A Totally Worthwhile Risk - 4

JOURNAL ENTRY

9^th May, Friday

“A westering sun
Lays long shadows across
The towpath and canal.

Two geese in a field
watch me from across the water.
A pheasant’s rasp
The scent of may.

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

A waxing May moon is a couple of nights away from full. Along the towpath, folding clouds of hawthorn glow ghostly in the darkness. Some of the petals are beginning to fall, dusting the canal surface with swirling constellations of petalled stars. Tonight, we float upon a starfield of blossom. 

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the gentle darkness of a soft, mild, May night, to you wherever you are.

Welcome! You made it! Thank you so much for coming, I was really hoping you’d be here. Come, let’s sit and enjoy this moonlit world together. I’ve put the kettle on. The biscuit barrel is close at hand. Why don’t you come inside and welcome aboard!

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

 I don’t know if it is the same for you but this year Spring – and I should perhaps caveat that by saying, in Britain at least or maybe qualify that even further by saying in this rather local part of Britain(!) – has had a particular luxuriant, languorous, decadence about it. Perhaps this is after all, the very nature of our home – bountiful, capacious, and profligate in its generosity. With an economy that can only effectively work on the creation of scarcity (or the perceptions of scarcity), such wealth along the hedgerows, woodlands, meadows, and scrublands can feel unnerving… and then, oh so, liberating. The nightmare is just that; a nightmare. A dream dreamt up in the cold shadows of the night, and with dawn we wake to such luxurious growth, and abundance, and life. John Clare, good old John Clare, he knew a thing about nightmares, but also about life in the real world that was lived around him. Of May he wrote:

‘In suns and showers luxuriant May came forth’

[READING]

Can that ever be bettered to describe this spring, this May?

Clare’s poem moves on, contrasting this openhanded opulence found within the heart of his Northamptonshire woods and fields with their destruction through human industry and ignorance. This Eden needs no snake, when humans “like crouching tigers had howled havoc here.”    

And each year – and this year too – in suns and showers luxuriant May still comes forth brim-full of life and with open hand and heart, and asking, perhaps, this time you will get it right. This time you will listen and understand.   

And it may be because of the succession of days of sunshine and clouds that we have been having this year; the syrupy enveloping warmth, honey thick with insect hum and busy wings. True, some days have dawned with near frost, and from time to time a cold wind blows – and even, a few days ago, thunder rumbled in the west over Wales. But the feeling is one of the land unfurling, gracefully stretching out, like a cat, velvet-pawed, from its sleep. The unknotting of tense shoulder blades. Contentment that, here at least in this small corner, on this blade of grass, life continues at its own pace, unhurried following its own paths.

Alongside the boat the hedgerows and towpath are lined thick with life and colour.

Within a few feet of us, among the young cow parsley, Lady Anne’s lace, and archangel, the grey globes of dandelions heavy with the feathered arrows of time waiting for the next puff of wind, pools of bluebells, vetch and speedwell blues, buttercup, daisy, herb bennet’s yellow stars, and white buttoned stitchwort, herb Robert pink and red campions, and, although past their prime, a few patches of celandine and cowslip can still be found - pinpricks and studs of vivid colour among the flowing greens of dock and nettle, tangled sticky ribbons of goosegrass, hogweed, plantain rosettes, burdock the size of elephant’s ears, and great gushing emerald fountains of hemlock water dropwort.

Tadpoles swim among the rushes in the tobacco-coloured waters of the sun-warmed shallows.

A cyclone of gnats tracing endless circles just above the water. A gauzy murmuration following ancient patterns beyond my understanding. Wind catches the five poplars and makes them sigh as a hire boat scurries back home to its wharf. A lowering sun paints the hawthorn cream. Soon the bats will be out.

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

A TOTALLY WORTHWHILE RISK (PART 4)

Over the past three episodes, we have been following Mum’s account of the time that she and Dad emigrated to Canada. Having been encouraged to do so by Governmental incentives and news that well paid jobs were plentiful there, they had decided to take the risk and emigrate there for a few years in order to build up their savings. The dream was for Dad to set up a small garage and workshop on their return. However, having landed on Canadian soil, they quickly realised that jobs were in fact scarce and unemployment was rife. Unable to secure any type of employment, they found themselves in a situation where their savings were rapidly dwindling with no hope of them being replenished. Furthermore, they were realising that rather than simply being a larger version of England, Canada was, in fact, a very different country with a culture they were struggling to come to terms with. We join them following a rather traumatic journey to visit some friends which entailed them walking a very long distance in the dark through a slushy Canadian countryside – something that they were subsequently told they should never do.   

By now, their savings were getting very low and difficult decisions lay ahead of them.

[READING]

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