Too long have I been in the enthral of the season spinners. Those that will tell you of long hot summers. They exist only in imagination, the good old days is the place for long hot summers, or perhaps long range forecasts from the Met. August is over and with it summer to my mind. There will be those, and I am among them, who will be happy to extol the increasing virtues of a sunny September, but it is an unexpected encore at best. Summer is gone, it goes with August.
We have four seasons and we all know winter lasts at least six months in Britain, so we cannot expect much left on the timetable for the other 3. Spring seems to have given up entirely as a season and has become more a state of mind. Autumn seems only to be reflected in our diminishing stocks of ancient woodland.
I have the monthly stocktaking to do. GPS files are sorted, images are backed up. Once safely backed up the culling begins, secure in the knowledge if I really want the 100th photo of that fly, I can dig it out barring any significant problems. Once the photo’s have been reduced to a more manageable number for the month they are geo-tagged, combined with GPS routes and put onto google earth files etc. I can now virtually recreate my wanderings on cold dull days when the only travelling which seems worthwhile is down memory lane for a bit. It seems tedious now, but I really appreciate it as the time lengthened between then and now.
By this stage the recriminations have already begun. A whole series of “why?” runs through my mind, and it all revolves around why didn’t I do more. Easily forgotten is the routine of ordinary existence, the eating, the sleeping, the preparing to eat and sleep, the need to earn enough so you can eat and sleep. So many hours are lost to the daily grind still. I only hope this week is not an indication of how things are going to proceed. My plans of out and about were left in tatters by realities.
September is the point at which you begin to realise you have left it too late, there is more behind you than ahead of you and when you add it to the fact we have had another poor summer with a recession and feckless government looming over us when it has been pleasant.
Rather than head out into the madding bank holiday crowds, half-crazed people determined to enjoy themselves, entire cities moving out into the countryside to get away from it all I have sat quietly and made plans for a hopeful September.
Brecon Beacons is in the mix, but I fret over the weather, you can never know till you have gone, and then it is too late, you are there. Are there better things to do than gamble on fickle weather for a week, that is the question. It is balanced by the other part of the equation, if not now when? I choose these times to avoid the herd instinct that populates the hills, but the downside is these migratory urges are implanted for reason. “Get while the getting is good”.
There is actually a guided tour pencilled in as well. The “nerd” factor is always dangerously high on these things but it is an opportunity to get to see behind doors which a local council usually keeps well and truly locked. If they just gave me the keys I’d be happy to guide myself about, but that is not going to happen even if I was prepared to dive into local council red-tape and ignorance, I could be a cultural anarchist, where would it end if everyone that helped paid for the upkeep of these buildings wanted to see them? Life is too short, I will just give them my tax to mismanage and wait till they ask for more.
The other venture has been inspired by a number of things.
Firstly The Solitary Walker blog post regarding Gavin Maxwell and his otter set a thought in motion. The other great otter work being Tarka the Otter, Henry Williamson, which is now something of an industry, crammed in with Lorna Doone et al. As luck would have it, I am, at this moment, reading Waterlog by Roger Deakin. A wonderful book in which he reminds me Henry Williamson also spent time as a Norfolk farmer.
Norfolk became a destination in my mind at this point, but what on earth to do there?
The final bit of the puzzle fell into place with my current disappointment surrounding the locked church door. Norfolk has far more than its fair share of Round Tower churches. There are 185 existing examples in England, 124 of them in Norfolk. These worthy structures are often over 1,000 years old, it is time I put a few more of them on my CV.
Many years ago I visited one example in Belton while exploring The Broads. It was very nicely maintained and quiet enough to lose yourself for a while. It was also the start of my growing concern regarding the role the church had in barbaric justice and persecution and quite how much injustice this building had witnessed in the name of truth.
This was sparked off by a casual notification that trial by ordeal took place in the church during the Middle Ages. It was not something till that point I had associated with the Church, I am not sure why. I have since separated the architecture from the institution and recovered an interest in church buildings.
In one of a series of excellent websites concerning Churches in East Anglia, Belton gets a mention. But it is a sad vandalised, closed off church without a service that is recorded in 2008.
There is also quite a bit of walking mileage to be extracted from churches as their longevity within the landscape has meant a network of ancient rights of way has often sprung up around them.
If I wish to catch a glimpse of things barely changed for 1,000 years I need to hurry, every chance in my lifetime most of it will have gone. I am too late for some of it, the Norfolk coast is increasingly eroded and the govt. considered response is to do nothing unless significant areas of population are concerned. So Norfolk and more especially it’s coastline has a simple choice, become more like London or disappear. There is still enough space left for imagination to work its magic though. This is one of the main reasons I walk, to catch a glimpse of things missed at any other pace.
The final piece of the jigsaw, I have yet to take a decent picture of a church, if I am not inspired by these architectural rarities then maybe I will never take a decent church photo.
Lets hope I do more and talk less in September.
September's never too late. Just starting early for next year
ReplyDelete;-)
That is one way of looking at it for sure. It chimes with my idea that Monday is a terrible way of starting a week.
ReplyDeleteGreat writing. Really enjoy the way you pen down you thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know you also got six months of winter in Britain, I thought only the Nordic countries were "blessed" by that. If it would be winter, that is.
Autumn is a month max, come October and those trees which lose their leaves are naked, and the dark and wet time starts. November is the worst, the increasing darkness culminates in December, and if you're lucky you got snow already. The first months of the year are usually OK, its sufficiently cold that the lakes freeze and there is snow, plus all the terribly Christmas decorations are gone. In April you're walking over all the grit they threw on the snow in the winter, and if you're lucky they take it off the roads in May. Spring as such doesn't exist anymore here, and in June you already celebrate Midsummer.
I see churches as nice buildings, and that's it. I left the church after a year in Honduras, and made my own thoughts. Nearly ten years ago, the time flies by once you hit 18, it seems.
It feels like six months, sometimes it is more like 12 :)
ReplyDeleteEngland has a damp climate, the seasons are in turmoil.
And yes, time does fly, but some events seem to rush down the time tunnel faster than others.