Songs are like tattoos

Who said that? Joni Mitchell I think. Some people write in a way which gets under your skin. Cormac Mcarthy is another. That kind of writing can be deceptively simple.

I always wonder if these links help, hinder or appropriate their owners' works. In the sincere hope that it's the first of those. Chris Wood is a master of the art who can write a song about an old sofa which will leave you needing a moment. Here is a set of his which also chimes with the Night Planted Orchard. Enjoy.

Chris Wood's Lockdown Set. 

A fire is like a dog

The old hunter loves to mooch in the Night Planted Orchard and from time to time he sniffs at the fen on one side, or at the thickening copse on the other as if to remember earlier escapades. Then he changes his mind and mooches some more, or curls up in the grass for a snooze.

It seems to me that a fire is like a dog. Sometimes they love to play. Sometimes they are wilfull and ignore every command, content to do their own thing. Sometimes, I confess, they have run off into the fen to mounting panic and bewilderment. Once the embers re-kindled after a week and we found a new fire, like a stray in the rain, raising its smoky snout to the air.

Yesterday's bonfire lay in the grass and refused to get going. It snuffled and grumbled at the tree-bones that we had given it to gnaw on. After an hour, it suddenly decided to play but wouldn't stay where we put it, wandering back and forth across the grass. This year we have given the hedges the full works. A pruning delayed by illness and now encouraged by time back from the lockdown. We had five piles of wood to burn, each taller than me, and the fire's initial response was underwhelming. After two hours, it decided to come alive and after that, it played all day. By nightfall, it was a smouldering pile of ash and embers, red-orange waves rolling like a dog writhing on its back. It was enough to cook food by, in the dark, and make a pot of coffee too. Then it fell asleep, turning to ash, its belly full of trees and snoring.

Wheelbarrow Meals

A September evening. We're having a few days of late warmth but behind it the heat is seeping out of the year day by day. This morning a mist lay in the fen like smoke from the doused embers of the summer. The light over the soft mist was low and brilliant. This is the first of my three beautiful things: honey and soft ochre dripping over the world. 

Later in the morning I saw that the harvested fields made lines across the landscape like a musical manuscript. The residual haze softened the colours. Sere gold dominates. On the horizon the trees are softened still further until they are like dissolving watercolour lines against a blue wash sky. The picture beside this post was taken in the nineties, from a bus on the way to work. For me it captures the very essence of early autumn in the Fens. Endless fields. Lonely trees. Black Earth. Colours that fill the huge sky.

I live for the light of autumn and September is my favourite month. Each evening we've loaded our battered red wheelbarrow with our evening meal and trailed it down to the orchard with the Old Hunter in tow. We pass under the tree where the bees were squatting in the little owl box. They were rescued by a kind beekeper a week ago. This is my second beautiful thing, the bees are safe now, but the old orchard feels empty without them, like the house does if the Old Hunter is not there.

The sunset is chipped into jewelled facets by the hedge and shards of red-orange are scattered on the grass.  There is a vivid lull, under the trees, with wrens hopping about and foxes barking. A lull between the constant effort of the summer, and pruning and cutting tasks of early winter. A few late beetroot are racing the summers-end. There are still beans on the plants. A self-set sunflower nods like a yellow card from those old Batman TV shows: POW! POLLEN! We've taken to smoking food in an old pan with chipped fruit tree prunings. The air is full of the smell of smoke, smouldering fig wood and slow-cooking sausages. As it grows dark the Old Hunter is torn between the bangers and the creeping, rustling beasts in the woods. He puthers back and forth, nose alternately low to the hedge and high to the cooking pan. Pruning offcuts crackle in the chiminea. An insense burner tries and fails to repel biting insects. A bat flits. A woodpecker swoops. We enjoy the failing light and the deep silence. We feel the creeping cold huddle together, all three of us, not quite ready to batten down the hatches for a brutal winter. This is my third beautiful thing for today: defiance. We are not quite ready to retreat from our beautiful, sleepy old orchard. We'll wait a little longer because I fear that this strange and deadly year is not done yet. 

The Hunter

The hunter is not so small now. The white hairs under his chin have spread around the bottom of his muzzle. He still loves to play, but sometimes avoids heavy rain and wind. When he rises, he's a little slower than he was. He won't lie in his bed if he's still damp from the river and frets a little if he's cold and damp. He has escaped from the garden a couple of times in the last few months, taking himself for a walk, meeting and greeting in his own unquiet way. 

When I try to fathom that he is in all probability past the mid-point of his life, my mind will not confront that idea.