The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows

Tags

1967, blue, brother, brown, cows, eyes, faces, food, hedge, herd, imagination, intelligence, Kent, meadow, Michael J Redford, milk, parents, reading, running, skill, sound, the Boats of Vallisneria

With Cows

Cows can be frustrating to say the least.   If you are in a hurry, they are not; if you want to turn left, they will turn right; if you want them to come to you, they will walk slowly but surely from you (except, of course, when there is food in the offing).   You can shout until you are blue in the face and, unless it is milking time, the only resultant effect will be an all pitying gaze from two enormous brown and blue eyes set in the most imperturbable face that nature has created.

My first introduction to the bovine species took place when I was about seven years old.   My parents, brother and I were on a picnic in Kent and on that particular day I was a fearless explorer penetrating the depths of the African jungle.   This had stemmed from the fact that I had just finished reading a book called the Gorilla Hunters which had sparked my imagination into a riot of fantasy.   Slipping unobserved into the undergrowth, I crawled upon all fours until I came upon a high, mossy bank surmounted by a thick, prickly hedge.   Hearing an unfamiliar chomping sound coming from the other side, I wriggled into the hedge and poked my head through into a small meadow.   I turned and gazed upwards and at the same instant, a cow who was hiding behind the hedge and who I swear was no less than fifty feet tall, turned and gazed down at me.   Then, unable to contain herself any longer, the cow blew violently down her nose at me, turned on her heels, and shot across the field like a bullet kicking the air behind her as she went.   I cannot recall ever seeing a cow move with quite so much speed.   Neither, I suspect, would an observer have ever seen a small boy move with such speed.   I rejoined the family scratched, breathless and as pale as a ghost, and shamelessly told the face-saving lie that I had been chased by a bull.

My opinions regarding the intelligence of cows has pendulated with the acquisition of experience.   When I first worked with cows I noticed how, on entering the shed at milking time, they all went to their own particular stands, and had an animal for any reason entered the wrong stand, she was very soon ousted by the rightful occupier.   This, I assumed, denoted intelligence.   However, I was very soon to discover that cows are animals of habit and habits are no criteria of intelligence.   Eventually I came to the conclusion that, because of its indolence and obstinacy, the cow was a complete and utter dim-wit.   But once again, experiences of the past year have led me to the final conclusion that cows have a very good measure of intelligence.   I milk for a local farmer one day a week to give his herdsman a much needed break from the seven day a week routine.   He owns a large farm with two herds of cows, a herd of Jerseys and a herd of Friesians.   Milking is carried out in a modern tandem parlour with automatic feeding and ‘all mod cons’.   When the animals enter the parlour they are fed by pulling a lever which releases just the right amount of food from a hopper into a manger.   When the lever is pulled down, two pounds of food are released and when pushed back up, another two pounds.   After a surprisingly short period of time, the cows become aware of the connection that existed between the action of the lever and the delivery of food.   By contorting their bodies in a manner quite out of character with their natural movements, the cows discovered that they were able to reach the lever and very soon began pushing it down and returning it to the upright position to obtain an extra double helping of food.   Indeed, one of the Friesian cows developed the knack of tossing the lever violently up and down in order to obtain an almost continuous supply of food.   When her manger was almost full, she would struggle back to her normal position and attack the gargantuan meal before her.

However, with cattle cake costing over thirty five pounds per ton, this state of affairs had to be dealt with.   We eventually overcame their antics by tying a piece of cord to the stanchion and looping the other end over the lever, so that in order to feed the cows, we would merely remove the loop, pull the lever and replace the loop.   This system worked beautifully – for a while.   It wasn’t long before the animals overcame this obstacle by pulling the loop from the lever themselves, despite the fact that this is a somewhat delicate operation for their great, cumbersome muzzles to perform.   An interesting point that came to light during this period was that the Friesian cows were the worst offenders, whereas, out of a herd of twenty five Jerseys, only four managed to reach this standard of reasoning and acquired the knack of working the lever.

Yet despite their apparent superior intelligence, I have in my experience, found fewer ‘character’ cows among the Friesians.   By ‘character’ cows I mean the bovine equivalent of the human being who is ‘a bit of a lad’ or rather ‘quite a girl’, the one who stands out in a crowd.   One such a cow was Magatha, who was just about the ugliest little creature that I have ever seen.   She was sway-backed, had a fawny-coloured coat with grey patches all over it and had a face too concave even for a Jersey.   One ear had a lump torn from it and her ridiculous little head was beset by two crooked horns.   Despite her lack of charm and elegance, for she waddled along in a most ungainly manner, she was the most endearing and affectionate cow I have ever met.   At milking time she would always be last out of the field and last out of the shed and during the short walk between the two, she would creep up behind me and push her ugly little head under my arm and we would troop up the lane behind the herd like a couple of young lovers.   On one occasion (I think it must have been a ‘morning after the night before’, for I wasn’t in a very benevolent mood), I failed to reciprocate her affections and instead gave her a hefty whack on the rump to speed her on her way.   She countered this breach of etiquette by doing a half-passage and forcing me nearer and nearer to the side of the road.   I realised too late what she was up to when I landed full length in the ditch running with effluent from the much heap.   However, like all good lovers we made up and until the end of my stay at that particular farm, we could be seen every morning and every evening strolling arm in arm together along the lane.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue & brown wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
eyes wormhole: thought
faces wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
hedge wormhole: travelling // arrival
reading wormhole: … the underleaves show
sound wormhole: moon- // washed

 

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The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay

Tags

1967, blackbird, branches, breeze, chaffinches, clouds, cuckoo, echo, fields, grass, green, hay, June, land, lark, linnets, Michael J Redford, scythe, silence, smell, soil, sun, talking, the Boats of Vallisneria, thrushes, tits, trees, wagtail, weather, work

Making Hay

“You’ll have a nice cut o’ hay here,” said George.   The wizened little old man, long since retired from the land, stood beside me in the gateway of Garden Field.   He has come to remove the debris that had fallen from the trees to prevent damage to the mower.   Like most retired land-workers he is unable to keep the soil of the fields from his boots, and one can find him in every village throughout the British Isles hedging, ditching, clearing odd corners of scrub with scythe and sickle and caring for the vicar’s garden.   To these men, there is an attraction so binding to the land, that to continue working thereon has become essential to their very existence.   It seems they draw the very essence of life direct from the soil, just as the unborn infant draws its life direct from its mother, and if this contact, this life-line is broken, so also is his life.   One has merely to talk with these old men for an hour to sense their affinity with and philosophy of the land, and I am convinced that it would quite literally kill many of them if they were to be taken from it.   An acquaintance once questioned the economics of employing these old ‘jobbers’ and suggested that it was merely a charitable act that enables the old men to feel useful, and I thought of old George ambling around the perimeter of Garden Field picking up dead branches and stones.   In the first instance the old man had given me half an hour of time to attend to other more pressing matters.   Secondly, his action of clearing the land of obstructions was quite possibly instrumental in preventing a broken mower knife or con-rod, and when taking into account the precarious weather conditions under which hay is made in this country, any delay could mean the difference between a field of good hay and a field of bad or maybe even a complete loss, and with good hay sometimes fetching £15 per ton and more, this could result in a considerable saving.   So what price an old man’s labour?

There is a great satisfaction in using a clean cutting tool, be it a pen-knife or a scythe.   Now unfortunately, the less harmonious clatter of a power driven mower has long since dimmed the sweet song of a scythe and men in the hay meadows no longer sway to its rhythm.   Nevertheless, there manifests within me a great sense of well-being each time I see the graceful stems fall into neat swathes as the mower encircles the ever diminishing island of standing green.   The pollen lifts and the wagtail follows close behind feeding upon the moths and gnats that are started into flight upon a day sweet with a green aroma. Soon comes the last sweep of the mower in the centre of the field.   It is an act full of purpose and symbolism that makes me hesitate before felling those last few stems.   It is I think, that the finality of the last cut brings about a sense of completeness, a completeness that is magnified by the silence when the mower has ceased to clatter and the tractor engine is switched off, when the only sound to be heard is the song of a lark out of sight, high above the dust laden air.

The following day, when the June sun has lifted the dew from the fields, the grass can be shaken up to let in the drying breezes, and it is towards the end of a good drying day that the green harvest begins to ‘rustle’ and emanates that exhilarating aroma of ‘making’ hay.   There are many jobs to be done on the farm some of which are dull and monotonous, and I must confess to a tendency of leaving such tasks to the very last minute.   But hay-making is not one of these jobs.   Even at the end of a hot, dry day of turning, tedding and windrowing, I reap a great deal of pleasure from strolling alone between the dry, fluffy rows, inhaling the richness, listening to the linnets, tits and chaffinches close at hand, and the distant echo of the cuckoo in the woods.   Also in the woods the Blackcap, much mistaken for the nightingale, sings sweetly at this hour and is a welcomed guest upon my solitude.   There are many such enchanting moments tucked away at odd intervals throughout the year, sandwiched between the bustle, toil and noise that nowadays fills most of our lives, and too often they pass unnoticed and without appreciation.   The baler is the transgressor that ends these few hours of peace at hay-making.   It is a great red monster that crashes into the calm, scaring the blackbirds and thrushes and littering the fields with bales of green, just as the child litters the nursery floor with his building blocks.

If there is one task on the farm nowadays that demands sweat and aching limbs, it is the pitching, carting and stacking of bales of hay.   No time can be wasted in bringing them home for should the weather change, the feeding value could be washed right out and hay made fit for only bedding.   Under a blazing July sun the throat becomes parched and the palms of the hands become calloused and shiny from gripping the pitch-fork.   Hasty swigs from a brown bottle concealed in the cool shade of a hedge ooze forth seconds later as sweat.   Hay particles stick to the body and gnats and flies buzz and bite. At times (if, for example, in a race against approaching storm clouds), the pace becomes so hectic that the sweat runs and blinds the eyes.   Seeds and pieces of hay fall into the shirt and make their way down to the trouser belt where they stick and prick and scratch each time the body is bent to life another bale.

This work, weather permitting, continues day after day, and to those involved it seems like eternity, but sooner or later the very last bale is heaved upon the trailer, and the last, slow journey home is made with swaying load and creaking ropes.

Last year, Garden Field was put aside for the cows and old George was helping me move the electric fence.   It was almost dinner time when we finished and we sat upon the headland whiling away the minutes in idle conversation.   He had removed his jacket and was picking out the fluff from the corners of a pocket.

“It used to be my brother’s,” he said of the jacket, “he lived in Shropshire but passed on a few weeks back, and as I’m the only one of the family left, I had all his bits and pieces sent here.”   He studied the jacket ruefully.   “Didn’t find no pound notes in it though, just a bit o’ fluff and a few hay seeds,” he said flinging them into the wind.   Now, as I stand staring at the bales stacked under the dutch barn, I find myself wondering how many stems of Shropshire grass there are within, and if left to ripen, how many seeds they would have produced.   I often stand and stare, much to the annoyance of those around me, and think my little thoughts, for little thoughts quite often lead to bigger ones.   This is, in fact, just how this essay came to be written.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blackbird wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
branches & green wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
breeze wormhole: 1964
clouds wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
echo wormhole: with all love released
silence wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
smell wormhole: travelling // arrival
sun wormhole: tremule
talking wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
work wormhole: next unexpected step

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working

Tags

1967, chimney, clouds, corn, cows, dusk, eggs, elm, farming, fence, fields, flood, food distribution, future, gale, gaze, green, grey, harvest, hay, hills, identity, leaf, letter, machines, meadow, meat production, Michael J Redford, milk, morning, oats, poetry, rain, sheep, silence, summer, sun, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, tractors, trees, valley, weather, wheat, wind, windows, work, writing

Chapter 4

Working

A Letter of Two Parts

Dear Pat and John

I thought it high time I dropped another letter from the country into the post.   Looking back over the past summer months seems more like looking back over a bleak and stormy winter.   The weather has of course played havoc with the haymaking and harvesting.   I hear that at one time, medium quality hay was fetching nearly £20 per ton, and taking into account the wide-spread flooding that has occurred, it seems there’ll not be enough oat straw to feed in place of it.   With this drastic shortage of hay and straw, the outlook is black indeed.

Even as I write, the rain is beating alarmingly against the window panes, borne upon a gale that roars like an express up the valley, each gust falling over the next in its haste to wreak havoc on the exposed hills.   As I gaze through the window pane distorted with rivulets and splashes, I perceive a hazy image of grey hills shouldering leaden clouds, and every few minutes the wind rattles the frame and comes sighing down the chimney.   The whole house shudders a little and a log in the hearth slips, sending up a shower of sparks to meet the confusion above.   The fields are in a sorry state.   Most of the corn has been lodged as if trampled by some strident giant, fences have been breached by falling trees and many sheep throughout the country have been drowned in the spreading waters.

There was a period two weeks ago when the tempest eased a little and allowed a little watery sun into our eyes, but this lasted for only seven days, after which the rain set in again and eased up only occasionally for an odd day here and there.   We have managed to stack about half the oats, but the remainder will probably have to be written off.   The wheat would have encountered a similar fate had it not been for the three hired combines.

Now here once again are the winds and the rains.   A dead leaf, too sodden to absorb any more water is whipped across the window and trembles for a brief second on the sill before joining the hosts that cling to the chicken coop wire.   Incidentally, I’d better put this letter to one side for a moment in order to collect the eggs before the half light fades completely.

                                * * * * * * * *

Dear Pat and John,

I’ve had to restart this letter.   Owing to this sudden bright spell we’ve been working like mad trying to catch up on the backlog of harvesting and general repairs.   I started this letter well over two weeks ago but I’m afraid I’ve not had time to finish it until now.   It is remarkable how the view has changed outside my window.   The country scene these past few days has been one of violent human and mechanical activity.

Implements of all shapes, sizes and colours have erupted from their unusual passiveness and are droning, roaring and rattling over the soil.   A combine harvester, like a metal monster from a Wells novel, trundles ponderously across the field, digesting the grain and vomiting the residue in its wake.   Tractors career madly through the lanes, heave with throbbing effort towering loads of sheaves and haul balers which follow on, nodding idiotically like inane sheep.   Men race fervently against time commanding machines, pitching sheaves, building stacks, their pitchforks leaping and flashing under the sun.   Farmers and farm workers alike are conscious of the urgency of the hour, but no clock watching for them, they are eager to see the culmination of a years’ hard work.   To these men, their work is not merely a means of earning a living, it is something far more than this, something far more personal and important to them as individuals.   These men work not so much for their employers but with them, and it is through this combined effort that the tempestuous vagaries of the past year have been overcome.

If a machine breaks down, there is a curse and several pairs of hands are immediately locating the trouble.   They may not be expert mechanics but farm workers are masters of improvisation and no machine is standing idle for long.   It is this knack of ‘making do’ that is the seed of many weird and wonderful machines that have appeared on the agricultural scene, and it would indeed be difficult to find any industry which has produced in such a short period of time a greater range of impossible machines to tackle such improbable tasks.   No doubt to the layman it would appear that with all these modern innovations, the life of the farm worker today is almost as idyllic as the sentimentalised conception of the pseudo-bucolic poets of the seventeenth century:-

                “O happy life, if that their good
                The husbandman but understood.
                Who all the day themselves do please …”

Whenever a new acquaintance asks the nature of my work they are, on being told, shocked into silent disbelief.   Apparently I neither look like a farm labourer nor do I sound like one (how does such a person look and sound), and henceforth I am re-introduced either as a farmer or, by those who are more sensitive towards the truth, as being ‘in farming’, thereby implying that I own vast acres and hunt every Tuesday and Saturday.   A wistful ‘back to the land’ look then enters the eye.   “I’ve always wanted to work on a farm” they sigh.   No doubt there have been insuperable obstacles in ambition’s path for many people, but surely not all, and I have yet to meet the person who doesn’t bemoan his lot in town and gaze longingly at the green hills.   And just as a point of interest, I have yet to meet the person who doesn’t have an uncle somewhere who owns a farm.

Their conception of farming today seems even more idyllic than that of their fathers’.   Machines, they say, have taken the hard work out of farming, all we have to do is sit on a tractor all day and press buttons.   Perhaps they would like to spend a day stacking bales of hay under a sizzling hot roof of a Dutch barn, or perhaps after a sixteen hour day during harvest, [perhaps] they would like to sit up all night with a cow who is having a difficult time calving and work another sixteen hours the following day, and the day after that.   Unless a farmer specialises in a line for which a particular machine or implement has been designed, then it is not economical to purchase that machine.   For example, a man with just one house cow would find it uneconomical to install a completely automatic milking unit, but even where this is justified, as in the case of larger herds, the farmer or herdsman still has to rise at five o’clock on a bitterly cold winter’s morning seven days a week.   The advent of the machine has not necessarily lessened the amount of hard work to be done, it has merely allowed us to do more work in a given amount of time.   In fact, it is because of the machine that the herdsman’s lot today is becoming an increasingly intolerable one.

An old friend of mine once milked twenty five cows night and morning with two machines.   He know his cows and his cows knew him.   Although he did not rush things, he was efficient.   He would stand aside as the cows came into the shed and cast his eye over each one, and as he milked, he ran his hand over their coats and looked at their droppings.   Old Charlie could tell immediately if one of the animals was off colour.   Then his employer retired and a young, progressive farmer moved in.   Fortunately he ask Charlie to stay on as cowman.   Now, Charlie milks sixty cows night and morning with four machines in a well-parlour.   On being asked how he liked the new system, the old cowman sighed.

“Well I dunno.   We gets the milk, that’s fer sure, but ‘tis like working in a factory.   There’s pipes, tubes, valves, taps an’ switches everywhere.   The animals go through the parlour like a dose o’ salts – you’ve ‘ardly got time to wash their bags.   All you can see of ‘em is one side, their guts might be ‘anging out the other fer all I know.”   His addendum, I think, summed up his real grievance.

                “Trouble is – I ‘ent got enough time to get to know me animals.”

What could once be classified as a pleasurable occupation was now, through the advent of the machine, become a tiresome chore, and as mechanisation infiltrates more and more, so true herdsmanship is disappearing.   The reticent paragon of tolerance, that slow, amiable patient being that was once the cowmen, is now being pushed aside to make way for the impatient, ulcer-ridden milker of high speed conveyer-type milk production of today, so much so in fact, that on some larger farms, milkers are already working a shift system to break the seven day a week monotony.

I can foresee in the not so distant future, a herd of a thousand or more cows, zero grazed, moving almost continuously through a system of yards and parlours twice every twenty four hours.   In the parlours, shift work will be in progress with round the clock milking.   The milk will be pumped through to the distribution.   The organisation will manufacture its own concentrates, will employ its own veterinary surgeon, accountant and secretary and will have a resident Ministry Inspector equipped with his own laboratory.   And of course the whole concern will be owned by the big industrialists of the day.   This is not such an improbability as may at first appear for this has already happened to a great degree to some of our poultry farms.   There are now vast empires where eggs are fed into one end of a building and emerge twelve weeks later at the other as pre-packed chickens with their giblets frozen into little polythene bags inside them.   Then there is the abomination of the sweat box and battery systems of meat production.   Agricultural evolution has reached a point where farming, as we know it, is slowly but surely plunging into self-annihilation and dragging down with it the responsibility of moral thought into a morass of turpitude.   We are entering an age of hydroponic systems where an agricultural technocracy permits controlled environment and mass production of living creatures to an extent unparalleled in human history.   It is as if we have forgotten that we are dealing with life itself and not inanimate lumps of putty waiting to be moulded into any shape by the current market.   Yet if the farmers of today do not keep abreast of [the] latest scientific developments, they would find it almost impossible to feed themselves let alone provide food for others.   Even so, despite the fact that agricultural efficiency and production have increased beyond the wildest dreams of great pioneers such as John Lawes and Sir Humphry Davy, people are still dying in their thousands for want of food.   Despite the fact that there is enough food produced throughout the world in any one year to supply mankind with the essentials of life for the next twenty, the bloated belly of the beggar is still a common sight in the greater part of the world.   It is not, therefore, research into agricultural production methods which is urgently needed, but research into the distribution of those products.   It is in this sphere that the great fields of ignorance lay.

But let me rein back awhile for I have digressed too far.   This letter to you was intended to be a portrait of the countryside as I have seen it during the last two months, so now let me gaze upon the pastoral scene beyond my window.   The cows have finished grazing and are lying in the meadow cudding methodically.   The sun falls upon their backs like a warm blanket and a faint breeze fans their faces.

It was nine o’clock last night that the last load was brought home.   Engines were switched off one by one across the fields and, as the evening star faded, Pegasus shimmered the in the warmth of dusk and gazed upon the southern elms.   As the last sheaf was laid upon the stack, the year ended, our year, that is.   George stood, hands on hips.   Harry leaned upon his pitchfork.   Alf and Arthur sat upon the trailer and Jim stood with one foot upon the wheel hub.   In silence they gazed at the stack, each man with his own thoughts, each man reaping his own spiritual harvest.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

chimney wormhole: the missing chord // the now-silent seagull
clouds & identity & time & wind wormhole: travelling // arrival
green wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
grey wormhole: for / the first time
hills & valley wormhole: volcanic rock
morning wormhole: forgotten anything
poetry wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
rain wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
silence wormhole: without any buffet at all
sun wormhole: is this it // all the time
thought & writing wormhole: Christmas 2015
trees wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
windows wormhole: river
work wormhole: I am not yet ready

 

Batgirl –

Tags

1967, 2018, 7*, air, Batgirl, Batman, Batmobile, cape, co-ordinate, comics, cowl, floating, flow, glasses, grass, green, hair, Infantino, leaves, looking, power, running, silhouette, site, sound, thinking, walls

                Batgirl –

                peering over her glasses
                through the fourth wall

                all of a sudden there was
                long grass in silhouette

                over which to run
                and there were foregrounds

                of leaf behind which
                to proceed and she thought,

                I could keep my looks
                under cowl and let

                the quiet and angry hair
                take siting and co-ordinates,

                let the cape field the
                flow of air while

                Batmobiles rev loudly
                and float adrift the green

                and current stalks –
                aimless to behold

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & sound wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
Batman wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
flow wormhole: concordance
glasses wormhole: city streets
green wormhole: without any buffet at all
hair wormhole: looking ahead
Infantino wormhole: Infantino KO
leaves wormhole: leaves
looking wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
power wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
silhouette wormhole: river
thinking wormhole: sweet chestnut
walls wormhole: is this it // all the time

 

south horizon

Tags

1959, 1967, 1979, 1993, 1999, 2011, 2012, 7*, abandonment, anger, Bowie, childhood, Dad, discovery, divorce, drum, evening, experience, horizon, light, London, Margaret Thatcher, memory, Mum, Nan, pain, parents, perspective, purple, rhythm, river, saxophone, shift, Shooters Hill, south, texture, Thames, travelling, words, world

                south horizon

                out on the river
                the purple is shifting

                but in the evening-bulb light
                the world-shaping words

                of grown ups
                is shifting uncontrollably

                but,          no; it’s OK          look
                there is rhythm, there is

                a saxophone, a hi-hat – shflpt –
                in the crack there

                where words sift
                where worlds shift

 

I submitted this to an online magazine; they didn’t want it; I’ll publish it here again with the copy that supported it:

about the poem: on my eighth birthday (in 1967) my Dad arrived home late from work; my parents had one of their last arguments; my Dad left home that night; I couldn’t remember much of what happened that night – what was said, how much I heard, how much I understood – but I realised that worlds could change quite quickly that night; years later, in 1993, David Bowie recorded ‘south horizon’ on his ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ album, but I didn’t really get to know the piece until 2011; hearing it etched that experience back into my memory – bevelled it up, almost – but it also supplied textures and chord changes to the memory that allowed me a perspective that held me from being just angry or hurt; (‘the river’ is the river Thames; we lived on Shooters Hill in SE London from where we could hear and breathe the river)

author bio: Mark Redford was born in 1959 and grew up in South East London until he bolted to university (like a bat out of hell) in 1979, hot from Margaret Thatcher’s election victory; London was never the same every time he returned back; his mother, who had brought him up with her mother (his Grandmother), died in 1999; since then he has travelled back to London frequently to find the previous 40 years, but only seems to find them when he writes down what he saw; you can see what he sees (possibly better than he can) at: https://mlewisredford.wordpress.com/; if you bump into him there, give him some directions would you?

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

abandonment wormhole: monument to vainglory
Bowie wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
childhood & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
Dad & divorce & texture wormhole: beepbeep
evening wormhole: alighted
horozon wormhole: 1966
light wormhole: so pleased to see you again
London wormhole: 1967
Mum wormhole: 1967
Nan wormhole: work
purple & river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
travelling wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
words wormhole: breathing out
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Agricultural Show

Tags

1967, August, children, farm, field, hats, June, life, Michael J Redford, people, portrait, the Boats of Vallisneria, walking, weather

The Agricultural Show

Walking for pleasure is one thing, walking because you have to is another, but in between the two comes walking round an agricultural show.   This of course, is purely self-imposed and must surely be classed as walking for pleasure, for the majority who attend do so without thought of executing any business.   Yet the final effect at the end of the day is the same as if one had been ordered on a route march across the Sinai Desert.   With swollen feet and aching backs the hosts disperse towards evening and flop lifelessly into their cars, their faces and neck still sizzling from the heat of the day.   Of course some shows are ill-fated with regard to the weather while others have not known a wet day for perhaps a quarter of a century, but on the whole, the shows fare well, the majority being held between the months of June and August.   This however is rather an unfortunate time to hold a show for it is normally a hectic time of the farm, what with mowing, baling and stacking hay.   It is even more unfortunate if a tractor laden with a couple of tons of hay (and it usually is at times like this) breaks down in the middle of a field, for an urgent call to the local agricultural engineers will receive the reply – “I’m sorry sir, but all the mechanics are at the show.”

Although each being in this world is an individual, the milling mass at an agricultural show can be divided into four main groups and if the truth were known there is to me, as much delight in studying the people as in studying the latest advances in agricultural technology.   (Taking this one stage further, I wonder how often it is I who have been the object of study).

I do not however include in these groups competitors for the equestrian events, for they and their retinues are a species apart and one could devote a sizeable volume to them alone.   Neither do I include the wide-eyed children who dart here, there and everywhere, sucking ice creams and soggy hot dogs, climbing onto tractors and falling into milk churns.   The first of the groups is the ‘immaculate’ group.   It is the bowler-deer-stalker hatted group that walks with militant step and serious face and prods at little pieces of paper with its shooting sticks.   The majority of this group have dangling from their lapels little cardboard discs with ‘Official’, ‘Judge’ or ‘Member’ stamped upon it in gold, and includes the ‘upper crust’, the gentleman farmer and the estate owner.   They wear either a bow tie or a club tie or maybe an old boy’s school tie.

The next group is that of the working farmer.   Here the hats have turned into soft, tweedy trilbies or pork pies.   There is a slight roundness of shoulder and the stride is long and loping.   The gait appears clumsy, yet after years of striding ploughed fields and climbing stacks, most farmers are as sure footed as mountain goats.   A young fourteen year old friend of mine is a supreme example of this.   He can skim across a freshly ploughed field like a hare and still keep pace with someone running on the flat.   Pipes and old walking sticks are the armaments of this group and are used to challenge, prod and probe new machinery or inspect the rows of tethered beasts waiting to enter the show ring.   This group is generally of a suspicious nature, non-committal and not easily swayed by the remarkable time, money and labour saving claims of the mountainous pile of literature thrust eagerly into its hands.   At the entrance to the trade stand beams the host.   He laughs very easily and his handshake is somewhat violent.   “Hello there, wonderful to see you again old boy, come in and have a drink.”   They disappear into the dim world of heaving canvass and creaking ropes.

The group that is always well represented at the shows is that of the farm worker.   He arrives in his best suit, polished boots and cap, his face can be likened to a bake potato and his smile is broader and more frequent than those of the other groups.   Unaccustomed to this mode of dress, it is not long before the tie is removed and the shirt front unbuttoned.   Soon the jacket comes off and is stuffed into the shopping bag containing the day’s ‘wittals’.   Some even go so far as to remove the cap, though why they should have the desire to do so on this particular day is beyond me, for judging from the pure white band on the upper part of their foreheads, the cap is never removed from one year’s end to the other.   He is disgusted at prices in the beer tent, but tolerates this as being one of the prices to be paid for a rare day’s outing with the family.   Old acquaintances are renewed more in this group than in the others, for farm workers move around more than farmers.   Friendly insults are bandied about and a sly drink is attempted before the womenfolk can find them and drag them off to the Women’s Institute tent.

The final group belongs to those whose only connection with country life is an occasional weekend outing in the car.   It consists of those who have farmed only in their dreams or whose children have a strong leaning in that direction.   Although their attire is variable, this group can normally be segregated by their complexions.   Even those who have communed with the elements for a fortnight whilst on holiday do not achieve the deeply ingrained weathering of the farm worker’s face.   It is a purely superficial mask through which the white lines of the brow, furrowed from the unaccustomed glare of the sun, can be detected.   Apart from this there is no strong characteristic linking these people together as a group for they all come from different walks of life.   Perhaps they walk a little faster than most and do not linger long in any one place, but no matter how disconnected this group is within itself, it can claim one thing in common with the rest and that is, a keen interest in farming or some aspect of country life.

On passing through the gates of a country or agricultural show, I invariably make for the little kiosk which sells the catalogues and on the map therein, I religiously trace out a route between the various avenues.   This route is designed to take me round to every trade stand, exhibition and demonstration in the shortest distance, retracing my steps as little as possible.   Having completed this task, an outstanding display a little way up the centre avenue catches my eye, so, thrusting the catalogue into my pocket, I decide to see what it’s all about.   My curiosity satisfied, I am attracted to a large group of people huddled around a mysterious object on display a little further down the line.   By the time I have made the front row, all thoughts of adhering to the route so meticulously worked out, have left me.   This happens every time I attend an agricultural show and I invariably end up by walking ten times as far as is necessary.   But so what?   Most of our lives have too great a proportion of it already ordered for us; there is far too much routine.   What matters it if we do cover the same ground twice?   One can always discover some fresh point of interest that had been passed by first time round.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

field wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance
life wormhole: everwhile
people wormhole: embodying
walking wormhole: faintly apricot air?

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance

Tags

1967, 2016, 8*, air, ale, breathing, countryside, earth, field, gaze, ghosts, grandfather, green, honeysuckle, Kent, life, Michael J Redford, noon, nose, quiet, sound, speech, suburbia, summer, Sunday, time

 

                on Sundays my father downed tools and was
                led by the nose – the Redford bequest –

                drawing us into the quietude of Kent,
                out from the crust of suburbia,

                plunged deepening into green
                carrying bags of sandwiches towards noon;

                when, he would gaze around awhile
                and “let’s try over there” as if he were only

                wondering, “landlord’s name is Bert,”
                he’d trail behind quietly to himself, breathing

                even ghosts in through his live and open nostrils
                (back, even, to the seventeenth century,

                 looking out over the tombstones,
                creaking & checking, drinking, ale); taught me

                to fathom honeysuckle
                on a damp summer’s air carrying far before

                the meet, to flare to the earth
                of a muck heap ‘made’ well, to bask

                and loiter by ammoniac stables
                breathing for to clear the head, to “foller yer nose”

                and find the green bean field –
                cup of sweet wine drunk with intemperance –

 

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose; this piece is, of course, written from the uncle-person singular, therefore his ‘father’ was my Grandfather, who died when I was still a baby – I knew him about as much as a ruffle on the head from on high that I can remember; I have grown familiar with him through Mick’s writings and old pictures I have acquired to try and trick time out of its progress – AND IT SUCCEEDED!

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & green & Sunday wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
breathing & speech wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
field wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
ghosts wormhole: passersby
life wormhole: passing below
quiet wormhole: sleep now
sound wormhole: 1967
time wormhole: time

 

1967

Tags

1967, 2014, 5*, Burt Bacharach, desert, Dionne Warwick, evening, London, mauve, orange, prayer, purple, rock, sand, smell, sound, white

                                1967

                                one early
                                evening
                                in London
                                amid the
                                fug of
                                cabbage
                                and the
                                clack of
                                cleared
                                plates

                the deep orange sand was turning purple
                and the piled rocks remained white and mauve

                                in the
                                desert

 

reaching both from within, and through: I say a little prayer by Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Burt Bacharach & Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1964
evening wormhole: beepbeep
London & smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
mauve wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
orange wormhole: magnificent salad
purple wormhole: the 19th century
sound wormhole: embodying
white wormhole: con / sum / mate

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose

Tags

1967, air, brother, countryside, Essex, father, fields, green, honeysuckle, horse, Kent, London, Michael J Redford, morning, mother, nose, pub, smell, suburbia, Sunday, the Boats of Vallisneria, trees

Follow Your Nose

My father had a nose for pubs, there’s no denying that!   Noses were always a prominent feature of the Redford family and very sensitive instruments they are too.   I remember when my brother and I were still at school, how mother would pack a shopping bag with sandwiches, apples and flasks of tea and early on Sunday mornings the whole family would disappear into the countryside.   We were then living in South East London and we would take advantage of every opportunity to escape into the freedom and quietude of Kent.   I was born in Sydenham and my father also was a native of that area, but when he was a boy, the green fields of Kent came rolling to within easy view from his back door.   Now alas, time has stamped these green fields with the concrete monotony of suburbia.   So it was that many a fine Sunday morning would see the Redford family making a bee-line for Shoreham just north of Sevenoaks.   Shoreham was our stepping off point and in those distant days it seemed a million miles from London.   My grandmother used to work at the Crown Hotel there and we were permitted to leave our bicycles in the garden while we plunged into the green depths of the surrounding countryside.   Towards noon father would suggest that we find a pub where we could revive our flagging energy and eat our sandwiches and, pausing awhile, he would gaze around and say, “Let’s try over there.”   Over the hill we would go and, sure enough, the very first building we would come to would be a pub.   Now this never failed.   It mattered not what part of the British Isles we were in, ‘Dad’s Nose’ was an infallible receiver and every pub a homing beacon.   In this way, father had built up over the years, a storehouse of information concerning pubs in Kent, Surrey and Sussex.   Sometimes a friend of the family would arrive at the house and suggest that we all take a trip out somewhere and have a drink.   “I’ve found a nice little pub at Luddesdowne,” they would say, “The Red Lion I think it is.”

Father’s mental filing cabinet would whirr into action and he’d say, “Ah yes, you mean the Golden Lion.   Lays down in the dip alongside an orchard.   Landlord’s name is Bert.”

I have never known my father to be caught out by a pub he didn’t know, although there was one occasion however, when father’s probosciscal (sic) infallibility received a severe jolt.   While living for a short period in Basildon New Town in Essex we sometimes took a stroll to Stock on Sunday mornings.   This was a distance of some ten miles and we usually timed our arrival at Stock to coincide with opening time.   On our first expedition however, we mistimed ourselves badly.   We had walked only as far as Great Burstead when the pubs began to open and so we decided against going on to Stock that morning for it would almost have been closing time by the time we reached our goal.   Following Dad’s nose, we turned off the main road and climbed the hill in the direction of Little Burstead.   At the top, among elm and oak, stood an old grey church.   Nestling beside this in the shadow of its spire was a small weather-boarded building that displayed all the characteristics of an Essex pub.   There were only a dozen or so other buildings in sight which were quite obviously private dwellings, so we walked up to the leaning timbers beside the church.   I was stunned and father was puzzled. Above the door was a sign which read ‘Village Stores – Newsagents – Tobacconists – Confectioners’.   This was something I could never have dreamt possible, father had failed and the honour of a long line of Redford noses had been thwarted.   This nagging failure prompted my father to do a little research, the results of which, in our collective view, reinstated the Redford’s nose to its rightful place in history.   The village stores was once the King’s Arms, a very old inn that dated back to the seventeenth century.   It stands along one side of the graveyard and, in days gone by, when the worthy patrons drank their ale in the back parlour, they could look out of the bar windows onto the tombstones, and it was for this reason that the inn was also known as Dead Man’s Rattle.

However, I must not give you dear reader a false impression of the Redford’s standards of propriety and morality.   We are not inveterate drunkards, but merely people who enjoy a pint of beer in congenial company and in congenial surroundings.   The Redford nose is not sensitive to only yeast and hops, but is also most appreciative of other aromas.   The nostalgic scent of honeysuckle on a damp summer’s eve for example.   It is surprising how far the scent is carried when the air is damp.   I have on one occasion been aware of the sweet tangle of honeysuckle a full two hundred yards before reaching it.   Of course, not all the smells of the countryside are as attractive, and here most people will automatically think of the many muck heaps dotted about the landscape and although one can hardly describe the scent of these as attractive, I personally do not place them in the unattractive category, for a muck heap that has ‘made’ well emanates a virile, earthy aroma that gives promise of future bumper crops.   The smell which immediately comes to mind in this category is that of the Stink Horn, the woodland fungus that gives off an overpowering stench of putrefying flesh and is attractive only to the bloated blue-bottle which is the curse of all rural ramblers.   The ammoniac-al smell of stables is offensive to some people, but I have many happy early memories connected with horses and I find it difficult to pass by a stable without pausing and conversing with the inhabitants, and even if there are no horses at home, I will stop, stand and stare.   Anyway, it is surprising how it clears the head.

One fine spring morning I visited a farmer friend of mine, but I arrived five minutes after he had left for Monk’s Tye, a fifteen acre field somewhere on the other side of the farm.   I told his wife who had opened the door to me, that I wasn’t familiar with the layout of the fields.

“That’s alright,” she beamed, “Yer can’t miss ‘im.   ‘E’s fixing the fence ‘longside the bean field – just foller yer nose.”

I went to the end of the stackyard, sucked my forefinger and stabbed it into the air.   A mild breeze from the west was moving the tree-tops and borne upon it was the unmistakably sweet, and to my mind, the most glorious country smell of all, that of a bean field.   I faced the zephyr and tacked across the fields.   It was a cup of sweet wine that I drank with unashamed intemperance.

At one period during my military days when I was transferred to Egypt, we embarked upon an exercise that took us trekking across the Sinai Desert to St. Cathrine’s Monastery.   In the heart of that leafless and shale-covered land cradled in the depths of silence and time, it struck me how different was the smell of the air to that of an English day.   I have always been of the mind that pleasure is the product of sensual contrasts and this certainly holds true in this instance for, although I had always delighted in the scent of a field of well-made hay or a breeze heavy with the sweet scent of a bluebell wood, I have never appreciated them more than on my return from that arid land.   So marked was the contrast and so great the ensuing pleasure, that I was moved to write the following lines:-

            Ne’re before, ‘till I went away
            From England, did an English day
            Seem quite so fair.   No line ‘twixt earth
            And sky so soft, no scene so dearly
            Held within the memory’s store
            For man’s old age to reap.
            A golden sun o’er greenest grass,
            The whitest clouds the azure dusts,
            And gentle is the soft warm breath
            That lifts the lark and cools
            The summer’s day.
            Low wind the lanes ‘twixt hedgerows
            Honeysuckle scented, trees clasp their
            Fingertips above in trembling sway,
            And softly rustling chestnut leaves
            So green, turn gold against the sun,
            Their echoes of a year gone by –
            The hunting ground of stoat and fox.
            The slow warm hours the humming
            Insects ride and dart, the trickling
            Streams the hot stones smooth,
            And slowly pass the whiles of dusk
            Across the silent fields once more.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
father & Sunday wormhole: familiasyncopation
green wormhole: industrial estate
London wormhole: time
morning wormhole: 1964
smell wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – mmpph’
trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

 

beepbeep

Tags

1960s, 1967, 2016, 7*, abandonment, colour, commentary, courage, crying, Dad, depression, direction, divorce, driving, evening, eyes, feeling sorry for myself, freedom, groundlessness, Have, home, hope, identity, life, light, looking, now, others, passing, people, pointlessness, purpose, renunciation, revolution, sense of self, sex, sign, sound, texture, time, true nature, Victoria & Albert Museum, world

                                did Dad leaving
                                trigger my sense of revolution or
                my sense of depression
that there is no purpose
                                in the world
                that I would eventually have to find the courage
to face those new tremors,
                                but five years on,
                                                there, between the given textures
                already cheap and fraying

                                or did revolution trigger Dad to leave
                                                                and find some other way
                                                                                to find some truer nature?

                -O~~~

                                I didn’t want the headphones, now
                                I didn’t want the commentary
                                                all safely wrapped and bordered
                                                                so I kept my own eyes
                                                                open and saw 50 year old memorabilia
                                                                                strangely mute, now
                                                                                despite the peacock-print

                                                and little in between
                                                                save shuffling overcoats with
                                                                no sense of direction where to go
                                                                                save their right of individual                
                                                                                                                way

                                                                                                ~~~O-

                                I don’t think I want the revolution
                                anymore –
                                                away with your awkward sex! –
                I want to know the innate freedom
                                I trust I have already,
                                                save for my sense of right of way

                                                                I cried for fifty years later that evening
                                                it is hard to lose your way returning home
                                                                cut up and turning in circles
                                                                                hoping for the right lane
                                                                                                lights on and direction to go                
                                                                                                                everywhere
                                                                                                signed
                                                                and passing overhead
                                                                it is hard to arrive
                                                toe to toe
                                                                with a fifty year old overcoat
                                with no face
                                but a blinking eye
and me with no headphones

                                                                beepbeep

 

on 30th October 2016, I visited the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition @You Say You Want a Revolution’ – Records and Rebels 1966-1970 (a birth day present, thank you, Carol); my Dad left our family on 2nd November 1967, my eighth birthday, and the divorce became final by 1969; I think it was Brigitte Bardot who said something about the ‘tremors’ which were felt in the late 60s, but few who had the ‘courage’ to face them, but I can’t seem to find the quote verbatim; we got a bit lost, at first, driving back from west London

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

abandonment & Dad & people wormhole: chartless …
depression wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
divorce wormhole: 1967
evening & identity wormhole: sleep now
eyes & life & sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
groundlessness & pointlessness wormhole: [once a] dilemminal [always a dilemminal]
Have wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
light wormhole: adjustment
looking wormhole: Clea
others & passing wormhole: passersby
renunciation wormhole: escape from Flat Planet
texture wormhole: zazen
time wormhole: the too big moon
world wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow