Musings and Reflections – Welcome to the Beautiful North

Year’s End

December 31, 2022January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North12 Comments

So, here we are at the end of another year. It’s a dismal afternoon, definitely one for staying in the warm and taking comfort from a hot mug of tea, the light and scent of favourite candles and the endearing murmurs of a sleeping cat as she dreams her dreams beside me on the couch.

Nowadays, I don’t make much of New Year’s Eve, even though both Eve and Day were quite a big deal in my childhood home. The late evening getting together of family and neighbours for an enormous pan of potato hash, with mushy peas and a bit of red cabbage or pickled beetroot on the side, preceded the mandatory countdown … 10 9, 8… until Big Ben chimed the hour. Nobody did fireworks then. I remember fondly joining the circle to sing Auld Lang Syne, crossing arms and linking hands of parents, aunties and uncles, siblings, neighbours and friends from along the Lane who had also been allowed to stay up late to see out the old year and welcome the new.

New Year rituals – at least in my locality- differed slightly from household to household but were usually variations on the same theme. I’m smiling now as I recall my dad asking us little ones to keep a look out for a man walking past the house, who had as many noses as there were days (left) in the year….. the key word being left out of the instruction. Of course, despite keeping our little eyes peeled for the longest time, we never did see that mysterious character with the very strange face! There was also another ritual which involved a late night procession which started out of the back door, snaked around the side of the house, and ended at the front door. Leaving the old and bringing in the new. For us children, the favourite New Year tradition was leaving our shoes out for Old Father Time to fill with shiny new coins and sweets. I’m not sure today’s youngsters would be as delighted with such innocent games, and would probably expect bank notes. I don’t know if anybody does any of it any more, but I am grateful to have had those happy times and my memories of those now perhaps forgotten little rituals of my early life.

We can create new rituals and traditions as we like. We can own them or we can share them. One that I’ve favoured for a few years has been a walk on this last afternoon of the year. Knowing that today’s weather wouldn’t be suitable, or at least wouldn’t make for a pleasurable experience, I set out on one of the nicer mornings this week for a stroll around the local flashes and down to the canal.

Now a very popular recreational space, a favourite with walkers, cyclists and water sports enthusiasts, this part of Wigan, between Poolstock, Ince and Bryn, was a massive expanse of heavy industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of men and women worked in the coal mines, deep underground hewing out the ‘black diamonds’, on the surface, sorting and bagging at the pit brow, loading the coal wagons, or in another of the numerous related occupations.

The pits are long gone, the shafts flooded to create several deep flashes, and it’s now quite a stretch to imagine this beautiful, relaxing landscape as the grimy, harsh hive of backbreaking industry that it once was.

A place to sit and enjoy the wildlife and count our blessings

Of course, it’s no coincidence that mine shafts were sunk near to waterways. Canals were often diverted or extended to facilitate the transportation of coal by boat. The Leeds & Liverpool Canal was the highway of its time, serving the Yorkshire and Lancashire coalfields through links to other waterways and to the Irish Sea via the port of Liverpool.

The Leigh branch of the canal which you see here is one such diversion from the main navigation, constructed to serve Wigan and Leigh, where ‘coal was king’.

On the right in the above photo is Pennington, the largest of the flashes and a base for numerous water sports.

I wonder what rituals Victorian mining households would have enacted on New Year’s Eve. There probably wouldn’t have been many spare shiny new pennies to put inside the shoes of children from those typically large families.

Alongside the canal is Westwood, a relatively small woodland with a cemetery at the other side, the final resting place of many who worked on this land. Hard lives, not always long or always healthy. Those lives too would have been punctuated, like ours now, by traditions, occasions, rituals, no less exciting for lack of pyrotechnic displays, and possibly more meaningful when community meant more than now.

I imagine a spectral gathering winding its way through Westwood, from the cemetery, through the skeletal winter trees, a procession led by a man with as many noses as days left in the year. Emerging from the dell onto the canal towpath they take in the vista: the moon reflected on the surface of the still water where Pennington pit used to be. As nearby St. James’ church bell announces the new year, they wish each other all the best, as they did in life.

I’ll end my last post of 2022 by thanking all my WordPress readers most sincerely for taking the time to read my scribblings this year, for your comments and your encouragement. I look forward to a new year of blogging and wish you all a happy, healthy and successful 2023.

November’s saving grace

November 29, 2022January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North9 Comments

I am not a winter person, though I have in recent years become more appreciative of the season which is, perhaps for many of us, a period to be got through rather than to savour. I realised years ago that my mood can be greatly affected by natural light, or the lack of it, though thankfully not determined by it.

During my winter working week I leave the house before the sun rises and return after it has set, making those weekend day light hours all the more precious. I hope for bright, dry days and the opportunity to get outside, even if it’s cold, and even if it’s only in my own tiny garden.

My personal perception of when winter starts is more in alignment with the old Celtic calendar, beginning on 1st November when the temperatures drop and the first frost arrives (though this year has been exceptionally mild) and ending at the start of February when the earliest of spring flowers start to emerge from the still frozen ground and the world slowly starts to become green again. The midwinter solstice is a big clue to how our ancient ancestors calculated the seasons. So, in my world, we are already a month into winter, even if it’s still officially autumn.

It will get worse before it gets better. The lack of light, that is. As the weeks roll on towards the December festivities, the nights will draw in ever earlier, with lamps and candles being lit by mid afternoon, just to provide a comforting glow to defeat the gloom outside. Even though the days are shorter still by then, December is redeemed by the air of festivity, the bright twinkling lights and merriment, the general goodwill and coming together. January brings a sense of new beginnings, a new year on the calendar, starting again and time in reverse, visibly stretching out that bit longer. November has no such merit. It’s a no-man’s land between the splendour of October’s rich palette and lingering warmth and the primal energy around midwinter. The autumn colours have mostly faded, temperatures plummet, it rains – a lot- leaving the oppressive odour of dampness that penetrates wood and bone. All but the most valiant of the summer flowers have died back and faded away.

November also brings some sadness, a time of losing loved ones, human and furry friends, memories of other dark, rainy days when the sun never really came out.

If you are still reading at this point, not yet discouraged by the miserable tone of this post thus far, please take a second to look back to the title. Feeling a tad guilty about my maligning of November, and a touch unappreciative of this dull and unremarkable time of year, I embarked on a little reflection and a very short walk close to home to rediscover November, which, I gladly concede, has a certain grace and its own subtle appeal.

The bold and bright petunias, lobelia and marigolds are long gone, but the ivy, in new hues of pink and pale green, is offering its exquisite winter display. Even the flowerless stalks now have a new form, different but no less engaging. The last of the flowers appear even more resplendent in their scarcity.

Nature keeps on giving.

A perfect antidote to grey sky, an abundance of bright and lustrous berries hang heavily from trees and shrubs, not only a joy to see but providing much needed nourishment to feathered neighbours.

…and snails in trees

When, perhaps more than any other time of year, there is little new growth, it is even more exciting to come across an unexpected surprise. A flourish of delightful pink roses, still faint with perfume, pushes through a fence to exhibit its last flush to an appreciative audience, all the more wonderful in the month of November.

For me, getting outside, regardless of the weather, is a necessity. Fresh air and movement. Observing and taking part. Appreciating the beauty in the mundane. It’s there if we want to see it.

On those days when going out isn’t an option, it’s no coincidence that so many Scandi-Noir have been filmed or are set in November: bleak, Nordic days when the sun never shines, providing a tense and angsty backdrop for a chilling crime. Keep the lights low, make a hot chocolate and enjoy the season.

Ruminations

October 11, 2022January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North4 Comments

Welcome again to the little garden. Autumn has arrived, bringing the great harvesting of summer’s abundance, before the gentle time of falling and fading as the earth prepares to rest and recharge through the dark months.

The garden still has much to offer at this time of the year; colours intensify, offering a shock of late summer splendour against a backdrop of grey sky.

Little creatures dart from flower to flower, hunting and competing for the ever decreasing supply of sustenance.

The morning and evening air is colder now, though the days are still beautifully mild.

Enjoy the words of mediaeval Persian poet Jamaladin Rumi, who had much to say about gardens.

‘Beauty surrounds us, but usually we have to be walking in a garden to know it.‘

‘Beauty is the garden scent of roses, murmuring water flowing gently. Can words describe the indescribable?

‘My heart rushes into the garden, joyfully tasting all the delights. But reason frowns, disapproving.’

‘Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.’

‘Be crumbled, so wild flowers come up where you are. You have been stony for too many years. Try something different.’

”True beauty is a ray that springs from the the sacred depths of the soul, and illuminates the body, just as life springs from the kernel of a stone and gives colour and scent to a flower.’

‘No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower, so the night birds will start singing.’

‘Every tree and plant in the meadow seem to be dancing, those which average eyes would see as fixed and still.’

Thank you for reading.

Something about nothing in particular

August 29, 2022January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North7 Comments

One of my readers recently asked me who I write my blog for. They went on to observe that I don’t have a particular writing style, with some posts being quite whimsical and florid whilst others are straightforward and more simplistic (maybe that’s polite speak for boring). Could that be, they suggested, because I don’t have a specific audience in mind when I put fingers to keys? I would say all of that is fair comment.

The stunning North Yorkshire Moors on a baking hot August afternoon

Purple heather for as far as the eye can see and a cloudless azure sky. I feel another ethereal post coming on……

My style of expression will vary depending on the subject of each post and probably my mood at the time of writing. Inspired or moved by a beautiful landscape or naturistic tableau, I may wax lyrical or I may write very little, letting images speak for themselves. Reflecting nostalgically on then and now, aided and abetted by a glass or two of red wine, I may gush excessively or lament.

Southport now, just a shadow of the place I remember from childhood

A summary review of a recently visited place of interest, offering information, suggestions and my opinion to other would-be visitors, will be in a format and style which is different again.

The greenhouses at RHS Bridgewater didn’t make it into the final edit of my recent post

So, who do I write for? In one sense, for myself. I write something that I would enjoy reading or would find useful. And I write for whoever else wants to read. I may never know those readers or what they think. Only other WordPress members can ‘like’ and comment (without having to submit their email address). Most of my followers, and readers generally, seem not to be WordPressers. If one person reads my blog and enjoys it, that is who I have written it for. They are my target audience.

Because I write here primarily for my own pleasure, I don’t tend to check stats very often. It’s a tiny blog and I’m not interested in tailoring my content to attract legions of followers, ha ha. Of course, I value and appreciate everybody who takes the time to read my humble scribblings, but I’m not doing this for fame or fortune. The chance would be a fine thing! When I do look at the stats, I am quietly delighted to see that a stranger, having looked at one of my posts, has enjoyed it enough to read on.

I write for that person and for anybody and everybody who is interested in reading my words, regularly or just the once. Everybody is very welcome and I’m thankful that each has taken the time.

One thing I haven’t done, up to now, is write for the sake of it, hence my reduced presence over the last couple of years when I have been out-and-about less and haven’t had as much to share.

I suppose this post could be said to be an exception of sorts, arising from one reader’s thought-provoking comments.

Our reasons for writing are as varied as we are as writers. If having read this you feel inclined to share your own story, I will be sure to read it.

Tide and Time

February 25, 2022January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North8 Comments

After a week of gale-force winds, rain, sleet and hail, Friday brought sunshine and double figures on the thermometer and felt like it should be taken advantage of. The ground being sodden and unworkable, tackling garden jobs was not an option. I had a couple of long-overdue errands to run in Southport, the closest coastal location to home, so decided to take the pleasant 35 minute train ride, mainly through arable farmland, to the seaside.

To my surprise the train was full, though from the snippets of banter I couldn’t avoid overhearing, some of my fellow passengers were headed to an event at a holiday camp a bit further down the coast. I had a very brief wander around that camp a few years ago when visiting another beach, and I hoped that the ladies, who had apparently travelled all the way from Glasgow and Northumberland, would not be too disappointed.

My errands ticked off the list, I headed towards the sea front to breathe in the briny air. I had thought it a bit early in the year for the seasonal traders, but a sunny, albeit cold, day in half-term week had tempted a few to open up.

The pier was busy. Couples walking dogs and family groups holding ice cream cones in gloved hands seemed not to care about the cold, enjoying the fresh air and making their own entertainment. The seaside attractions, on the other hand, all brash gaiety and neon, seemed to be trying too hard. The riderless carousel horses looked forlorn. Not even the Charlston, followed by a rousing big-band number, could get them whirling. All dressed up but with nowhere to go.

The music, the ride, the lot, all sad and showing their age. I felt my age, too. I used to love this place as a child, favouring it over bigger and (to most) better Blackpool up the coast. Much has changed, none of it for the better as far as I can see, but change is part of life and mine is just one opinion. I sat for a minute on a memorial bench dedicated to some folk who had ‘walked here often’ over many decades.

I spotted a couple of my own happy ghosts on the beach, animated in fragments of sunlight, colour and sound, committed to memory.

I’m glad I knew Southport in better times. But it can be a mistake to compare the past with now. My memories are those of my child self, candy-floss flavoured and always in summer sun. Of course, now can never compete with then.

Nostalgia put aside, and back to the moment, I looked down to the sand where a new generation walked and ran and laughed, moving out towards the tide, probably wondering, like us all, if they would ever reach it.

Shepherd’s Delight

July 23, 2021January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North13 Comments

It’s almost 10 pm and the sun is setting on another gorgeous July day. The sky is a delicious blend of burnt oranges, pinks and corals: red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Tomorrow looks promising then. Through the still-open window I can hear the faint and exotic sounds of a bamboo wind chime in a neighbour’s tree, gently animated by a cooling breeze. Muted conversation and laughter is carried on the air from nearby gardens. At the end of a magnificent week of scorching sunshine, today’s slightly lower temperature has been most welcome. We can be such a contrary lot where the weather is concerned, craving to be baked and sweltered, but soon needing respite before yearning for the next heatwave.

The little garden is a joy to behold, bursting at the borders with tecnicoloured blooms. I’ve never seen as many bees as this year, which is what it’s all about for me. It took a long time to get going after an exceptionally cold and rainy May, but the plants have forgiven and forgotten and have made up for lost time.

Here are some of the most vibrant and gorgeous that give me so much pleasure. Apparently, lots of people dislike orange flowers, but they never fail to make me smile. Tigger appreciates them too.

Having had mixed results from new plant varieties I have added this year, it’s been wonderful to see that once again the cosmos, calendula and nasturtiums have done me proud. Seed harvested last year was roughly sown straight into the soil in April and the flowers are thriving, needing very little care. There’s a lesson there, I think.

The light has faded since I started writing this post, and in the darkness the garden has another kind of magic, fairy lights and lanterns picking out the shapes of tiny bats as they flit above, looking for insects or heading back to their roosting places. It’s time for music and wine and thinking up plans for a new day. Have a great weekend!

Shamelessly retro

November 15, 2020January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North5 Comments

So here I am tapping out a few words. It feels as though this is a bit like one of those pieces that appear in the news during a quiet week when the politicians are all behaving themselves and celebrity scandal has gone off grid. But papers must still go to press and cameras must still roll at the appointed hours, and so are rallied all of those trivial and regional fall-back stories to plug air time gaps and spaces on pages. And so it ashamedly seems to be here.

I don’t write for writing’s sake, and this is, after all, supposed to be a blog about me getting out and about; and as I have become something of a social recluse for the time being, there has been nothing new to write about. Somewhat surprisingly, though admittedly rather gratifyingly, I was told this week by somebody who I didn’t even know read this blog, that as he hadn’t seen any new posts recently, he had been reading all the older ones. He also asked about my profile picture, the philosophising French carrier bag. Well, there’s a story……

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Montparnasse is the second largest cemetery in Paris. It covers about 46 acres in the 14th arrondissement and is the final resting place of some of the city’s great and good, including artists, writers and thinkers. My friend and fellow traveller on that trip about six years ago is fascinated by necro-architecture and how, like abodes in life, graves can reveal the personalities of the dead.

Some were nothing short of art installations, the exhibitors’ final works in a gallery where they would be both present, and not.

Did any have a hand in those creations; set their living eyes upon them and envisage future reactions? Or were these the designs of others who had loved and admired, expressing who, to them, the dead had been?

Interesting then the plainness of the tombs of some of Montparnasse’s best known occupants. Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir, celebrated intellectuals of their time, are identified only by their names and the dates of their lives, though the imprints of admirers’ kisses show they are remembered and revered. So often, less is more; that’s one of my own philosophies, anyway.

I like the photos that you find on headstones; a smile in a happy moment frozen in time. Who was behind the camera? What was the joke? Heartbeats immortalised.

Who can think of Serge Gainsbourg without a mental soundtrack? Younger readers, click and learn.

Considered to be quite racy at the time, with all the sighing and breathless utterances of desire and amore, Je t’aime is probably the song for which Serge is best remembered. It has become a tradition for adoring visitors to leave their metro tickets as a sign of how far they have travelled to pay their respects. I don’t think we left ours, but we may have spared a wistfulness sigh and hummed a few bars as we moved on.

Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in 1890 and raised in a New York Jewish immigrant community, Man Ray was one of the most celebrated artists of the Surrealist and Dada movements. I am not a fan of surrealist painting, but I like some of Man Ray’s photography. Much of it is provocative and some of it disturbing. Dada was as much a political movement as it was creative, and some powerful messages are expressed through Man Ray’s images. The simple message epitaph is equally open to interpretation.

The most celebrated work of Charles Baudelaire is Les Fleurs du Mal or The Flowers of Evil, an eclectic mix of sensory and sensual compositions which speak of appetites and desires and the exotic. I’m not keen on traditional poetry where contrived rhyme metre determines the words, but I do still have a battered old copy of The Flowers, from my youth, which I dip into on rare occasions.

How very fitting and amusing it was then that as we made our way to one of the exit gates we spotted an unusual plastic carrier bag near a composting receptacle full of decaying floral tributes. In a place of dead thinkers and dreamers it offered an inspirational philosophy for living.

And that’s the story.

A lesson in patience and seeds of change

September 30, 2020January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North9 Comments

So, here we are on the last day of September. The hours of daylight and darkness have passed their balancing point and we move slowly towards the dark and the cold. Figuratively speaking, we are, and will be, living through darker times than usual this year. But those long months of shorter, colder days offer hope of renewal and regeneration when the warmth returns.

There have been some frosty mornings of late. I have opened the back door to look at the slivers of dawn light and to observe my misty breath in the air. As the garden dies back and slowly goes to seed there is still a lot of colour to take pleasure in, and there is even new growth.

Back in early spring, unable to source any plants, I picked up a few packets of seeds from the supermarket, amongst them some blacked-eyed Susan. Unlike some of the other more vigorously sprouting seedlings, the Susans were very slow to emerge from their little plug pots and, when they eventually did, seemed to be stuck, no bigger than tiny cress stalks, for a long time. I almost gave up on them, planning more than once to throw them into the composting bin. With nothing to lose, I moved the little pots one late July day to a slightly sunnier spot. Their transformation into robust little plants was fast and furious, as if seizing the moment and making up for lost time. I planted them, still doubtful due to their relatively small size, into a bed. Happily, they took hold and went from strength to strength and their sultry shades of ochre and golden-brown keep the spirit of summer alive for a bit longer.

Calendula and nasturtiums are still flowering. Every time I think I have dead-headed for the last time I spot a tiny bud or two.

Roses also continue to bloom, hopefully for a few weeks yet.

The cosmos seeds I potted in April were the first and fastest to grow, feathery stems reaching for the sun. The baby plants were the first to go into the ground and they continued to shoot up and up, lanky and eager. But there were no flowers for the longest time. I gave up on the idea. I pulled up some of the plants which were blocking the light and putting other plants in the shade, stunting their development. I want my garden to be a food source for pollinating creatures; I couldn’t spare the space for anything that provided neither beauty nor nourishment. I left a few of the smaller specimens there, including a sad little thing in a small terracotta pot. To my surprise, they have produced a small number of flowers in white and vibrant pink, a joyful late summer gift, long after I gave up on them.

I adore the muted pink leaves of this honeysuckle plant which I had forgotten about. The pot, invaded by moss and in an inhospitable shady corner, was nearly recycled months ago. Moved into the sun to serve as a stand for a solar battery, the plant awoke again, returning to a long- forgotten splendour. I bought it on the same day as its cousin below, now well over two metres tall and one of my favourites, its pink and purple berries succulent and splendid. They were 50p each on the half- dead rejects shelf.

Nigella have grown in my little garden for about four years now. My first pack of seeds was shop-bought, but for the past three years I have gathered the brown seed heads in September and October, releasing the black seeds, each a potential new flower in the next summer. I move them around the garden, this year planting in perhaps too sunny a spot, shortening their season. Some seeds found their way, on the breeze, to a shady place beneath an over-hanging tree. They have done much better, new flowers still appearing. There is a lesson there.

One of my favourite shrubs is the heavily fragrant caryopteris, Heavenly Blue. It is a bee magnet from May to early September, but its season is nearly over.

Last year I added another caryopteris, White Surprise. It didn’t seem to thrive in its original spot so in early spring I moved it next to its relation, not knowing if it would take root. There was some growth but no flowers. I decided it would have to give up its prime position to a newcomer next spring, but it could stay put for the time being. Over the last few weeks I have not been disappointed. A profusion of lavender blue flowers have taken over, a nectar fest for the insects. I see it from my kitchen window and take great joy in watching the feasting. To think, I might have dug it up, not knowing it was a late summer bloomer!

Another new addition is the pink buddleia, bought from a pound shop. It has grown quite a lot and its big candy-floss display enchants me, though it doesn’t seem to attract the butterflies. I haven’t seen a single one sampling its supposed delights. I am still in two minds about its future prospects, but I won’t be rash. Perhaps the right butterflies haven’t spotted it yet.

When is a weed not a weed? This geranium Robert has the most wonderful aroma, like parsley. I leave it alone to do its thing.

In this mellow season of winding down, decay has its own beauty.

I have bought some spring bulbs to plant at the weekend. They will rest in the cold winter earth before energising and bursting forth to surprise and delight on a March morning. Hope springs eternal.

Nostalgia, rediscovered

July 21, 2020January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North9 Comments

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Today, I had arranged to visit an elderly member of my family who lives in one of the more rural parts of town so I decided to combine the visit with a short walk in her locality, an area I know well – or thought I did.

Early lock- down restrictions led to a lot of people exploring their local areas and finding walks and green spaces that had hitherto been unknown to them, or which would previously have been eschewed in favour of more exciting destinations. Unfortunately, options close to my own home are very few so I haven’t been out and about for quite some time. Travelling still has its complications and limitations, especially for users of public transport. Before the pandemic, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to set off on today’s walk, but an unexpected feeling of nostalgia and a desire to be near to water enticed me quite literally down memory lane.

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My walk started at Hey Brook where it runs under the main road at the boundary of the villages of Abram and Bickershaw. Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries this was coal mining country, an area of heavy industry, but the pits are long gone, leaving behind what I remember as a wasteland where once had stood giant winding gear, mountains of coal and railway tracks. The sign for a caravan site points not in the direction of a place for holiday-making, but to a notorious travellers’ camp. The road is the start of a short nature trail to Low Hall Park, about a mile and a half away, and not my destination today.

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Not many people head that way because of the travelling community’s very aggressive dogs, which roam freely around the site and onto the public footpath. A couple of terrifying childhood encounters on that path, including an incident where a cousin’s clothes were torn by one really vicious hound, left me frightened of dogs for many years. Needless to say, it’s not the fault of the animals, and I love dogs now.

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Somewhere along the path is a memorial plaque which marks approximately the place where on 30th April 1945 an entire train – locomotive engine and 13 wagons – disappeared into the New Zealand shaft of Low Hall Colliery. Without warning, a huge chasm opened up where the shaft had been filled in in 1932. The body of the driver, 67 year old Ludovic Berry, was never recovered and remains 150 ft below ground with his beloved train, Dolly, which he had driven for 35 years. I would have liked to seek out the plaque but I confess I’m not courageous enough to risk another encounter with a travelling dog.

Back across the road and through the kissing gate I was on another path which I hadn’t been along for 35 years or more. Behind me, a section of Hey Brook emerged as a trickle beneath the bridge where a large amount of litter had accumulated, and then twisted to the south on its course towards Pennington Flash in nearby Leigh.

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My surroundings, lush and green, a plantation of young oak and beech trees and wild vegetation, were nothing like the barren landscape I had walked over with friends and cousins in the 1970s and early ’80s. Known as the ‘rucks’, a local word for the site of a demolished colliery, it stretched out for miles, still littered with bits of mining detritus and the masonry of smashed-up outbuildings. We used to walk that way to get to a small flash – another word from the lexicon of coal mining – a lake created where water had filled an area of mining subsidence. That’s where I was headed.

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I hoped I would still be able to find my way there and that the path had not been rerouted.

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The transformation from industrial desert to botanical haven was truly wonderful.

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Pollinators’ paradise

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Tracks led off in other directions but I had the main path to myself, and it felt a little surreal to be in a place both familiar and unfamiliar.

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I felt like I could have been in an art- house film; no sound except bird song and the camera lens focused on flora and fauna.

There were no trees when I was last here, but now there is a woodland in the making.

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The path ended in another place that I knew, yet didn’t know. Last time I was here it was open and bare, but instinctively I knew the way.

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Polly’s Pond to me, or Kingsdown Flash to give it its proper name, came into view. I remember a friend’s grandma telling me that when she was young it used to be known as Auntie Polly’s. Nobody knew why, or who the mysterious ancient aunt was.

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The sky was mostly grey but emerging patches of blue were reflected in the water. Families of ducks swam in formation, approaching fishermen and walkers, clearly used to being offered food.

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Back in the day, kids used to launch dinghies and kayaks onto the pond. Staying at the water’s shallow edge, I remember wading in up to my knees and examining tadpoles and frog spawn and trying to avoid leeches, not always with success. Algae on the surface was known as Nanny Green Teeth, the malicious old water spirit who would suck children under if they got out of their depth and gave her the chance. Today, this seems to be the domain of anglers – and their very patient dogs.

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I took a stroll on the gravel path. Trees screened the flash from view for the most part, and many openings were occupied by fishermen. Not all though.

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I retraced my steps along the green path, encountering a group of beautiful horses along the way, they and their riders more than happy to pose for the camera.

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This short and very humble walk gave me immense enjoyment, not only because it was an opportunity to be out in nature again, but because it was a lovely example of environmental improvement and enrichment at a time when so much green space is being lost to development. Here, the trend is very much reversed. I have rediscovered a place from my past as a new place that will be part of my future.

The Colour Purple

June 14, 2020January 7, 2023Welcome to the Beautiful North8 Comments

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This week, the wind and rain have lashed the garden, whipping the tender shrubberies and blowing a sheet off the line and into a neighbour’s tree. I had to take down the wind chimes for a couple of days until the gusts settled. Even I, lover of tubular tinkling that I am, was driven to distraction by the cacophony that sounded more like an ice-cream van in melt-down than soothing music for the soul. Today it is warm, muggy even, and although a storm has been forecast for this evening, it’s lovely so far.

The little garden has taken quite a bashing too, but the flowers and shrubs are none the worse for some much-needed rain. I have decided to abandon the various plans I had for my tiny plot this year; it’s been hard enough to get compost, let alone the shrubs and the landscaping materials I had hoped for. The fences, thirsty for a coat of wood preserver, will have to wait a bit longer. The prospect of queueing outside B&Q for an hour does not appeal.

Strangely, I find that I don’t really mind. Some of my plants seem slow in getting going this year, but I am enjoying what there is so far, and the wildlife is enjoying it too. It’s not always a bad thing to be forced to slow down and enjoy right now rather than think about what’s next.

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Most of my planting has been deliberately chosen to encourage bees and butterflies, and purple is definitely one of their preferred colours. I yearn for those bolder, brighter colours to come through but whilst the roses, geraniums and fuchsias are still just on the edge of revealing themselves, there is a lot of pretty purple in full bloom.

Scabiosa

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Lavender

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Thyme in flower

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Verbena Bonariensis, a butterfly magnet

One of the most popular plants with the bees is Walker’s Low, cat mint. Like all mint it takes hold and spreads, offering the pollinators a fragrant feast. Oddly, there were no bees around when I took these photos.

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