There is not much to write about Burnley, a shopping mall that was looking a bit tired, you could see the line of development from the top of the bus. Small terraced houses near the centre, just a yard for a garden, the old working class houses for those that worked in industry, the sameness is somewhat pleasing but dull to the mind. Then we come to the classier upmarket semis of the 1930s, not sure, then the fringed scatter of bungalows in larger plots. Landscape is strange, we take a hill out of Burnley and the bus gets slower and slower as it creeps up, reminding me of my camper van which I verbally prayed that it would manage the hill out of Bath.
It is the underlying rock that gives shapes to the ground into large hummocks, and then we disappear into the valley, and the bus is assaulted by the tree branches as we pass. There are corpses of trees that have fallen in the storm and have been dragged to the stone walls. Up North, is beginning to remind me of the Midlands, or the Black Country, where industry and houses melded, and especially towns slipped into each other with no greenery in between.
The clinic set up for the booster vaccinations was run by many volunteers, it was a bit like a game of musical chairs, or desks, for I did not sit down for long but stood for an hour with my daughter, we were both grateful for the efficiency, and for the patient nurse, who as always went through a long list of questions about my health but did it with a lovely smile. Today I am tired, my arm aches, though not much and I haven't listened to any news, as the government fumble and mumble through this pandemic - it's a pig ear that is all I know.
I am listening to MacFarlane's 'Landmark,' it is about the magic of words, words lost in time and language but today he talks about Nan Shepherd, 'The Living Mountain'. I have read Shepherd on the Cairngorms. I must say her book struck me at the time as rather cold, but to makeup for quick judgments I have bought the audible of it. And promise myself to concentrate.
My cousins were born in one of those classier upmarket semis of the 1930s.
ReplyDeleteIt's a small world, I wasn't exactly enamoured of Burnley though I expect it looks better in the sunshine.
ReplyDeleteI've read Landmarks and the Nan Shepard. I guess Shepard was a forerunner of the 'new nature writers' and, as often is the case with forerunners, doesn't always seem as exciting as what came after. I've always preferred Jean Luc Picard to Captain Kirk, for example.
ReplyDeleteI have a problem with the 'new nature writers', could be because I'm thick but it seems to me there were many writers, whether poetry or the local vicar, who covered their small natural worlds over the centuries. Macfarlane is a clever writer but singularly so, and I suspect he writes for audience applause in his analysis. Picard over that smug faced Kirk any day ;)
ReplyDeletein depth reading