery’s Folk Flora to see what he says on the subject but he doesn’t shed any further light on it, apart from noting that it was often considered an unlucky flower and was often forbidden to be taken indoors and were generally omitted from May garlands to avoid bad luck. It’s a shame that we have lost the explanations about how these associations arose, particularly for such innocuous seeming plant. Vickery notes that in parts of Cambridge that it is referred to as ‘headache’ as it was thought that its scent could bring on a headache. After reading that, I went back and had a sniff. It smelt pleasantly summery. A very light bouquet of honeysuckle sweetness and the faintest hint of rose.  and that in parts of Wiltshire, it was believed that picking it would result in being bitten by a snake. This one makes a certain sort of sense as Vickery’s correspondent explained that there was a piece of land upon which cuckoo-flowers grew profusely that were also inhabited by grass snakes. Although grass snakes aren’t poisonous (or even real snakes), and I always understood them to prefer warm dry environments. 

Bad luck or not, I’m glad to have found some. It’s such a diminutive little flower that creates almost a mist of colour. Other names are, mayflower or milkmaids.  

Like the cuckoo, this light flush of pink heralds in the flashier, brashier pinks, cerise and mauves of a maturing Spring. Later, the same day, I came across a small patch of herb-robert. Funnily enough, this is another plant, according to Vickery, associated with causing headaches, being called in a number of locations ‘headache-plant’, but also with snakes. One Gloucestershire correspondent writes that in Hardwicke, near Gloucester, “herb-robert was called ‘snake-flower’ and was never picked because snakes would emerge from the stems.” A correspondent from Dorset adds that it was referred to as ‘snake’s-food’. Although, it is true that the plant’s red stems is very distinctive and serpentine, to my eye, it bears closer resemblance to a nest of worms rather than snakes. I imagine that these types of connections between snakes and mid-spring flowering plants have probably more to do with the emergence of snakes in general at this time from their winter hibernation, than specifically to the plants themselves. The re-appearance of snakes in the fields and gardens being particularly noteworthy as they are really the only venomous and therefore potentially dangerous animal in the British landscape that one (particularly children gathering posies) is likely to come across. For all this, herb-robert, as Ali English observes, is extremely useful to herbal medicine, having been part of the wise-woman’s, and monastery medicine chests for a long time. Some plant folklorists maintain that the Robert in its title refers to a monk named Robert, renowned for his cure, and especially his use of this plant. In which case, tales about the dangers of needlessly picking this plant for childhood posies, would not hurt at all and help to safeguard it for more useful curative uses. 

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

THE DUSTS OF WINTER (SPRING CLEANING)

And so, it has been good to be back on the Erica. Actually, it is not that we have really been away from her that much, just that there’s been a general feeling of transience, rootlessness. Neither in one place or the other. When we are up in Norfolk, we are conscious that we need to get back to the boat and work, and when we are on the boat, we are conscious that we need to be back in Norfolk. As a consequence, we’ve just been really living out of weekend bags, not feeling quite at ease in either place. Therefore, it is not that we have been away from the boat that much, but when we have been here, we’ve not lived here – just ate, and slept, and worked – with the eye of repacking and leaving again. That has meant that all the normal jobs (as well as less routine, but just as necessary schedule for maintenance) have just not been done. As you can probably imagine, two people and an exuberant dog living in a metal tube just under 60 foot long by just under 7 foot wide, can mean that things can get messy and cramped really quickly. Add to that the effects of running a solid fuel stove (and resultant ash and dust), a winter and early spring that seemed to turn every square foot of land into a quagmire of mud, and you probably can visualise what I mean when I say ‘messy and cramped.’

One of the things most people who are drawn to living in tiny homes, is that they can be incredibly cosy places; creating that warm womb-like feel of a snug, intimate, nest. It’s true. I mean, in reality, it is never quite as you might see it on television or Instagram. There’s always a waste bin that really needs to be emptied, or muddy pawprints on the settee covering, or just at the edge of your vision, a pile of newspapers, donated as firelighters, have spilled out of a carrier bag that has been dumped in the corner because there isn’t anywhere else to put it. Yes, there is usually something to edit it out one’s mental picture of the perfect scene – or maybe, just add some much needed reality to life – but, I do have to say that on a bitter wet winter’s night, with the wind howling outside, it can get pretty close to it.     

But the line between comfortably cosy and unbearably cluttered can be razor thin, and four months of hitting the deck and then running, has created a lot of clutter and mess, with little time to clean things up and put them straight. One the character traits that both Donna and I share is that we both detest living amongst a lot of clutter and that it can quickly get us down. Furthermore, general boat jobs and maintenance that are usually done as and when the need arises have been piling up. You might remember, in January, I mentioned that we had problems with the central heating. It was sort of sorted, but the engineer couldn’t really locate the problem. It has pretty much behaved itself recently, but there is that feeling that it might breakdown at any moment – although with the advent of spring has meant that it is not quite such a concern. However, there’s a leak somewhere that I can’t find that is dripping into the engine bay (although, I think I am getting closer to finding the culprit), added to which there’s been a very slight diesel leak. It’s been contained, but I have desperately needed to sort it. I could go on, but the ever-lengthening list, together with everything else, can get quite wearing and, to be honest, overwhelming. I think it has also been made worse by the fact that the overwhelming physical disorder and clutter mirrors what it feels like inside my head.

It's lovely making a nest at the beginning of winter, but by spring it is time to spread your wings and feel the freshness of a new year.

Therefore, it has been great last weekend and now this coming weekend to be able to do some good old-fashioned spring-cleaning! It’s not the proper one – root and branch, take everything out and dust it all down, but we’ve started. We’ve begun with the kitchen area, or galley as it seems to be the more recent preferred term. We’ve also started to get the jobs in the engine bay done too. The diesel leak is now no longer, and even just that small milestone feels beautifully liberating. I cannot express what a wonderful feeling it is to put all other cares to one side and just clean, sort, wash, relocate, mend, file-away, mop, and just be busy. To clean away the dusts of winter, real and figurative.

Oh, there’s a long, long way to go before things are anything near a semblance of comfortable normality, but it’s something mundane and prosaic, and the doing of it feels liberatingly positive. Cathartic. This is really just a temporary hiatus in our trips to Norfolk – for more sorting – but right now, we’re home, and more to the point re-making it home for us. And I have been loving it. Already, the boat jobs do not feel unsurmountable. We’ve a lovely neighbouring boater who has worked most of his life as a narrowboat mechanic, who is doing some of the bigger jobs that I am either incapable at this point in doing, haven’t the confidence to do, or just don’t have the time at the moment to do. And that is a load off my mind too.

So, right now, the boat is still in rather a tip, but it’s good to be here. It’s good to be doing normal stuff; to be able to look up and just stare out of the window at nothing but the greening alders or the scudding clouds and watch the reeds bending with the breeze. It’s good to not have to think of important stuff, imponderable questions, to take joy in watching a small corner of clutter clearing and being put in order; clean, neat, and tidy. It’s good to feel the familiar ache of tired muscles and the sensation of rinsing off the grime of hard-work from off your hands.     

With that in mind, I am going to finish with a reading from one of Dad’s favourite books. I’ve chosen it because it’s quite apt as it also features spring and spring-cleaning. But it also resonates with so many other significances for me at the moment. When talking to Dad just before he died about any favourite readings that he might want us to include in the funeral, although he was a great reader, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows was the only one that he thought appropriate. In fact, the section that I am about to read is the passage that I read at his funeral, but owing to time constraints I had to cut it down considerably. I know it held a lot of significance to Dad and I also know to another of the listeners to this podcast. So, this reading from the beginning of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows is especially for you.

[READING]

SIGNING OFF

And there we must leave them, but of course, it is just the start of their adventures together.

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

WEATHER LOG