Could this poem be any more apt?

Well Readers, this was a bit of a ruprise, but a good one. M john Harrison, at 81 years old, is the oldest winner ever of the Booker, and also the first  author to identify as a science fiction writer – it’s true that several of Margaret Atwood’s novels are clearly science fiction (in my view) but she’s always rejected the title.

This is a very peculiar book. It has moments of great beauty, but also some startling violence. Aliens had invaded the City of London (or have they?) On the south coast, Marley, a woman with dementia, and Philip, a middle-aged beachcomber, try to cope with the ‘new normal’. Meanwhile, Philip finds an ‘artifact’ not exactly an alen, but definitely something sentient, with a character of its own.

It’s not exactly a cheerful read, but it has a lot to say about resilience, and ehat it means to be human.

Highly recommended!

Dear Readers, I’m sure you’ve all heard enough about me and my virus over the past two weeks, though I could entertain you with tales of nearly passing out in the shower and doing a ‘Shakin’ Stevens’ impression for most of last night. Suffice it to say that my usual GP has decided enough is enough and is going to try me on some antibiotics for the secondary chest infection, so I might soon have no cough but a whole range of other problems. I shall certainly be paying attention to my own article here. No more gallons of fruit juice for me!

And in the meantime, have a look at this cheeky parakeet. I think they always look their best in spring and autumn, when there’s a host of blossom or golden leaf to set off their green feathers. This one appeared to be trying to break off a twig. Probably a bored teenager.

And the light really is lovely at this time of year, especially once the fog lifts.

So here are a few more well-posed parakeets. Keep healthy out there!

Dear Readers, I’m still pretty sick so I decided to try out 111, the NHS online health advice line.I’d heard lots of complaints about it, but it worked beautifully for me.

First, a nurse was supposed to ring me back within 2 hours, which she did, to tell me a doctor would ring me back at 1.15.

Which he did, but sadly thete wasn’t a lot he could do. He was interested in whether I was breathless.The fever, shivering, joint pain and coughing were all just indicative of ‘a nasty virus’.

Fair enough! But while my body fights off whatever this is, I am cancelling dear friends and  social events left right and centre.

And now, at 17.49, I’m back to bed. See you tomorrow!

Morcup, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Readers, I have spent most of today in bed alternately baking and shivering with a touch of coughing thrown in. Definitely contacting the doctor on  Monday unless there’s a miraculous recovery tomorrow. But in the meantime, the last line of this poem has been playing in my head all day, so here it is. The obituary for my friend Ann was published in our local paper, The Archer, today, and although Ann was far from a shy woodland creature, she loved this poem…

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

By William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

Dear Readers, the lurgy that I picked up in Venice is the gift that just keeps giving, and I have spent most of the past few days prostrate, though without any celestial visitations. However, I do have a few thoughts to share with you.

I listened to a very interesting Radio Four programme about plug-in solar panels. These could be a real boon for anyone who can’t have the more typical solar panels, but there are a number of things to take into consideration, like the little question of whether your home electrical system can take electricity coming in as well as electricity going out. As you can see, I’m not a technical engineer but I did find this fascinating. You can listen to it here.

As a little light reading, I’ve started on this book:

In part I’m reading this because my friend Ann loved Tennyson, but I didn’t quite ‘get’ him, so I’m belatedly trying to work out what the attraction was. But what I’ve found  most interesting so far is the way that the whole idea of species becoming extinct was an existential crisis for people  living in the early 1800s; it had been taken for granted that God had created the world and that it was pretty much stable and static, so the thought that giant animals had roamed and the world and were clearly no longer here was terrifying. The author compares the shock that ensued with the thought of nuclear destruction or, more currently, through climate change: if the dinosaurs became extinct, what would happen to all the other animals walking the world, even humans? Things became even more complicated later with the theory of evolution. There are these moments in human history when all the old certainties crumble, and it’s interesting to see how artists react.

And although I’ve included this poem before, it seems like a good time to pop it in again.

The Land of Counterpane

Robert Louis Stevenson
1850 – 1894

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

And now I’m off to make a cup of tea and to recline elegantly on the sofa. I might even do a bit of Duolingo German.

Photo By Domenico Salvagnin from Legnaro, Italy – Frozen Leaf, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38378046

For my US friends. In hope.

Salt and Sand
Kathryn Kysar

In dark winter coats at sunset, we spell out SOS on snowy Bde Maka Ska. We throw orange cones over tear-gas canisters on Nicollet. We share blue plastic whistles with neighbors. We are as common as salt, as common as sand.

We stand guard wearing yellow vests at barricades and preschools. We line Lake Street with vigil candles. We burn memorial fires on Portland. We shuffle thousands strong down towered Minneapolis streets, wave signs on frigid freeway overpasses. We are as common as salt, as common as sand.

We check license plates from our evening armchairs, drive diapers to community centers. We wear layers and layers against the cold, against the winds. We are the sand on Minnesota roads, we are home-printed Know Your Rights pamphlets in Hmong, Somali, Vietnamese, Karen, Spanish, and Aramaic. We are a thousand frozen flowers and snow-covered framed photos. We are as common as salt, as common as sand.

We are warm cars waiting outside the Whipple Building with thermoses and blankets. We are fierce mothers keeping our children in the basement. We do not answer the door. Shades pulled. Curtains closed. Windows locked. Lights off. We are considering leaving the country. We have tough talks with our kids, but we are enduring. We are as common as salt, as common as sand.

We are scared; we are brave; we are fearful; we are fearless. We are not divided by rivers or lakes, not divided by railroad tracks or tree-filled parks. We are not divided by neighborhoods, as we are neighbors. The ice is slowly melting under our thousand grains of salt, our thousand grains of sand. We will stand.

Narrow-headed Ants (Formica exsecta) feeding on a moth wing. South Devon, UK. May. From https://www.flickr.com/photos/160919311@N04/46167270472

Dear Readers, the insect in the photo is a Narrow-headed Ant (Formica exsecta). It is one of the rarest ants in the UK, with populations in Scotland, and a single isolated population in Devon. The ant lives in woodland, where it has a symbiotic relationship with plants such as the Small Cow Wheat (Melampyrum sylvaticum), whose seeds are dispersed by the insect. The Capercaillie also uses the ants as a food source. 

Small Cow-wheat (Photo By Konrad Lackerbeck, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2278812)

These wood ants like more open areas in woodland, and build nests about 25cm tall around tussocks of grass or other vegetation – as the plants rot, they provide heat to the nest. The south-facing side is usually largest, which means that it is literally ‘solar-heated’. The individual workers also sunbathe, returning to the eggs and young and providing them with additional heat from their bodies. Finally, the roof of the nest is ‘thatched’, providing another layer of insulation.

A queen Narrow-headed Ant can live for 25 years, and there can be up to five thousand workers. The nest is also shared with another specieIs of ant, the Shining Guest Ant (Formicoxenus nitidulus) which is only 2-3mm long – it benefits from the protection of the nest, but may also solicit food from returning Narrow-headed Ant workers. There can be several Shining Guest Ant nests in each Narrow-headed Ant nest.

It’s evident that the Narrow-headed Ant is an important part of its ecosystem, but it is also vanishingly rare. The Devon population is the last one in England, and the species as a whole is described as ‘Near Threatened’ on the IUCN Red List. All this makes what’s happened in the last few days even worse.

Someone appears to have gone into  the Chudleigh Knighton Heath reserve in Devon, where the ants live, and dug up an entire nest with a spade.

There are apparently such people as ‘ant collectors’, who would pay a high price for such a rare species. Another possibility is that the nest has been taken by someone keen on re-wilding, who wants to introduce the ants elsewhere. Both possibilities pose risk to the ants, who were being  monitored closely by the Devon Wildlife Trust and Buglife – moving a nest, even to other suitable habitat, is a complicated procedure, involving a lot of assessment as to whether the spot provides enough shelter and food for the ants. Whatever the reason, decades of work by conservationists has been disrupted, and we can only hope that the ants survive. This is a crime and has been reported to Devon and Cornwall police, so let’s hope that someone shops the perpetrator.

I knew that people would  steal nestlings and bird eggs, rare fungi and orchids, but this is the first time I’ve heard of anyone stealing an ants’ nest. Let’s hope it’s the last.

Dear Readers, I’m still a bit under the weather – the throat infection that I picked up during my travels is not a shedload of fun. I’m gradually improving, but looking out of the office window at the Amelanchior opposite has put me in mind of this particularly cheery Shakespeare sonnet, so I thought I’d share it, even though it’s not Thursday, when I usually post my poems.  Addressed to the ‘Fair Youth’ who has caused so many critics and historians to scratch their heads, it always seems to me to lay it all on a bit thick in a bid for sympathy, but see what you think. Some critics have suggested that it’s also all a bit cliched, but the problem with Shakespeare is that so many of his phrases have dropped into common usage, and we forget how new-minted they probably sounded at the time. Anyhow, enjoy!

Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold

By William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.