A witch at her cauldron surrounded by beasts. Etching by J. van de Velde II, 1626. Contributors: Jan van de Velde. Work ID: kdrau2b4.

I’ve always loved the fierceness and defiance of Anne Sexton’s work. Isn’t there a part of a lot of us that would like to be wilder? See what you think.

Her Kind

By Anne Sexton

I have gone out, a possessed witch,
haunting the black air, braver at night;
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch
over the plain houses, light by light:
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.
A woman like that is not a woman, quite.
I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.

Dear Readers,  I’m finding it rather wonderful to hear the chuckle of jackdaws here in East Finchley – they were rare visitors when I first arrived back in 2010, but this year a family of four have been coming to the garden, and its been interesting to see how busy the youngsters are keeping the parents.

The youngsters sit on the suet feeder and watch as the parent pecks out a few pellets. Clearly they haven’t learned how to manage it themselves yet!

These birds have attracted a lot of folklore, most of it contradictory. Seeing a jackdaw on the way to your wedding is a very good omen, but having one settle on your roof means a calamity is approaching. Or that something new is beginning, depending on where you live. They are renowned  for their fondness for shiny objects (their species name monedula means ‘money’) and to call someone a ‘jackdaw’ implies that they are a bit of a hoarder, no doubt with a drawer full of elastic bands, safety pins, a cork, some out-of-date parking permits and a pair of secateurs that need sharpening (ahem). Whatever they ‘mean’, these smallest UK corvids are smart, adaptable birds, who have learned how to use a bird feeder meant for much smaller birds than them. Good luck to them, I say.

Well, Readers, we continue to be visited by the fox cub every night – I’m pretty sure that s/he and the vixen hang out at the bottom of the garden during the day, whenever John goes to the shed he disturbs some russet creature.

Here are Mum and the cub together, they seem very close still, though I haven’t seen  the little one trying to feed.

They both look very bedraggled after the thunder storm a few nights ago.

Always so watchful…..

The baby squirrel is also much in evidence first thing in the morning….

But for now, I’m really glad that the foxes are still around and safe. Soon the cub will probably need to move off and establish their own territory, and that’s when the trouble really starts – most urban foxes only have a life expectancy of about eighteen months, compared to a maximum life expectancy of 9 to 12 years. Fingers crossed f or this little one.

Dear Readers, I was very sad to hear that, after a century, the Shipping Forecast would no longer be broadcast on longwave radio. It was originally programmed in this way because it could be listened to by sailors at sea, wherever they were around the British  Isles. But the transmission was turned off this Saturday (27th June 2026), although it’s still available on Radio 4, BBC Sounds and on the HM Coastguard NAVTEX network.  Nonetheless, such an ending deserves a memorial, I think, and here is Carol Ann Duffy’s sonnet ‘Prayer’, a favourite of mine. See what you think.

Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer —
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Dear Readers, I was at the Barbican this week – I seem to be living there at the moment, with a trip to see High Society, followed by a trip to see Mr Handel’s ‘Serse’. This time, it was to see a puppet version of ‘Venus and Adonis‘, a poem written by Shakespeare when all the theatres were closed due to the plague. It was live-narrated by Simon Russell Beale, who is a wonderful actor with a wonderful voice. I loved the way that he interacted with the puppets. The whole thing was very grown up (it’s a very erotic poem) but far from being the ‘puppet porn’ that I was afraid of.

Another reason for all these visits is that the Barbican Centre is going to be closed – admittedly not until June 2028, but still. I hope that in addition to sorting out the infrastructure problems with the ageing building, they might think about improving the signage – every time I go I find myself helping some poor soul who is going round and round in circles trying to find something. Plus, the restaurant could do with some work in my opinion, I was ‘table-ninja’d’ by a group of 8 ladies who were desperate for somewhere to sit, as there are never enough spots, and the seats are also mightily uncomfortable, plus the food ordering system is very counter-intuitive (i.e. you’re never sure which counter to go to ) (sorry!). It’s hoped that building work will be completed by 2030, ahead of the Barbican’s 50th anniversary in 2032. Fingers crossed. For now it’s still one of the most photogenic locations in London (to my mind at least). I can never resist getting my camera out.

But wait, what is this that has sprung up in the middle of the sculpture court?

This is ‘origo’ by Colombian artist Delcy Morelos. On the day I visited we couldn’t walk inside because of the extreme heat, which I think might have had an adverse effect on the soil and clay structure. The soil contains fragrant spices, including cinnamon and cloves, which would have added a whole other dimension I think. This is the first time that there has been a sculpture in the Sculpture Court for more than ten years, such a shame. I like the way that ‘origo’ echoes the shape of the buildings around it – the Barbican was a utopian project when it was first designed, piloting a new way of living in the City, and it seems appropriate that the sculpture is built of the most fundamental of materials, clay, echoing the Brutalis cement constructions that surround it. There are some photos from inside here. See what you think!

Eurasian Otter (Lutra lutra) Photo by Gaurika Wijeratne at https://www.flickr.com/photos/gaurika/9639580887/

Dear Readers, you might have read about a pioneering project in Somerset, based around the River Tone, which is asking volunteers to try to look at the habitats around the river as if they were not humans, but a particular animal – the participants can choose between an otter, a kestrel, a salmon, an earthworm or a red deer. They are then taught about the lives and senses of their chosen animal, and asked to walk along the river, imagining how their animal might perceive it.

Imagining yourself as an animal has probably been going on for as long as there have been humans (after all, hunters would have needed a deep understanding of the creatures that they hunted) but science gives us a much more detailed appreciation of what the world looks like to say, a bumblebee with its ultra-violet vision, or a salmon picking up the scent of its home river. Of course, it’s not possible to actually ‘be’ the animal, but it did give the volunteers an insight into the lives of their creatures, and especially an understanding of risk.

One participant chose the otter – as otters are so sensitive to vibration, she noticed how the constant  rumble of nearby trains and cars would have disrupted the senses of the animal. She, and another  volunteer who identified with the kestrel, also noticed the ubiquity of dogs. While owners stick to paths, dogs root around everywhere, plus there is a strong body of evidence that the flea treatments given to dogs kill water invertebrates, resulting in less fish. I shall probably write a bit more on this subject soon – there’s a very good article about it in British Wildlife magazine this week. But for now, it’s enough to note that dogs have a profound impact on most species of wildlife, from frightening ground-nesting birds to affecting the hunting sites of kestrels.  There is a good case to be made for having areas where neither humans nor dogs are allowed, but of course this conflicts with the whole ‘right to roam’ ethos.

The emotional responses of the volunteers are very interesting. There’s this, from the Guardian:

‘Phil Tovey, the director of nature-centric approaches at ASRA and a former soldier, said the testimonies they received from the “as-otter”, “as-kestrel” and others were rather like civilians caught in a war zone who struggled to find food, safety or shelter. “We heard that access was deeply stressed. When the volunteers gave their testimonies they were on the verge of tears. They took it so seriously but none of them dramatised it.”

Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) Photo by By Andreas Trepte, http://www.photo-natur.de, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14325567

The River Tone study will be written up as an academic paper, but the project reflects a growing trend in nature conservation, which tries to see the landscape through the eyes of its non-human inhabitants. You might remember an interesting book by Charles Foster, ‘Being a Beast‘, in which he tried on the ‘skin’ of various animals, including a badger, an urban fox and an otter. Does this help us to personalise the threats to a particular animal, and to make us more engaged with them? Does it help a community to take action? It  will be interesting to look at the River Tone project and see what happens. 

You can try out the ‘Risks Beyond Human Eyes’ exercises here.

Expertise comes from ASRA (the Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment), and you can read about them here.

The project was funded by the Ecological Citizens Network and you can read about them here.

Dear Readers, in honour of our newly adopted cat Abbie, here’s this wonderful poem by Marge Piercy. If you haven’t read her novel ‘Woman on the Edge of Time‘, it’s well worth a look…

The cat’s song

By Marge Piercy

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face.

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long.
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers.
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

Hemlock (Conium maculatum)

Dear Readers, hiding in plain sight along many of our ditches and rivers is one of the most poisonous plants in the UK, Hemlock. It looks very like Cow Parsley but the leaves are different (and in my part of the world at least, it flowers a bit later).

These are the leaves of Cow Parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris). Note how fern-like they are.

Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) leaves © 2022, Philippe Juillerat – Sources du Lison

Hemlock (Conium maculatum) leaves (Photo by By Jean François Arnould – https://www.tela-botanica.org/eflore/consultation/popup.php?module=popup-illustrations&action=fiche&referentiel=bdtfx&id=2188405, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79820745)

Hmm. I would say that Cow Parsley leaves tend to be more pointy and spear-like, while those of Hemlock are rounder, but it’s a tough call unless you see them side by side. Fortunately there are other identifying features:

• Hemlock is often taller
• The plant is hairless (Cow Parsley is hairy when looked at close up)
• The plant also has purple blotches and spots on its stem (hence the Latin ‘maculatum’ which means ‘spotted’. You’re welcome :-). O Level Latin has its uses!)

On the subject of the blotches, poet and naturalist Geoffrey Grigson wrote that the stalks ‘have a deadly look, as though they bore their own signature of destruction and mortification’.

Hemlock stem (Photo By MPF – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20583615)

Apparently it also has a mousy smell, but as we won’t be cutting any to take home (will we?) I missed that excitement.

Hemlock is an interesting plant in many ways, not least of which is that it is not a native plant, but an archaeophyte (an ancient introduction which was wild in the UK before 1492) which has made itself exceedingly at home, not just around human habitation (like so many ‘alien’ plants) but in many semi-natural habitats. In ‘Alien Plants’, Stace and Longley describe how the plant occupies the verges of many miles of the M1 motorway, and speculate how horrified people would be if they knew what it was. Hemlock enjoys nitrogen, which it can absorb from the fumes emitted by lorries and cars, and from the run-off from agricultural land.

What about this poison business, though? Famously, Hemlock was the plant of choice for public executions in ancient Greece, and was used by Socrates to kill himself when he was condemned for corrupting the youth of Athens (by encouraging them to think for themselves) and offending the Gods (and the State). The lethal potion was called a pharmakon (the origin word of pharmacy and pharmaceuticals). According the account of the death of Socrates by Plato, this was a relatively gentle death: the executioner told Socrates to walk about his cell to speed the progress of the poison, which was experienced first as numbness in the feet, then in the legs. At this point, Socrates retired to his couch, where he continued to teach until respiratory paralysis set in. Socrates last words were said to be about making an offering to the god of medicine

‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Make this offering to him, and do not forget‘.

‘The Death of Socrates’ by Jacques- Louis David (1748 – 1825) (http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436105)

All well and good except, as Peter Marren points out in ‘The Devil’s Garden‘, death by Hemlock poisoning is not like that at all: take this account by Nicander:

‘(Hemlock) assuredly looses disaster upon the head, brining the darkness of night: the eyes roll, and men roam the streets with tottering steps and crawling upon their hands; a terrible choking blocks the lower throat and narrow passage of the windpipe; the extremities grow cold, and in the limbs the stout arteries are contracted; for a short while the victim draws breath like one swooning, and his spirit beholds Hades’. 

Scientists who have isolated the main ingredient in Hemlock (called coniine) agree that it causes paralysis of the nerves and muscles. It may be that Socrates fatal draught was laced with opiates or some other ingredient that made his death more gentle, or maybe Plato just wanted to leave his master with some dignity. The lesson here is ‘do not go munching on random plants’.

Why is Hemlock so poisonous? Clearly it’s been around for a lot longer than humans have, so it didn’t evolve to purposefully poison Greek philosophers. One explanation may be pest control – the plant is poisonous to many grazing animals. Conversely, the alkaloids in the poison are concentrated in the flower buds, and may be attractive to pollinators.

Interestingly, the leaves of this deadly poisonous plant were used in the mountainous regions of Georgia as food – it’s reported that the locals knew the plant was poisonous, and would treat it by washing in several changes of water before eating it. This practice has largely ceased since better food sources have become available.

Medicinally, Hemlock was used as a treatment for rabies – it was combined with the seeds of betony and fennel. As rabies is still 100 percent fatal once symptoms appear, we can assume that Hemlock was not successful. It was also used in a last desperate attempt to treat strychnine poisoning, and  also as a treatment for gout – as this last complaint is intensely painful, I can imagine that people were ready to try anything, although as the roasted root was applied externally this was less risky than direct ingestion.

In the Victorian language of flowers, giving someone Hemlock meant ‘You’ll be the death of me’. I can imagine that receiving a bunch of mousy-smelling deadly poisonous flowers would probably have put paid to that particular relationship.

Hemlock illustration (from By Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen (text on p. 154, illustrations in back) – List of Koehler Images, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=255533)

As one might expect of such a powerful plant, Hemlock is mentioned in accounts of witchcraft – it’s thought to be one of the ingredients of the ‘flying potion’  that enables witches to fly. The genus name ‘Conium’ means ‘to whirl’, which probably relates to the giddiness associated with ingesting the plant, but might also give a sensation of flying. It was used to reduce male potency, and was said to be used by Circe and Medea to poison their male enemies.

One species of moth has made a speciality of eating Hemlock leaves: the Hemlock Moth (Agonopterix alstromeriana). As Hemlock is now widespread not only in Europe, but also in the US and Australia, this little moth has been used as a biological control: it only eats Hemlock leaves, so this means that the caterpillars don’t transfer their voracious appetite to other related species. The caterpillar uses the toxins from the plant to defend itself from predators, who quickly learn to leave it alone. Interestingly, birds don’t seem to be affected by the toxins in the seeds of Hemlock, presumably so that they can spread the plant around.

Hemlock Moth (Agonopterix_alstromeriana,_Aberdovey,_North_Wales,_July_2006_(20191381660)

Hemlock moth caterpillar (Photo By Eric Coombs, Oregon Department of Agriculture, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6212018)

And finally, a tale from ‘Flora Britannica’ by Richard Mabey. Anne Pratt (1806-1893) was the botanist author of many books. In ‘Poisonous, Noxious, and Suspected Plants, of our Fields and Woods’ she tells a story of an eccentric lighthouse keeper who lived in Kent in the 1850s, and who made a bower out of Hemlock, in spite of its poisonous leaves and unpleasant scent:

‘A large bed of Hemlock grows there, and the man occupied in the charge of the Marine Telegraph at that station has availed himself of its abundance to deck with its stems and branches his little cave in the cliffs. This has a sloping entrance, and all about it he has planted the Hemlock, which attains there a great luxuriance, and is in summer six feet high, affording by its numerous branches a shelter alike from sun and shower. The owner of the cave, an intelligent man, has an eye for grace and beauty, and prizes the elegant foliage, taking care to preserve its verdure by cutting off the fruits as they appear; while the robustness given by an out-of-door life, by airs and sounds from the sea, have rendered his nervous system too strong to be injured by the odour. To him the faint smell gives no disgust, though he tells how a friend, and old coast-guardsman, who occasionally visits him, cautiously declines to subject himself to its influence and seats himself on some crag at a distance, where he may see its branches wave in safety’. 

I rather fancy such a green bower myself, though maybe made out of hemp agrimony rather than Hemlock. But to each his own!

Dear Readers, you might remember that we’ve been fostering a fourteen year-old cat called Abbie. Abbie had lived with one lady for the past ten years, until her owner died. Since then, she’s  been in a variety of temporary homes, which has been very traumatic for an anxious, shy cat, who has previously lived a quiet life.

Anyhow, she’s gradually started to come out of her shell. Last week, we discovered that she not only likes tea, but will use unusual tactics to get at it…

Bless her! She’s like Arthur the Kattomeat cat, who used to eat with his paw out of a tin.

And I have discovered a rather convoluted tale concerning Arthur, with an East Finchley link – you can have a look here.

Well, last week Abbie went to the animal hospital for some dental work, and came out minus most of her teeth, poor love. She spent a while under the bed looking very sad, until the painkillers kicked in and she was back to being her queenly self.

She is a creature of regular habits: breakfast should be no later than seven a.m., after lunch it’s time for a brush and at 6 p.m. it’s time for supper. She often jumps up between us while we watch the television, and then it’s time for bed. She is coping with the current heat by finding a patch of sunlight and laying in it. Go figure.

At this point, I would usually put out a call for someone to adopt her but, dear Readers, I can resist her charms no longer. I am worried that a fourteen year-old cat with minimal teeth and the social confidence of a mouse would spend a long, long time waiting for her forever home, and the fear of vet’s bills to come would also be a deterrent for many people. Plus, her charms are subtle, unlike those of some of the younger cats we’ve looked after – she sleeps, eats, comes around for a stroke and then sleeps some more. Perfect. She doesn’t want to go outside, so my garden birds are safe. And so, we’ve decided to adopt her, and to give her the best possible life for the rest of her time. Our fostering days are at an end, for now at least.