May your winters be beautiful, springs bright, your summer unfading and your autumns rich and fair.
A rather good blessing. It is at the end of Horatio Clare's book - The Light in the dark, A winter journal.
He is a fine writer, lyrical explains his writing better. A prose poem that like the Illiad captures words - his words fall like snow to the ground.
What he did do however was that he explained to me the dreariness you find in these steep valleys, the overwhelming feeling of being hemmed in. When I see other people's photos of the moors above, I find them bleak places. The ruined grey farmhouses, blank windows, roofs that no longer exist, small fields clustered around derelict houses. Of course it is not all like that, there are still working farms up there, as there are small terraces of houses amongst the trees, telling of earlier histories when people worked in the mills and took the pathways down through the trees to the towns.
There are good people today (they call themselves The CROWS) who work up on the moors relaying the paths, gritting the boggy parts. And of course 'Slow the Flow' volunteers wind the fast flowing streams down the hill, so that they slow down their force and enter the town in a more genteel manner.
This world has of course been lit up the last couple of days by the out of space Universe conducting a light show for us. Sun flares from the sun whirling away through the darkness to spark colour into our world. It can be rather frightening when we contemplate the Universe, with its millions of stars echoed by the millions of questions we want answered on its being.
It is said that the bright creatures, young or old, who grace Hebden Bridge town, are from hippy eras, the slightly offset people who do not quite sit in the Yorkshire Style but come from those other glittering places like London or the South. As a 'foreigner' myself, I just like to observe. What I do see is people actively looking after their small territories. They moan quite a bit, the closure of the road to Rochdale was particularly funny. And as for dogs and cats going missing, blame it on a town squashed up tight with no gardens to the houses.
When I go shopping to Lidl, my eyes are always raised to the trees that climb to the moor, a particularly beautiful sight at this time of year in their fresh greenness, the moors edge can be seen also as can that funny lump of a hill in the following photo. You will see a large building in the centre of the photo. This is Tod College, owned by the town and given over to many different things. Volunteers man it, the Makery resides here, where my spinning wheel got mended. You can bring anything to be mended, bikes, computers and household goods. People are kind, the one word spread around town.
And on a meditative note: A far cry from capitalism and privatisation ;)
I am not trying to be ingratiating, but before the photos was beautifully and so descriptively written.
ReplyDeleteI've recently received so much kindness and it so nice to know how people really do care.
"I've recently received so much kindness and it so nice to know how people really do care" As you should Andrew. In blogging land other people's grief is felt as well because that dark road you are walking down at the moment is often experienced by many. You are doing well, all that writing. Pacing out the utter misery of loss, it will fade over time but will never leave you.
DeleteAs for the book, I should have written about and then went on to talk about the town I find myself in, I have a magpie mind.
As Andrew noted, there is so much kindness in the world that slips by unnoticed. In these unkind days, we need to focus on that kindness, we need to extend that kindness, we need to celebrate it.
ReplyDeleteTrouble is Debby there are different views of how to govern the world. The people may be kind, as so many of them are across the world but laws are enforced that shouldn't be.
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