Notes From A Writer

April 23rd

It’s a day us English don’t seem to bother with

although the Red Cross of Saint George flew

from every English church in my youth

times will always be a-changing like

the moving hands of the tower clock

counting each hour one at a time

as the minutes slip through sleep

of countless – the safe-in-bed children

to the cardboard city of the lonely

can we not have a saint that puts

his sword down and makes early

morning tea for the sleeping pavement

waves a look-a-like Potter wand to take

their aches away with their addictions

but it’s more than that because somehow

we need the image of good over bad

and what would you do anyway

with a decomposing dragon

that has always amused children

and warmed them with his fiery throat

BOOK REVIEW – TWO STORM WOOD BY PHILIP GRAY

Book Review Two Storm Wood

Author Philip Gray

Published by Harvil Secker London

‘1919 The Guns Are Silent.

The Dead Are Not.’

Immense. Events move from narrator to narrator, from location to location skillfully although one area was slower. This was when the story was tramping through the mud of a spent battlefield. It was a book that I did not want to leave.

In February 1916 a hospital ward sets the tone of the horror of war and gives us clues as to what we could expect. Outside, our attention is focused on Amy Vanneck and Edward Haslam’s love story. There is focus on England’s class divide and the arrogance that existed. Moving on to 1919 we find Amy and her friend Kitty searching the desolate countryside searching for their missing loved ones. The rain, the mud, abandoned and partly destroyed earth works, shell holes full of water containing whatever, are the world they are searching in. Desperation is obvious.

It is here that we are introduced to the military searching too. Captain Mackenzie leads his men to find the ‘missing believed dead’ to discover their identity if possible, and to bury them. It is a complex story to tell especially when the opening chapter hints at horrors past. A childhood where missionary parents were butchered in China and witnessed by the young . A starting point for a character to emerge and to be a principle one in this tale of horror.

Reminding ourselves this is a work of fiction in the telling but so closely related to historical facts that combine so well it feels that we are there too. Research undertaken is thorough and is welded into the narrative.

Two Storm Wood is a significant place and features strongly. What happens there is a major player and one you will have to read. I am not a plot spoiler. We work our way through the scenarios and eventually we realise the implications of the past that are now in the present. Do Amy and Kitty find their missing men? A chapter turner and page turner to the last one. This has to be the best book I have read for a long time.

David Young, author of Stasi Child, in one sentence says ‘A quite terrifying literary thriller’ and I agree.

THE LOST RAINFORESTS OF BRITAIN BY GUY SHRUBSOLE

Book Review

Title The Lost Rainforests of Britain

Author Guy Shrubsole

Published by William Collins

A SUNDAY TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR

Guy Shrubsole is an activist and author of the previously published, Who Owns England, by William Collins in 2019. The front cover carries the legend ‘How We Lost Our Green & Pleasant Land & How To Take It Back’ and that elucidates the premise of what he and his writings are about. His views will be enforced yet again with The Lie of the Land which is due to be published on 12th September this year.

Guy Shrubsole undertook an awe-inspiring investigation in his travels on the western edge of Britain from Scotland, Wales, through the Lake District and into Devon and Cornwall The Lost Rainforests of Britain or where they were is sobering reading of what we once had. He estimates that a fifth of the land would have been covered in temperate rain forest. Now all that remains is fragments that have been lost overtime but these provide a home for a dazzling variety of luminous life. He tells of the past and the difficulties being experienced in establishing where they were. Old maps, place names and local knowledge can indicate where the fragments of those old forests were. He is able to bring into today the myths and legends from Druid, from Welsh stories and by referencing the Mabinogion and Conan Doyle’s creations based on Dartmoor.

Wonderful fragments do remain where they are often protected by isolation and ‘difficult’ terrain. He talks of the threats to their continued existence where privately owned land is a factor by allowing overgrazing by sheep in particular. Nature will regenerate itself if the shoots of new growth are not continually being nibbled. Less sheep would be good but we have an expanding deer population to contend with as well. All of this is explained in depth and with ideas for the future.

The oceanic western edge of Britain hosts extreme wet conditions and where residual temperate rain forests can be found. They are not always obvious but are delightful to enter with stunted tree growth warped by the wind and providing habitats for lichens, mosses, ferns and much more. There is a very special beauty in these dripping wet places.

A very informative and detailed account of what we once had and how to maintain and protect what we still have. His writing is inspiring and provokes my thinking for the need for more knowledge of what can be found in a British Temperate Rain Forest.

This book has details of further reading, contacts, and sites to follow. For more information on the Lost Rainforests of Britain campaign a visit to – lostrainforestsofbritain.org – will give the enquirer stacks of information and hopefully the urge to help protect what we still have.

Ash Path At Easter Time

I remember this time.

The image of feeling – every one

of them float across the mind

as a new earth gives birth,

shares growth, allows

this new sense of purpose.

Greens hurry to appear, seemingly

in a rush with stunning yellows,

as they strike the eye with

their strong sense of shape.

Swagger, they do, as they

sway in an ever present breeze.

Some remaining snow helps

to accentuate the image with glistening

crystals amongst the black soggy

earth and then the proud trumpets

and pheasant eyes seem to poke

fun at it all. Laugh with my daffodils.

On the ash path, dividing plot

from plot, the frost erupts

from the frozen crust as the sun

begins its melt. Releases the

odour of warming earth and ash

from the frigidity of night-time cold

Then the call. A welcoming, teasing

smell escapes from the kitchen doorway

The richness of roast chicken, roast

potatoes and then that image of crispy

golden Yorkshire pudding. What else

can matter for a family at meal-time?

FROM THE LOG PILE

TO THE POWER OF SEVEN PLUS

SUPPRESSED BY A TENT FOOTPRINT

take away the tent footprint cover where

wood chips were scattered to suppress

now allowed to feel seasonal changes

of sunlight humidity and temperature rise

and like magic rising from the woodchips

toadstools edible or otherwise ours to

wonder-at and investigate on another day

FROM THE LOG PILE

TO THE POWER OF SEVEN PLUS

NOT DEADMANS’ FINGERS

log blackened by time and decay

is still a living entity with a flatmate too

in the form of fairy fingers that erupt

through its roughened skin as though searching

for air or to share pores for another generation

candlesnuff fungus is a good name for me

with the importance to sustain invertebrates

FROM THE LOG PILE

TO THE POWER OF SEVEN PLUS

SLIME MOULD

I love decay on this bark shedding log

in its own decorticate style of beauty

like a sponge or delicate head cover

with the un-enticing family slime name

not a fungi but nevertheless enhances

the logs decaying state to create

another wonder to admire and ponder on

FROM THE LOG PILE

TO THE POWER OF SEVEN PLUS

WITCHES BUTTER

bright orange growth protrudes from elder branch

beauty is two fold fungi in its home

of roughed up and decaying bark

it’s as though it was intended and of course it was

Dacrymyces Palmatus or Witches Butter knows that

wonderful to find to see and to know why

myth and legend help the tale onwards

FROM THE LOG PILE

TO THE POWER OF SEVEN PLUS

SPORE LADEN

our log pile holds a key

for a thought or two from me

randomness of saw cuts & lengths

matter not at all for haphazard growth

to allow the extrusion of polydium vulgar

on moss coated spore laden logs

with hidyholes for homes within

FROM THE LOG PILE

TO THE POWER OF SEVEN PLUS

CUT TO SIZE

two sevens plus a three make up

the seventeen years we left The Platt

go wild unfettered by human hand

the diggerman came in to cut & expose

as sycamore branches were cut in meters

just handy in size to lift and be stacked

to await the season and the live within