“Beautiful writing. Each word pulls you towards the next in effortless momentum. Very much enjoy your work.”
— Mark Peter Beeson
“I love your blog! You write so beautifully.”
— Oliver Ryan
I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the house-top.
– Psalm 102:7
It may have happened a million times. Or it may have happened just this once. Not that it matters. Not to me. Not really. But to the birds, almost certainly. Preeminently the lone shadow which still sings… – Shakespeare’s “substance of a grief” made manifest.
As is so often the case, the body was in virtually flawless condition: the only clue as to its demise the dull eye (ordinarily… extra-ordinarily brilliant yet pale with cheeky inquisitiveness and intelligence) hanging loosely from its socket – seemingly beseeching me for help that could never come. Even two days later – when no-one, no-thing, had been to claim it: neither fox nor magpie; buzzard nor kite – it remained impeccably embalmed in its lignite sheen: and so I carefully gathered it from the verge – the weight in my hand remarkable for its lightness (as if the departure of its life-spark or soul had rendered it hollow) – and laid it carefully in its temporary resting place. Normally, we would have buried it in a quiet spot in the garden. But times are not normal: so I swaddled it, instead – muttering a few thoughts of ritual respect and regret… – in a large workaday carrier bag; and then placed it, heartbreakingly, in our green council compost bin.
And then – suddenly; startlingly; steadfastly… – it is Sunday. The chilling, seemingly fixed north-north-easterly – ferrying in yet one more ferocious (but not this time vacuous) official foreboding of its own, in the form of a frigid wind-speed alert… – seemingly purifying the pavement of all pedestrians. All the silver/grey/black cars, however, immune to its volitions, are stationary: as they still – thankfully – remain locked to their owners’ homes – many warmed with the rainbows and soft toys that demonstrate love, hope, and temporary happiness. [Andrà tutto bene. “All will be fine.” (We wish. Fervently.)]
The cooling breeze – the cooling day – it brings is concretely cleaner; and, as I circumambulate the churchyard (the building at its heart now closed even to such prayer), I launch my atheist’s supplication quietly upstream: craving continuing clarity, and everlasting expanded green spaces to breathe within. At the exact instant I traverse the main, southern entrance, the air resonates with the midday chimes. I feel blessed. Perhaps this presages something. But… – and I hesitate…. Benevolent… or… the other kind…?
I choose the former; and ramble onwards.
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?
– Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus (Scene III)
Every day is Sunday now. Lawnmowers hum in the low sun like the reinvigorated bees that surround them, joyous in the warm spring light. Pelotons of mouthy mamils speed perilously through the village, leaning inattentively around busy, sometimes blind bends. Small happy huddles of prattling people descend from the windmill in their mudsome wellies. And yet a peculiar – (mostly) car free? – silence presses sharply on my eardrums more painfully than any aeronautic descent. This time it is my mind – my soul – tumbling rapidly (once more) towards perdition.
On my way to school pickup one smoggy, sweltering summer afternoon, I heard an older woman just ahead of me telling two small boys they’d have to go straight home that day. “It’s good to be outside,” she said, “but sometimes the air is not good air.”
– Beth Gardiner: Choked
As soon as I had gotten out of the heavy air of Rome and from the stink of the smoky chimneys thereof, which being stirred, poured forth whatever pestilential vapours and soot they had enclosed in them, I felt an alteration of my disposition.
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger
Some describe sixteenth-century Bolivia, where the Potosí silver mine was the largest in the world at the time, as the start of the Anthropocene – the geological era in which human activity began to have a significant impact on the natural world. The air would never be the same.
– Tim Smedley: Clearing the Air
The last act when life comes to a close is the letting out of the breath. And hence, its admission must have been the beginning.
– Aristotle: On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On Breathing
Introduction
When I originally started researching the subject of air pollution, at the beginning of March 2019 – driven by personal health issues to produce something in-depth for my blog that would, hopefully, also heighten awareness of this worrying subject (especially in this rural Elysium that is Warwickshire’s Feldon: where defilement of any kind probably seems at its most improbable), I had aimed to put the resultant article to bed in time for World Environment Day on 5 June 2019 (whose theme, this year, was, fittingly, #BeatAirPollution).
Yesterday – coupled with a developing desire to prove my brittle body once more able – the weather beckoned me far beyond the longing windows of home: with the high-cloud-shrouded sun at my back, and a sluggish breeze easing its surging heat. My first thought upon fastening the garden gate was of the church as objective; but primal instinct pushed me further – to revisit last year’s iterative ascent through Tysoe Hangings, and onwards to Upton House. With every initially uncertain step taken with conscious pain and caution, I crossed the main road close to Church Farm Court; eased my rucksacked self through the metal gate; and prayed that my body (and resolve) would be resilient enough. All I could do was walk, and discover if I could also achieve my heart’s desire….
Where, last year, there had been wheat, was now linseed (and where there was linseed – on the plateau beyond Sugarswell Cottages – I would find wheat): a four- to five-year rotation that seems increasingly fashionable and profitable. Sandy soil under this brilliant cobalt crop was beginning to fissure, though; and the meadow’s margins were dune-like in their desiccation. (Even in so sparse a crop, skylarks nested: their sweet purling such a soothing soundtrack.)
So let extend thy mind o’er all the world,
In knowledge, all things in it comprehend.
It was an email from my good friend Paolo that did it. Not directly, of course. Just a little nudge; which, in turn, morphed into a diminutive, but nagging, suggestion; which, gnawing at a widening area of brain-cells, wouldn’t let go. Thirty minutes later, I had changed into some light walking trousers, a thin T-shirt, and a medium-weight fleece. (Although the only marks in the sky were man-made – the number of planes travelling over Tysoe having seemingly increased in the last year or so – the Met Office warned of northerly twelve mile-an-hour winds: making seventeen Celsius feel like fourteen.)
Sometimes – and sometimes more fittingly than we may care to observe… – Mother Nature schedules her tasks and happenings more fruitfully and frequently (and therefore with much more granularity) than simply the succession of seasons obvious to even the most imperceptive of eyes. Waking late, yesterday morning, my habitual appraisal of the front garden, and the youngish oak which stands sentinel over it, revealed a large selection of cleanly-broken twigs on the green verges beneath, scattered by the recent sharp winds (harbingers, it seems, of yet more of Winter’s cold, unforgiving, grasp; and its reluctance to depart – despite Spring puncturing the jackstrawn turf with the tiny xanthous blooms of narcissus and primrose; and the local finches’ songs, above, swelling with Summer warmth…).
Just a little set of amuse-bouches – of hastily-scribbled, reasonably relevant, limericks… – to celebrate four years of blogging! (Photo courtesy of the wonderful people at Dr C P Grey Opticians.)
Read ’em and weep
The Bard of the village of Tysoe
Did wonder and worry just why so
Few views were logged
Of the words he had blogged
The paucity making him cry so
Hot off the press
There once was a brilliant Bard
Who typed so exceedingly hard
That his fingers were numb
(As was his poor bum)
And the keyboard he hammered was charred
Did Cicero say anything?
The Orchestra’s Writer-in-Residence
Loves using his words to set precedence
With notes so unique
They could well be in Greek
Ή ακόμα και για τους γούνιους ελέφαντες†
I’m sorry so little is happening on this blog at the moment: but serious issues with my health mean that other things must take priority. However, if you’re interested in the progress (or otherwise) of the “Pre-consultation draft” of the Neighbourhood Development Plan, I’d like to point you to Stratford-on-Avon District Council’s gritty response – from 31 July 2017. It may not be quite as detailed as mine – but it certainly is pithy! Thanks to Duke Senior, as always, for the heads-up!
Welcome to the blog of the Bard of Tysoe… – especially if this is your first visit (hopefully, of many)! If you’ve arrived here after noticing the advert in the Tysoe & District Record (right), then a big ‘thank you’ for tapping in the address of this site manually: you are indeed – as the Old English would say – a wilcuma – that is, ‘a person whose coming is pleasing’ (and from where we get the word ’welcome’ itself). Hopefully, you will find posts that similarly(?) tell you something you didn’t know before; that entertain; make you scratch your head (in deep thought; or perhaps bafflement); and – in the case of reviews – make you wish you had been at that event (that is, presuming that you weren’t…). You may nod in unanimity; or disagree deeply with what I have to say; or simply have a question, as a result… – in which case, please feel free to leave a comment (the form appears at the bottom of each post); and I will, once I’ve (moderated and) published it (if your remarks haven’t broken my scant and simple rules of decency and defamation, etc.), try and answer it (if applicable) as soon as I can. (If you’re really fortunate, you may even get a post written especially for you, in response!)
INTRODUCTION
Over the past four years – commencing with the huge amount of research I carried out to produce the Sustainable Tysoe? briefing paper (against the proposed Gladman development on Oxhill Road) – I have collated a large (digital) stack of documents dealing with various aspects of planning (specifically, neighbourhood planning) and development (not only of buildings, but of communities, of individuals, of neighbourhood resources). I have also contributed to this pile with the articles I have posted on my blog – The Bard of Tysoe – at least fifteen of which are responses to (mostly direct; although some do, admittedly, take a rather sideways glance at…) our parish’s various attempts to produce something resembling a neighbourhood (development) plan (NDP).
Great planning does not mean either “most restrictive” or “most laissez-faire”. It means creating the conditions for growth and change while maintaining a vision of the common good. It balances competing interests. It includes a grasp of the cumulative effect of individual decisions…. It can protect long-term benefits against damage from short-term profit. It has the ability to spot problems before they become crises and find a way to address them. It can review alternative approaches to an issue, such as population growth, and promote the best ones. It has clarity and consistency, so everyone knows where they stand. It has the ability to review the results of its own decisions, and learn from them. It is informed by knowledge, not guesswork. It is the result of genuine and transparent public debate.
– Rowan Moore: Boris, we agree London is a great city…
In my latest post on the subject – as it finally looked like there might be a version of the NDP submitted for examination (although not without a large amount of revision, and late-night cramming…) – I simply linked to these previous writings: as they (sadly, in the case of the ones offering constructive criticism) are still vitally relevant and pertinent (even those written three years ago). However, having all been ignored or denounced – and then summarily removed from the trail of documentary evidence that is needed to explain the evolution of the ideas captured within the Plan (as well as those so discounted) – I feel now is the time to collate (and, where needs be, summarize) their ideas in one place: not just to demonstrate how my prescience has, sadly, come to pass; but to use the inherent research and reasoning to explain, more thoroughly:
As I pointed out in my previous post on the proposed Tysoe Neighbourhood Development Plan, my request for copies of the Representation Form in alternate formats for those of us who are disabled not only fell on fallow ground, but were deliberately deleted from the Tysoe Parish & Community website. As I cannot complete either the online form, or the paper one, I am therefore asserting my right – under the Equality Act 2010 – to provide my Pre-Submission Regulation 14 Consultation feedback in an alternate format – namely by way of this blog post, and all the other blog posts I have written on the subject, listed below:
Please note that should all these comments once more vanish into the ether, and not be appended as “evidence” to the version of the Neighbourhood Development Plan submitted for inspection, I shall ensure – through whatever channels are available to me – that they are put forward to the relevant bodies both as proof of long-term opposition to the Plan’s approval, methodologies and non-democratic nature; and as testimony to the fallacy of the supposed “consultation” that has been falsely promoted within the Plan itself (as most villagers would concur).
Introduction
Surprise ballot results are all the rage, it seems: deflating arrogance; defying expectation; demonstrating the real power of real people. Being at the heart of “the Shires”, huge local majorities for Brexit and a part-time, non-resident Tory MP (more interested in property and anti-environmental, non-executive, share-bearing, board positions) are givens… – however, as with last week’s General Election, seeing (what is now called) The Neighbourhood Development Plan – rather amusingly (as it covers the years 2011–2031) entitled TYSOE – A village for the 21st Century and Beyond – through to implementation (whatever that means) may not be so simple or predictable.
A few days ago, a piece of paper entitled “Save Upper Tysoe” fell through our letterbox. Yes – another campaign against another invidious building scheme: proposing another dense housing development in another unsuitable place. No – not by one of the accustomed large property developers or house-builders… – but as outlined by that aforementioned Neighbourhood Development Plan (NDP).
Yes – really.
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell
Pain, it appears, has no appointed programme; nor consequent sleep any scheduled assignation. Alive (afterwards) to the fact that I had spent too much of my day in writing – itself a diversion from the devouring distress of a deepening migraine, gnawing at my left eyeball like some resolute rodent after rotting fruit – it was, however, the subsequent clumsiness – born of fading concentration; my proprioception misty and maladroit (even at the best of times) – that was the crucial moment’s mainspring: an instant unwinding, a lightning strike cascading through my stricken, confounded limbs; rapidly unfurling its coercion, before reconvening all its clout, condensed, at the accustomed spot, speck… the spike where my circuits were sabotaged so very long ago.
What hath night to do with sleep?
No manner of oscitant opioid, lethargic anxiolytic, or torpid tricyclic would rid me of my wretchedness and wakefulness: an expected early night failing fast; successive struggles satisfying me that the only remedy – however short-lived – should be yet more distraction: my boots, recuperating by the front door, cajoling me, inveigling exercise and exploration; demanding to get back on my feet.
The village yet damped-down beneath the oil of night; the only report, the high-pitched, mock-bark fracas of fox-cub. In the nucleus of nautical dawn, all is grey: green-grey grass; mauve-grey cloud; brown-grey stone; black-grey horizon – the world the colour of mallard, wood-pigeon, blackbird, and rook.
Leaving the Shipston road, the burble of an old valve radio being spun between stations grows with the wheat. My footsteps and stick-falls are silent, here: but still that splashing of song sooner turns trickle; soon turns stream; turns river; turns waterfall – drenching me in an incessancy of resonant comfort; drowned merry in a sea of skylarks. To my right, a crisp rustle of stalk. Then muffle of noiselessness. Only as I move on, the blades once more immobile, threat dissipated or dissolved, does the torrent of Matins restart.
Sunday
There is a hierarchy, it seems, to Tysoe’s with-sun-rising birds. As the first sodium-bright slash of dawn slices the horizon, the barn owl – its wings the shade of the night-mourning sky it haunts – yet circles the windmill: peeved, perhaps, that my presence has quiesced the small creatures in the verges, trembling umbellifers, ruffling daisies. The hedges here serenade me with the river-runs of goldfinch; the gossip of sparrows; the bossy robin; the caution of blackbirds. The crops, a sea of skylarks: effervescent; ubiquitous. But none yet leave their roosts. It is the raptors which rise pre-eminently on the cool air: a lone buzzard, one lazy, subtle flap of its wings propelling it yet higher. A glint-eyed kestrel shearing across my path; grasping the dead branch of a wayside oak from which to study me. There is nothing here to interest such a hunter; but yet he waits until I have passed before busy wings pull him beyond my sight.
A male pheasant, paranoid, dull-witted, staggers away from me: its drunken pose and anguished cacophonies aimed at naught; only rendering it more manifest. Thirty paces I tail this manic meandering, before remembrance of cover emerges between those frenzied eyes.
As far as I am concerned, the only thing that can be achieved, when both my mind and body are suffused with deep, thick, viscous torment (echoed by repeated, random interference in both ears: stereophonic sussurations of spite…) – as I have stated so many times before – is walking. Apart from summoning lurking asthma, I know there is little worse I can subject my aching frame to. Plus, of course, my depression will ease, the further my journey. And on a morning like this – clear skies and concomitant summer balm; goldfinch twinkling in the hedges; chaffinch in the fletching oaks; buzzard and skylark floating above; sheep lazily grazing (heavy in their winter coats); and cattle uniformly resting in the shallow corrugations of ancient fields – what else am I to do? It is too generous a day to be shackled by sheets and shocking stair-rods of pain.
The first mile is hard: as if battling through stacked mattresses. But, reaching the sown fields, resistance fades, and my limbs begin to move with supernatural ease. Through my second gate, the path flowing beneath me, last week’s fresh cowpats have been grilled by the new heat, drilled by flies; but fudged treachery lies beneath the further stampede of hoof-prints, incised as the cattle migrated to new pasture. Despite the surface-split soil, moisture lurks. I wonder for how long.
Walking is magic. Can’t recommend it highly enough. I read that Plato and Aristotle did much of their brilliant thinking together while ambulating. The movement, the meditation, the health of the blood pumping, and the rhythm of footsteps… this is a primal way to connect with one’s deeper self.
– Paula Cole
As part of my ongoing therapy, not only am I increasingly inhooped by a rising bricolage of motivational tomes and workbooks; but I find myself engulfed in periodic upsurges of rippling diaries, forms, and tables: a flux of unsullied A4 wavelets, tiding over me as temporary succour; busying me; until, eventually – when they are progressively overlaid with my records, registers, and particoloured responses – they crystallize into frangible stepping-stones, leading me steadily ashore. Rush ahead too expeditiously, though, and these will crumble, along with my tentative betterment. Forbearance is key – especially when allied with deep trust, hard listening, and terrifying honesty: the underpinnings of hope, if not yet achievement.
