The loss of distant horizons – almost, but not quite, a literature review…

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).

My answers to the Neighbourhood Development Plan questionnaire (with a handful of minor edits…)

Q9
Lower and Middle Tysoe have already met their targets under Stratford District Council’s Local Plan; and yet the village is blanketed with active house building: none of which is affordable to our (meaning the majority of residents’) children: who have therefore to move out of the village (a heartbreaking process that I have sadly witnessed several times).

What I would really like to know is why the Neighbourhood Plan that was proposed (and seen as a good idea by most inhabitants) has transmogrified into a Neighbourhood Development Plan. Is it because those involved are keen on increasing the prices of the houses in Lower Tysoe; or simply wish to fill the pockets of our local property dealers (i.e. estate agents)?

Also: it is claimed that the NDP involved a great deal of public/inhabitant consultation: it “reflects the views and aspirations of Tysoe Residents” you stat(ed). But, as most of this involved writing “disagreed” against the majority of responses (which obviously made the NDP committee, and especially its chair, uneasy), surely the opposite is the case? Why?

[As my comments above are mostly questions, it seems to me that writing “disagreed” against them provides no sort of answer – in which case you have not only not ‘listened’ to me (as in all previous drafts); but have provided the politician’s usual defective reply: which is obviously a case of failed linguistic logic. I would like real answers, please.]

Q11
There seems to be an absence of sustainability: a property which I would have hoped ran through the document like a glistening thread of gold.

For going out, I found, was really going in…

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.)

The soul that sees beauty…

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.

Is this now My Hill…?

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.

Up Hill and Down Dale; or There and Back Again…

It was always ‘The Hill’ – or even ‘My Hill’ – never given its given name. Not that such mattered. When I was trialling my resurrected skill of perambulation, it was my habituation – requiring a destination that stretched and tautened my ill-used muscles frequently, as a baker will confront his callow dough. And not just those slack sinews of leg and arm; but a locus which tantalized my cognitive tendons, too – for, if the place bore no intrigue, it bore no reward.

It was only My Hill because my excursions were timed for those hours when the dog-walkers, kite-fliers, and recalcitrant children would likely be elsewhere: awarding me a selfish kingdom of solitude; but one where I could practice my eccentricities without fear of shame or chagrin; where I could talk to those whose names were fixed, in memoriam, to benches; or to the grazing, scrubbing cattle… – or simply myself. It was only The Hill because it was the only hill: a quarry-shocked crag; a two-hundred-and-eight-metre climb above the grey flatness of urbanity to the Cotswold Way – a deterrent, a border almost, most effective to the majority of those level-pegged inhabitants of uniformity.

Faith, I’ll bear no base mind…

It is seven months and six days since I last donned my fervent walking boots and headed out of the front door in search of the spiritual nourishment only nature can provide – the act of doing so more psychologically and physiologically strenuous than I had initially envisaged. But such challenges are there for us to subjugate… if we are to be alive to our values (and alive for them). Should we let either external constraints or internally-driven apprehensions suppress (or even oppress) our compelling predilections and true-hearted desires, then surely our very identities and individualities are at risk of corruption or cessation.

Tomorrow will be dying…

Here I am, sitting at the garden table, wringing out the occasional, disconnected phrase – with the encouragement of a variegation of beautiful, purring, tiny hoverflies feasting on the pansies, whilst revelling in the scent of proximate herbs, honeysuckle and ivy; sheep bleating stochastically from the Edge Hills; the call of St Mary’s tower punctuating my stop-motion creativity; interrupted by the passing murmurations of neighbours, occasional squabble of sparrows, and annoyance of dogs… – trying to express the joys (and consequential griefs) of being wilfully, ill-fully alive in Tysoe, during an Indian Summer that could dent even my well-armoured atheism.

Yesterday, however, I was a coincident Superhuman. Although – demonstrating the unequivocal effect of medication on the body’s ability to transcend its own physical and mental limits – I must admit that a form of ‘cheating’ was at the root of this accomplishment. Inadvertently, it has to be said. But, yes, I would do it again – despite feeling, this morning, through hyper-overexertion, as if I had gone ten rounds (geddit) with a steamroller… – although it is unlikely such an opportunity will present itself for quite some time….

[The medicine in question has been prescribed to try and reduce the stratospheric levels of my neuropathic pain; and the impact – that is, the frequency and intensity – of my almost-constant cervicogenic headaches. (They’re not really ‘migraines’, in the usual sense: because they are provoked by the huge tangle of nerve damage in and around my cervical spine.) A temporary side-effect of this – which is why some people take huge, ever-increasing, risky overdoses recreationally – is a ‘buzz’, once you reach a certain, individual level. I, though, am at only half the (mammoth) maximum dose – which is where I will stay for the next few months – and have only noticed its energizing effects (initially just a gentle, almost inaudible hum) in the last fortnight: after nearly three months of titrating the quantity I take (because of its potential for ‘evil’). Last week – as I was about nine‑tenths of the way to my currently-prescribed limit – this then-new bombilation lasted a couple of days. But it seems that yesterday – and I’m therefore glad I gathered rosebuds while I could… – was it: my last chance at glory. (Well, until my GP and I decide – if we ever do; and depending on the drug’s efficacy – to head a little further towards its sensibly-imposed ceiling.) So I grasped that chance as if my life depended on it.]

Usually, as the regular reader of this blog will know – however ‘easy’ the average onlooker may think it appears – I struggle intensely to put one foot in front of another: because such an activity exacerbates the already high levels of pain I continually experience – and from the first step onwards. (And trust me, it gets exponentially worse with each succeeding one.) As that poor soul (either the reader or the onlooker) will also know: this doesn’t stop me – when other factors don’t intervene (such as those three-day ‘migraines’) – from battling onwards: always hoping that the reward of a good walk won’t be spoiled by the consequent agony and downtime. Sadly, of course, it always is. (If my abilities were magnified by a factor of ten, yesterday; then the consequences are of at least the same factor.)

Such innate (and well-exercised) stubbornness is probably, realistically, at the root of yesterday’s remarkable achievement – however much its effects were magnified. If I had not already possessed the willingness to push myself, then the drug would have had nothing to amplify. (I obviously cannot speak to the truth of this statement for athletes caught doping: but I think it is not difficult to extrapolate from my experience and draw your own conclusions.) However, it was nice to be reminded of what – many years ago – I could do every day, week in, week out, without harm or effort. And, therefore, for me, my decrepit, torturous state, today, was simply an immensely worthwhile exchange.

I had decided to scale, again, the west face of Spring Hill, via Centenary Way; and then split off, around Sugarswell Farm, to head for Brunchfast at Upton House. This I achieved – despite fighting the slithering mud above Old Lodge Farm (where the thrum of building work melded with the passing cars above and below) – and with time to spare. I therefore spent a happy half-hour sat on a stile above Blackwell Wood, jotting down some initial aide-mémoires about my climb.

Apart from the promising weather and the dispersing school traffic, there was little to mark of my traipse through the village. A couple of brief chats – about the chilly breeze, the forecast, the scudding clouds… – and then no sign of another being until I reached Sugarswell Lane: where the hedge was carefully being flailed. There weren’t even that many birds around until I reached the expansive field of linseed on the other side of the road.

A small portion of this had been recently harvested (the combine now silently parked on the far edge): leaving the soil coated with a muesli-mix of flakes and stalks; but the remaining crop hid small feastings of goldfinches (especially amongst the thirty-three-strides-separated tyre tracks): which I regularly disturbed, despite my best efforts, until they formed a large tinkling charm bobbing and circling above me. They only settled when I did – but what divided them into their separate resting-places, I cannot say.

The only other interlopers here were infrequent, tall, proud stalks of barley – glowing head and shoulders above the main crop – escapees from the margins: where a ready mixture of generously-furnished plants (the agricultural equivalent of those suspended peanuts in our front gardens) would soon go to seed as winter food for non-migrating flocks.

One moment, though, above all, had characterized my ascent. As I closed the gate behind me, before entering the treeline – which I think always looks like a well-organized gathering of broccoli, from the Stratford-upon-Avon road, especially when well-lit – I glanced backward. Or at least this was my intention. I must have stood there for at least fifteen minutes: focusing on various parts of our parish – the sunlit church tower the most obvious… – from the gold-green patchworked plain beyond, up to our idiosyncratic trinket of a windmill. All I could think was how magnificent this view is; how wonderful it is to live here; and how miraculous it was that previous generations had allowed the place to evolve – that glorious medley of stone and brick; of slate and tile – without damaging the heavenly spirit of our miraculous haven.

But then doubt seized me as hard as any physical pain: and I wondered if this majesty could last; if our children will be the last to see, to enjoy, Tysoe at its best. And, yes, reader – despite the temporary drug-induced ‘high’ – I shed a tear or two: because – although I accept that each generation may think their time the ‘best’ – I see the prevalence of money (and its cousin greed) beginning to prevail again: dividing, destroying, dominating. I see equality dissolving; monopolies of wealth domineering and discriminating – …and with the power not just to rend the social paradise asunder, but the village’s physical existence, too. Not only that: but those who would fight such change are being quashed methodically and cruelly. What I saw was entropy made manifest… – and made by man.

Of course, I could thrill in the current material resplendence, and ignore the political shenanigans; roam these splendid pastures, blinkered to their travails, for as long as I am able. But I am not the sort of person who – intellectually – can stand idly by (even if my corporeal existence couldn’t remain upright for a minute or two without agony or vertigo instantly dragging it to bed; or to the floor). I am a natural-born resistance movement of one… – even if all I can do is pen the words that might, one way or another, motivate others to follow….

After a brief, breezy wander around Upton’s mirable orchard, gardens, and woodland, I set off to retrace my steps. Again, the linseed field was dotted with rising goldfinch; but, this time, the challenges of “the slithering mud” were accompanied by the mew of a buzzard, the calls and whistling flaps of pigeons, and the burbling annoyance of a discomposed robin. Emerging from the trees into a balmy atmosphere so unlike Upton’s crisp clarity… again, that view gave me pause; but I was – finally – beginning to wane, and decided just to enjoy the remainder of the walk ahead of me.

This time, as the path levelled out – parallel with the road between Lower and Middle Tysoe, where I had espied a lark earlier in the year – I was suddenly greeted by fifty or so house martins bobbing and weaving along, around and over the tall, untrimmed hedgerow – a rill running alongside it, the obvious attraction – gliding just above the freshly-ploughed field’s surface (as fine as any mole’s tilth), scooping the uplifted insects which had caused me to don my cap. Intermingled with a handful of red-bibbed and deep-fork-tailed, dark-blue-glistening swallows, they seemed unworried by my presence – parting to let me through, and then re-forming behind me – and delighted in their exercise. Sadly, though, of course, as the warmth of September fades, and summer dies away – nothing is permanent… – these birds will leave us; their nests already deserted until next year…. Farewell, summer.

That familiar conviction…

From time to time, I forget that kestrels can fly: so used am I to seeing them simply suspended (the majestic puppets of an invisible deity) – tail bowed, almost motionless, even in the strongest blusters – or merely spiralling (a little like a lazy lark): withdrawing upward for a better sighting of their prey. But, on Thursday, making my way by the Avon, a keen example flashed close by me: gliding (a little like a sizable swift) fleet and fluent across a burgeoning field of barley – winging perfectly parallel with the tips of the green fronds (and only a few inches above them) – reminding me that these raptors’ abilities in the air are manyfold and magnificent.

I had found myself on the route of an almost identical (in almost every fashion) stroll to one I embarked on two years ago: encountering (again) not just my first damselflies of the year (banded demoiselles: as always, on these verdant cow-parsley-crowned banks); but perhaps premature butterflies – including bejewelled peacocks and small tortoiseshells: both of which wouldn’t – shouldn’t…? – normally be around (in such numbers, anyway) until July. (Having said that, I did espy a rather pecked and pale mature peacock, today, torpidly sunbathing….)

I was also lucky to spend a few minutes, on my rather leisurely walk – when immersed deep in stippled woodland, shadows, and thoughts – observing both a chiffchaff (which I heard before I caught sight of); and then an almost perfectly-camouflaged treecreeper – speckled with markings that merged with the leaf-filtered dancing dapples of sunlight on bark: demonstrating perfectly its apt appellation with its characteristic entertaining flits and scurries… – before a friendly chocolate Labrador nudged tenderly at my knees in welcome: craving a little attention (with which it was duly rewarded… well, until its much livelier companion spaniel requested the same – albeit a little less politely…)!

I was reminded of all this, earlier today, by another within-reach windhover – displaying more (to my mind) typical movements… – as I mooched up Windmill Hill (exhibiting my own such “typical movements” – i.e. ponderous plodding, and swaying steps). At first, I was more entranced by a solitary red kite: bewraying not one simple flap of its splayed fingers as it traversed the Tysoe-facing slope against the prevalent easterlies; directed only, it appeared, by that inimitable rudder of a forked tail. (Such poise; such beauty; such grace….)

But then the kestrel rose – although not to a great height – directly in front of me: cruel beak and talons noticeably empty. At first, I assumed it would simply drift, habitually, to one of the many power-lines and posts that straddle the hill. But no….

Soon it dived again: a small pause above the ground; and then, this time, victorious… – although the resultant worm, trembling in its beak, seemed a meagre reward for such unsparing skill. As the bird quivered over the tall hedgerow, not far from my path, I lost sight of it; but wondered if this quarry could be (partial) breakfast for one of this year’s progeny.

Later, coming down the hill towards Epwell Road, joining the witless Compton Wynyates ‘road to nowhere’, I noticed (and was grateful) that the rights-of-way here have finally been re‑scribed – albeit crudely, with some form of crop-killing spray. A cynical (rather large) part of me wonders if this would have been carried out at all, were it not for Saturday’s Tysoe Windmill Run.

And yet the more popular, direct footpath from Shipston Road had obviously only been re-instituted as a consequence of those runners’ pounding feet pulverizing the field of clover-rich green manure as they descended. If my fellow wanderers, today, are anything to go by, there is still some confusion as to where the authentic route lies.

By the way, the reason for the lethargy of my loitering circuit of Windmill Hill, this morning – apart from the obvious avian attractions (additionally, rare yellowhammers; the usual truculent rooks, and cheeping dunnocks by the dozen) – was the long tail of a virus which finally floored (well, bedded) me, over the weekend.

I therefore missed the chance to admire the stalwarts taking part in the above event. However, I was delighted to witness (from my bedroom window) the village’s transformation – especially yesterday, in the glorious seasonal warmth – into Bourton-on-the-Water (or some such similar Cotswold tourist hotspot), thanks to the National Garden Scheme (NGS); and the ten kind hosts who welcomed so many visitors onto their becoming plots. Never before have I seen – or had the opportunity to rejoice at – our “small, blessed corner of Warwickshire” so inundated with such a wonderful plethora of checked and striped shirts, oft-inappropriate shorts, and fascinating (mostly straw-based) headgear!

The Good Lady Bard – who toured the gardens in yesterday’s sunshine (summoned by a full peal of bells); passively gleaning only complimentary reactions: not only to the individual plots, but also to people’s discovery of the wonder that (we, of course, know) is Tysoe… – was exceeding impressed with both the horticultural talent and passion on display; as well as the obvious skill and effort that had gone into organizing the whole shebang.

Huge thanks, therefore, to the marvellous Julia Sewell: whose idea I believe this was; and to all those volunteers whose implementation of her plans was impeccable.

At last, it feels like summer has truly arrived…!

Wary of the furrows that we’ve churned…

Who can tell me where I am…?

Having worked in agriculture, I struggle to understand those landowners and/or farmers who plant a crop, and then force people to tread all over it, willy-nilly: damaging the young seedlings; flattening the ground; and, ultimately, reducing the yield. Try walking up to Tysoe Windmill, at the moment, and play a jolly game of ‘spot the path’ on your ascent. (Fun for the whole family!)

This is not a path; this is not a stile…

If you’re like me – badly disabled – you may be tempted to take the route of least resistance: looking for a gap in the next hedge, and heading for it as straight as the crow flies (although not today: the northerly wind was buffeting them like a mainsail rounding the Orkneys…); crossing your fingers that a gate or stile lurks there. However, if you’re really like me, and have innate, well-developed sensitivities about these things, you will try and follow the tractor’s elephantine depressions in the soil, tiptoeing gingerly between the green sprouts, and trying to minimize the spoil.

Probably pining for the fjords…

That such a strategy led me to encounter the stiffened, stripped corpse of a young badger seems strangely apposite. If it had been trapped, I suppose it would have been removed. However, rendered paranoid by the deterrence of erased trails – and a pair of rusty spikes seemingly designed to carry trespassers’ severed clotpoles… – I wondered if this too was a warding-off, even a poisoning? The rigid death-pose looked highly unnatural; and I can only pray that the resultant scavengers were more fortunate, if so.

Enter Guiderius with Cloten’s head…

Legally, paths have to be reinstated within a fortnight of ploughing and planting – but, of course, some (I feel I must be allowed to call them) capitalist bastards prefer you not to access their land at all: and will therefore string barbed or electrified wires across defined rights-of-way. Anarchist that I am, I am more than happy to smash these illegal (and anti-social, of course) blockages with my handy walking stick: until I can pass without fear of major bodily harm (and the subsequent Bard-invoked lawsuit).

Theory, one; reality, nil…

Such routes have either been hard-fought-for; or have existed as byways for many centuries. Why should the greed of a few spiteful individuals ruin – as they did today – my enjoyment of fresh air and public access: especially when I know these are effective treatments for both my chronic pain, as well as my PTSD-originated depression? (I therefore returned home more miserable than when I had set off… – my many rude mutterings causing the local, wind‑hovering buzzards to mew in dismay; the chattering chaffinches to blush; and the truculent rooks to welcome me with open wings….)

Round like a circle in a spiral…

Packwood House – what a real path actually looks like…

What a contrast, though, from yesterday! Not only the weather: but every footpath I traversed between Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House was clearly marked, and well-maintained. You feel welcomed (and even appreciated); and you therefore relax (despite, in my case – after a long, enforced bout of rest – setting too high a target; and not doing myself any physical favours – hence the re-stretching of limbs, today…).

Bluebells – you wouldn’t have known, otherwise would you…?

This was strong, sweet medicine, which required no sugar to swallow: especially as the wildlife also seemed happy in the surprising warmth. (My fleece stayed on for only a few hundred yards; and even a thin, technical T-shirt felt too much! Today, a thick, hooded fleece and a long-sleeved thermal vest were no protection from the harsh wind… – although it did help push me up the hill…!)

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows…

All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey…

…I’ve been for a walk on a winter’s day: well, autumn’s – but that breeze, “after summer evermore succeeds”, truly felt like “Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold” puckering at my face and fingertips. Certainly: “Life’s autumn past, I stand on winter’s verge”. And with meteorologists marking the season’s change on the first of December; last weekend’s bitter frosts; and only just over eight hours between dawn and dusk; it really does feel like “dead-cold winter must inhabit here still”.

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;

When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth.

All may be well; but if God sort it so,

’Tis more than we deserve or I expect.

– Shakespeare: Richard III

Our young oak discarded almost all of its leaves abruptly and unceremoniously in the recent gales: scattering them far and wide – and only a small handful of hardy, corroded bracts still flicker tenaciously but tenuously in its stark silhouette. However, wandering around the area between Baddesley Clinton and Packwood House, on Wednesday, I noticed that most of the oak trees there – albeit more full-grown; and huddled together, in damp, deep, fecund ground (some of which still clings to my poor boots) – yet hoard their marcescent foliate treasures: with glowing, backlit hints of jade amongst the gold and bronze; vivid under the gelid sun, against the sapphire sky. (Who needs a rainbow…?)

These more-developed specimens stand in the precise line of a hedgerow (above) that had not long been flailed, military‑style, within an inch of its life – if not just beyond. Cropped so short that I could easily see over it; and transparent as chicken wire – despite a large uncultivated strip between crop and boundary – this act of agricultural barbarity has left no shelter for any overwintering flocks; and therefore no chance of sustenance from within its boughs. The deep marshy tyre-tracks also showed how very recently this savaging had taken place – the footpath churned into a series of treacherous ankle-snapping, puddled diagonal ridges.

If this compulsive cut had been set against a major thoroughfare, I would have had a little sympathy, perhaps. But this was well-removed from civilization, between two extensive arable fields; and seemed to represent an over-attentive brutal addiction to unnecessary neatness for which I can conjure up no justification. As Nicola Chester – one of my favourite observers of the natural world – recently opined: “It’s the hedges way off the roadside that get me; tractor tracks slewing all over the verges and for why?” And she described my recent encounter with a decapitated waymarker as “Ridiculous, extreme unnecessary hedge cutting!”

I would hope, as the warmth returns – bringing with it our summer flocks – that these torn branches – already “too short and thin”; and just as they begin to recover, with their emanating buds – are not subjected to the same repeat indignity: leaving no space for nests, huddles of sparrows, retreating small mammals or endangered moths and butterflies. (Although, with a rule change effectively banning such trimming after the first of March, each year – unless in exceptional circumstances – I am starting to feel a tad more confident….) Such an action, then, would reduce the availability of food for any emerging chicks: and it is no wonder, therefore, that the RSPB is concerned about the future of agricultural wildlife – especially when you learn that “over 40 years the long term decline in farmland birds is 50 per cent”.

I do understand why hedges are trimmed. [Although, in my day – nearly forty years ago – this was a more intensive, manual undertaking: and the small mixed farm I worked on was run by a family who cherished the brambles and the resultant, eager wildlife. (If you truly want to see how much has changed in a few generations, the Ladybird book, above – What to look for in autumn – from 1960, reads like ancient history.)] What I don’t grasp is the seemingly modern trend of too-frequent, over-enthusiastic, reiterative cutting: especially where – as here – such wide field margins exist: which surely negate most of the reasons for this intrusive (and expensive) form of land management in the first place.

If farmers want to reinforce their credentials as custodians of our natural environment (not that there are many – if any – places truly wild, or “natural”, anymore, on this small island); and keep the respect of those who also use and enjoy the land, then perhaps they – although accepting that many already do… – need to apply a little more thought (along with the Government, of course), and balance the social issues with the economic. Just imagine the outcry if our mature oak trees were all trimmed so severely every year.

Code green: “You shall not pass…”

I know, as a lifelong (but now decelerating) walker, that I have a duty to the owners and tenants of the land I cross (not that we aren’t all “tenants”, really…). But, of course, this is a reciprocal responsibility – and one, that from my perspective, isn’t being upheld – not everywhere, anyway.

In a short crawl up an extremely windy Windmill Hill, this morning (along the infamous Compton Wynyates cul‑de‑sac…), I encountered two electrified fences (one half-covered – after a tunnel requiring acrobatics and/or body armour – pictured above – one not) barring my way – and in a field with no livestock whatsoever (well, apart from the rare breed of a struggling Lesser-Spotted Bard) – a missing sign (top); a freshly-hedge-trimmed waymarker (which also acts as a support post for those of us crippled enough to struggle with stiles at the best of times – pictured at the bottom, along with the bare electric wire); and, of course, now that harvest has come and gone, paths that are mere palimpsests:

Those who have trodden these before me have done remarkably well to create new, faint tracks on the freshly-cropped and -tilled earth – but these are visible only from certain angles; in certain lights – and, according to the OS map I always carry with me, diverge in several places. Surely it would be easier on everyone – especially as the scattered trees appear to prevent no obstacle – to drop in a few signposts?

Having worked on a farm (dairy and arable) – albeit before the invention of much of today’s automated machinery – I know that keeping public rights-of-way (PROW) maintained and open can be an inconvenience at best; and that those who tread them dropping litter, letting their dogs loose, etc. can be a menace at worst. But this is no excuse – certainly not for the ‘No trespassing: violators will be shot; survivors will be shot again’ sign I encountered last week… – and definitely no reason to dissuade people from enjoying their local patch. Nature – shaped as it is by our very presence – belongs to all of us.

Things are looking up… (or ‘That’s Entertainment’…)

Once, in a particularly insalubrious pub, an old man with a face like a wet leather satchel gripped my forearm, locked his milky blue eyes on mine, and enunciated very precisely: “Never forget to look up, son. Never forget to see what’s around you.” The utter drunken seriousness with which he imparted these pearls of wisdom gave me pause. I remember staring blankly at velveteen wallpaper and a middle-aged barmaid with a wide smile and a deep cleavage, and thinking that the oracle of the Nag’s Head had probably had enough votive lager. At the time, it sounded trite. [Now] it makes more sense than ever. I feel like I’ve rediscovered my own country, found a series of secret rooms in a house I’ve lived in for my entire life. The reality is that England has some of the most inspiring countryside and driving in Europe, if not the world. We have every type of road, and far too much weather. We have excitingly stupid wildlife, and views that make your jaw hit the floor while your brain struggles. But, best of all, we have the freedom to enjoy them, as long as we make the effort…. Put simply, we should heed the advice of small, drunk old men in pubs, and remember to appreciate what we’ve got on our doorstep. We should look up, and look around. And get out there and do it.

– Tom Ford: Top Gear magazine

You meet some funny (meaning ‘strange’; and sometimes ‘unusual’) creatures when out on walks – and not just in Tysoe, either. Earlier in the week, on this “slow-time Monday” – but not for the first time – I came across a group of Ents having what my dad would call a ‘confab’ (more properly, of course, an ‘Entmoot’).

The few, sparsely scattered, other folk following the park walk trails at Hanbury Hall appeared totally oblivious – were in too much of a rush to complete the course, their goal; or, even in their leisure, just weren’t interested in the “unhasty” nature of the discussion. And, to be honest, I would have passed them by, too – intently admiring the restoration of George London’s early eighteenth-century landscape; and listening to the busy birdlife and the sheep’s echolalia – were it not for the assembled young cattle, all singularly rapt in ruminative attention. There was obviously wisdom to be imparted, and to be absorbed.

If I had not “looked up” – habitually concentrating on avoiding bard-traps in the ridge-and-furrow, and putting my already-soiled boots once more unto the the copious amounts of sheep and cattle droppings – I would not have spotted the Ents’ wise and friendly faces above me: looking down (but not in the patronizing way that implies), welcoming all who would stop and tarry a while, as is their wont. We should therefore be grateful to “the Elves ‘curing the Ents of their dumbness’ [and] that it was a great gift that could not be forgotten”: for, if there are to remain guardians of this fragile planet, it is to them we should look and listen, and take great heed.

After mutual introductions had been made – at length; and in a relaxed-but-formal fashion very much to my liking (“Decided? No, we’ve only just finished saying good morning…”) – and after being complimented on dressing appropriately in raindrop-repellent ’roo bush-hat and showerproof fleece (there was a threatening Edward Seago sky: which would soon deliver on its dark promises) – the tallest of the Ents asked me if I had yet visited the last of their nearby wards: the black poplars, on the edge of the old deer park. I responded that I had; and that I had wondered – admiring them, their solitude and fortitude – what supernatural presence had protected these unfamiliar beings – “the most endangered native timber tree in Britain” – from prevailing destruction. Now I knew. And was thankful.

These trees, although commonly seen during the middle ages, found it difficult to adapt to modern agricultural and woodland management methods. Today they are rare so we hope to plant more using cutting from these trees.

– National Trust: Hanbury Hall park walks

As is their modest way, the Ents – as “Shepherds of the Trees” – regretted that their efforts had not been more successful, more numerous; but were pleased that – albeit almost too tardily – we humans (at least some of us) had finally begun to appreciate what lay around us; how such life – “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower… that blasts the roots of trees” – was precious beyond jewels, beyond anything man-manufactured. “Would that the trees might speak on behalf of all things that have roots, and punish those that wrong them!”

Eventually, I had to leave them to their concerned contemplations, and continue on my way. Their leader bowed from his great height, and held me gently by the hand – his bark much gentler, less craggy, than its sight would imply – and thanked me for my time. I replied that it was freely given; that I was grateful for their involvement; and that I would soon – by their measure – return. It was time well-spent, I said; and most, most valuable.

Noticing, as I moved on, that they were not marked on the provided map, scrumpled into my jeans pocket (and now lying before me, as I write), I wondered where I would next encounter them. I was sure that, whatever their ubiety, the poplars would be well within their sight; and that, if necessary, they would find me.

Passing through the burgeoning woodlands, after skirting Goodwins Hill Coppice; and before ascending the grassy slope to St Mary the Virgin Church – beautifully situated, with gorgeous panoramas (over the Vale of Evesham, back towards the Cotswolds), and backed by the dense Church Coppice – the conversation stayed with me: and I viewed all the trees I encountered (the older ones often acting as shade and shelter to the estate sheep and their now well-grown lambs) with fresh vision. I wondered, though, if the Ents would approve of the beautiful decorative carpentry within: much of it – including a pair of eye-feasting, neck-breaking, barrel-vaulted chapel roofs – originating from the Vernon family’s (the founders and then residents of Hanbury Hall) major restoration of 1840. The land is now well-managed and -loved; but, all those years ago, were the originating woods replanted to replace those toppled in the name of creed and craft…?

¶

It was only upon leaving the church that the foreshadowed rain finally fell. As I reached the bottom of the hill, just before I reached the avenue of fortunate oak trees (almost sold for timber, in the early 1960s, by Doris Vernon, the widow of Sir George Vernon, “to raise some extra funds”; but saved by the National Trust on “a surprise but well timed visit”), I walked into a grey wall of wetness. An unfortunate couple in lighter clothing had to be rescued by the farmer, who had been herding the sheep from field to field – bouncing the poor, drenched souls back to the comfort and respite of Hanbury’s servants’ hall tea-room, in his covered John Deere Gator (a vehicle I am still trying to persuade my dear Lady Bard to buy me for my birthday…!).

Was it purely coincidence that the trees saved me, with such perfect timing – like a lamb to the water… – from being soaked…?

In memoriam Joseph Ashby…

If this field…

If this field could cry, then it would;

If this field could cry, it would cry

For hare, for badger, for silence,

As the owl cries, but not for care.

If this field could weep, then it would;

If this field could weep, it would weep

For unity, for history,

As the cloud weeps, but not for rain.

If this field could grieve, then it would;

If this field could grieve, it would grieve

For tilth, for furrow, for the plough,

As the horse grieves, but not for ease.

If this field could pass, then it would;

If this field could pass, it would pass

For myth, for symbol, for tribute,

As the days pass, but not for night.

What once was plenty was all our fathers’

And our mothers’ too; was shared in labour

And enjoyment; was permanent and firm

As the ridges and footsteps they planted:

Knowing never to cry, weep, grieve, or pass

By this field that grew them, formed them entire.

If this field could cry, then it would;

If this field could weep, then it would;

If this field could grieve, then it would;

If this field could pass, then it would;

But it will not lie easily

Entombed beneath base usury.

If this field could live, then it would;

If this field could live… it would live.

Look at it this way…

A man walks into an empty bar. Gathers up all the darts he can find; can hold. Just. Turns his back to the board, and walks to the oche. Stops. Throws all the darts in his hands, in one go, over his shoulders. Luckily – but then the bar was empty, remember – no-one is hurt. Unluckily, most of the darts either clatter to the floor: directly; or after bouncing off the brick wall. One even pierces a wooden ceiling beam; and hangs there, quivering for a while. Amazingly, two hit the sisal. One, outside the metal ring. The other, double top. The perfect finishing score.

No different to putting a needle in a map, blindfold, really.

So why Tysoe? Apart from an available and willing landowner eager to make a few quid (aren’t they all); and a field large enough to hold enough identical boxes (boxed in); what makes our village such an attractive target? Why not Hook Norton, for instance? Oh, sorry.

¶

I spent most of my working life in some form of marketing; and we would not even think about thinking about bringing a product to market without a great deal of research – about its viability; about its likely customers; about the relevant competitors. But, above all, we would be creative: rather than simply producing the Mk1 Grommet in eternity; and hoping that enough people would carry on liking it, or learning to like it, as it always was, that we would make money from it. You have to innovate to accumulate. As they say.

Perhaps, though, in the property world, it’s not like that. Find enough fields; apply the same layout, the same whatever-the-word-is-for-the-opposite-of-design; prepare to repulse nimbys; throw a lot of money at the planning process; and, hey presto, you’ll have launched so many darts that it doesn’t matter if so many of them miss their target. One success will easily pay for a handful of failures. Rinse and repeat.

It doesn’t matter if there’s no gas to heat your brick estates efficiently in a world of oil and stone; nor that you will eradicate centuries of vital heritage (you can always offset the ridge-and-furrow somewhere, can’t you); or create flooding; jam the roads; remove productive land from the foodchain; not fit the local vernacular. Soon enough, so many examples of your commoditized crap will stick out of rural communities like sore thumbs, that no-one will notice that the original, manicured fingers are withering to bloody gangrenous stumps; now that this subtopia has become the norm. No more opposing digits: just interlocking hurt.

Now it’s the norm, all the rage, there’s no need to fight anymore. Acceptance. And from carpet bombing. Woot.

And all in the middle of nowhere. Now. here.

¶

So why Tysoe? Because it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter why, how or who. We are the faceless giants who will come in the night and eat up your tiny little dreams. We are omnivores. Grizzling and horrigust. We have no taste (except for money). We have no senses, no sense at all. Feed me, Seymour.

Might as well come quietly, then.

¶

A man walks into an empty bar. It used to be called the Peacock, you know. They’re turning it into apartments, next spring.

The Changing English Village (Part 2)

As I read more and more of Kathleen Ashby’s wonderfully detailed book – and wish that she had stayed in Tysoe, and carried out her thorough research and narration here… – it becomes obvious that certain themes echo down the centuries: some even remaining – or re-emerging – as contemporary issues. (To paraphrase Douglas Adams: For a few hundred years, nothing changed. Then, after a few centuries or so, nothing continued to change.)

One of the principal themes – Bledington, as Tysoe, being a rural economy – is, of course, land ownership (and the greed that can result); the continuing (if not growing) difference between those who have, and those who have not; and the attitudes of the richer classes to the poorer (never made quite so blunt, perhaps, as in the bearing and behaviour of the current, élitist, Tory-led government – and its continuing mission to boldly rid the poverty-stricken, zero-hour contracted, disabled, and unemployed of all their dignity…).

I know my place. I look up to them…; but while I am poor, I am honest, industrious and trustworthy. Had I the inclination, I could look down on them. But I don’t.

¶

One of the earliest references to this concerns the fourteenth-century, Malvern-born poet, William Langland – most famous for the beautiful and dreamy poem Piers Plowman – and his “passionate concern for the well-being of ordinary folk”:

All around him, Langland sees superstition, greed and riches, together with poverty unrelieved. Pope, priests, bishops, have all failed the people. Greed is the basic cause of evil, affecting not only the great folk, but merchants and tradesmen, and in even greater degree lawyers, those flatterers and sycophants. Langland says clearly what he means by greed. He contrasts “measureless meed” with “measureable hire”. Here is more than a Marxian touch. The longing for unearned increment is in all men; ‘capitalism’ is only one of its results….

“The poor have no power to complain though they smart” but “Ye macemen and mayors that are midmost and mean The King and the Commons have power.”

Langland does not look to rural knights or to the lords of lands for help. In this, and in looking to the towns, he is prophetic. The nineteenth century saw terrible need for help and saw the towns indirectly give it.

¶

Later, when Kathleen Ashby moves on to the sixteenth century, she discusses how…

The great struggles and developments of this period would continue and remain recognisably continuous through more than three hundred years, until the First World War in 1914. Villages would undergo changes apparently revolutionary, but never so thorough that many old patterns ceased to throw up problems, at least one of these, the relief of the poor, growing more acute and tragic for centuries and until 1918, never solved.

I think – as a social historian, very much in touch with the plight of those struggling to find meaning with and through their lives – Kathleen (especially given her heritage) would be heartbroken to see that we have, in the intervening century, regressed so terribly: with anyone who is different – because of unemployment, status, race, infirmity, etc. – being treated so badly, again, by those influencing – and letting themselves be influenced by – the modern press.

For a long time past the problem of poverty had grown more acute and more pervasive…. During the sixteenth century there were added to ‘God’s poor’ (the aged, the blind, the lame, the widow and the orphan) great numbers of destitute persons who were young and even, when not starved of food, able-bodied.

Will historians of the twenty-first century document us in the same way: with benefits sanctions and other measures forcing the ‘hardworking’ featured in political slogan-making to rely on food-banks and other charitable enterprises as leading examples of our belief in unattainable (but capital-led) supposed equality? What about our scurrying to spend increasing portions of our (hard-earned) salaries on property ownership?

In the course of the seventeenth century there came to be a score of freeholders. The husbandmen in their wish to be owners learned to borrow money: here begins the career of that potent and dangerous document… – the mortgage.

At the same time – eerily echoing the news stories and concerns of today – the numbers of labourers and the poor were increasing:

Some became casual workers, and vagrants and then destitute. This was an old problem. Henry VIII’s government had tackled it with some success, providing a parochial machinery and stimulating charity. Elizabeth and her Parliament had passed experimental legislation and checked its results…. But after the coming of James I these practices were discontinued and during the struggle between throne and Parliament the poor were left to parish officers.

The Restoration brought no return of systematic thought or planning…. Those who could have spoken for the poor were silenced and depressed; the idea of allowing or encouraging the poor to speak of their own condition was totally absent. On the contrary, under the dominance of the wealthy landowners who, now, in Boswell’s term “possessed” Parliament, and of industrial entrepreneurs and merchants there grew up an attitude to the poor of unheard of brutality and insolence whose development and spread would continue through the next century…

…and still be present today.

The move to enclosure, and private farming, and the concomitant removal of common land, also did nothing to help those at the bottom levels of rural society:

Arthur Young, the first great agricultural reporter was a propagandist for enclosure in his early writings and would later sum up the stimulating quality of outright possession in the well-known phrases “the magic of property turns sand into gold” and “the enjoyment of property… has clothed the very rocks with verdure”.

Beside the satisfaction of gain in produce or money, there were the more imaginative pleasures of ownership and mastery – of being lord of what one surveys and being able to say to one “Go!” and to another “Come!” and perhaps to a third “Vote!” Plainly, profit of this order helped to bring about… enclosure….

Sometimes it is said that the growth of the population of the country led to enclosures, but they were not advocated as a means of feeding the people: the absence of this motive is shown in the general absence of the wish to feed adequately even workers on the land.

There was in fact no adequate debate on the gains and losses from enclosures: exposition was one-sided. Enclosure would change the basis of thousands of communities but this fact was not to the front… landownership and therefore the management of land as property, rather than as soil for crops, was the ruling factor in English life….

The results of the enclosure were not in the economic sphere momentous: there was never emphasis on mere exploitation until the twentieth century. But the system which had come to an end was communal.

This dissolution of community – echoing my plea to the Planning Inspectorate re “the threats the cohesion of this community faces” – may be why we look at Mr White’s field of ridge-and-furrow, between Tysoe Manor and Oxhill Road, and see more than just lumps and bumps of earth. In our veins we understand implicitly what we have already lost; as well as seeing, explicitly, with our brains engaged, the need to preserve this co-operative relic from a long-lost time – the history and nostalgia that can be used in the game of planning poker we play against the likes of Gladman.

¶

As some of us now fight for living wages, so, in the eighteenth century, the obverse: “Maximum wages were controlled by the landlord-magistrates, but not the minimum.” Only as the eighteenth century rolled into the nineteenth would Samuel Whitbread, “the rich brewer and humane man and statesman”, introduce a bill to the House of Commons “to end the fixing of a maximum wage and to institute minimum pay”.

The easiest way to reduce costs of production was by the lowering of wages and increase of hours…. Even the humane Arthur Young wrote that “Everyone knows that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious… they must (like all mankind) be in poverty or they will not work.”

It would not surprise me if Iain Duncan Smith recites this eagerly, every night, before retiring to bed: where, no doubt, he sleeps easily in his cruel, simplistic beliefs.

Other doctrines, however, did allow the poor to have, at least, souls. With the growth of Methodism in the eighteenth century, and the outpourings of John Wesley, one day his movement “would assist the widespread revolt against evil conditions of living”.

“Want of tenderness,” Dr. Johnson said, “was want of parts and no less a proof of stupidity than depravity,” but England would require most of the nineteenth century to learn the truth of that.

¶

As hinted above, single mothers – as now – came in for particular criticism, as if they had made themselves poor on purpose:

Some have thought that the expectation of an allowance for each child from the parish, influenced unmarried mothers – a reasonable view in some cases but not here a necessary one and false in some parishes, e.g. Tysoe.

Here, Kathleen invokes the deep knowledge her father had of our village, our community; and it is easy to see obvious parallels ploughed between her adopted home of Bledington, and the village where she was raised; as well as between the past and the present.

One passage in particular raised my ire, though, with its modern equivalency in the “deep dark hell” of jobcentres – particularly for those suffering with mental illnesses:

The young and the lame went where their infirmities and capacities were not understood…. In many parishes when work was lacking overseers refused relief unless the men performed some set useless tasks or even actions that did not pretend to be work [including men being] set to lower the height of ridges in the fields by throwing soil into the furrows with spades; they might as well have been set [Sisyphus’] task of rolling a great stone up a hill.

I don’t believe all humans to be evil (although we all contain that seed…); but I do suspect that our tendency to selfishness, and the increasing mania for consumption, along with a parallel wish for ease and speed of delivery – of both goods and information (the received opinion seeming particularly popular – even though we have never had so much data readily within reach…) – have contributed to our continuing disdain for, and ill-treatment of, “anyone who is different” (especially those who we perceive to be beneath us): and particularly those who have less than we do.

These people frighten us, because they are an unknown quantity; but they are also easy to ignore, or, even worse, mistreat, because of their lack of similarity to us, to what we know and understand.

We are not “all in this together”. And never really were.