Clattinger Review

A new power cable(or is it a pipe?) is being laid in the meadows where the turf is sliced aside revealing in parts the juggernaut clay. Thick, punch-hard clay as deep as my arm with the shreds of the plant roots lying on the top like a skin. No wonder everything grows. There's a lake under the turf! I wondered what the pipe was for and I liked the association of new connections being made.
I have walked the margins of these fields perhaps two dozen times, every time going the same way, as fixed as any badger on its nightly foraging. I stopped at familiar places, the pool in the elbow of two fields, the five-bar gate, the cattle trough, the end of the field where the fritillaries grow, and many others. They became more than obscure points on a map; they had different moods and elements, and I recorded them in my journals. I made a history of places that people pass by, and a history of my responses. I liked this time out, but I wont say from the real world. There was a lot here more real than that.
Clattinger is so ordinary I say to others. Every day of the week you would pass it by; a few flat fields, some enclosure hedgerows, a few big trees. There is nothing to attract your attention. This jewel is not given easily.
To repeat, Clattinger Farm is a near-vanished type of grassland, the hay meadow. It is considered the finest remaining example of enclosed lowland grassland in the UK and has legal protection as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. This is a tribute to the previous owners who farmed it traditionally without artificial fertilisers - the only lowland farm in England to escape.
I, like others, had come for the processions of orchids in their thousands. I had never seen anything like it. I stayed and came back in every season, in the rain, the fog, when the grass was scrubbed clean and the flowers were only a memory. I kept going back.
And what did I find? The fool in me, for sure. I buttered no parsnips. I fed the child that loved to meander, not follow signposts. I remembered the joy of discovery, like seeing the way a grass-blade speared dew drops, the smallest at the top, the fattest at the bottom; identifying insects such as the sunfly with its totemic yellow stripes. I liked my private, hidden world and by some transmission I liked the hidden meanings I found in nature. This is what I found.
I think this is as far as I go. I am working on the pieces now. I have invented 26 new words to record what I found. There just are not enough words to describe the inside moments of our lives - yet all the time I have been looking at the real world, what's in front of me.
Instarmori - the little death between moults, the space between. This feels like one of those moments.
So this marks the end of my formal Clattinger blog. It's been a quirky journey and I have no idea how many have come along. I will post more bulletins when I have complete samples. So watch this space. The plan is to publish what I found in book form.
Do contact me for more information: peteralfredplease@hotmail.com

Last Light

In the dark lane the low sun is spraying golden paint onto the hedgerows; small birds let off steam releasing the song pressure little by little sweet-talking the day passing overhead the only sure thing is the curvy way, the eat-your-heart-out-greens, the world yellows of crabapples with brown counterparts, the few leaves at half-mast and always the air dripping moisture foraging earth's shade of greys communicating the dry broom of leaves and everything on the way down falling falling in parts remembered only in our minds in the cold sleeping body of earth, the muzzy and mousy pearly grey tints, smudged outlines the colours freighted sleeping under the skin of day. I am sombre, slow-tongued, slow to move grave graven belly greys pulling down the shutters of light.

Everything is on its way down smudged, fudged, draggle-ended, fag-ended light, the outlines only, everything is seen under water, the liquid eyes of peat, the borrowed time, the sense of falling slowly onto earth. The cool intake, the ferried scents arriving, the noisy escapes of birds taking off to somewhere else, the jeezy jingle of jackdaws, the stirruping stones of thrushes, everything alone together, the crowded isolation at the end of day, the momentum of silence, the slow fingers crawling up the hillside, haunting the shadows of red, the day a tear in the darkness. So calm today, its been here a long time in this music of nothing happening, not this day, the dead fisheye of the sky, the silence talking for our attention. We have come this way before, once in the long ago. The last light is a low tide in the sky, the faintest of praise for the mortals walking below.

Cross-cutting Ties

And I was thinking, Where do all the people come from?
From a plane more dreary fields
And the people mountain time bender ship of dreams
They're all the same, flatlands, straight pencil lands derived from the enclosures; a few curling oaks, ash and hazel, loose-limbed, greenish or lighter than brown
I see the world through the plate-glass, the grey-sprayed light without the halflights
This is not a place to hide your lights.
The West Coast express, Eco Sulis voyages...And the thighs keep their rhythm scissoring down the main street, stretching the pleasure lines, setting out horizons for view.
Into the paradisial world of flies, the whizz momentum, the din soothes, the red before you making it day
In the supermarket the stacks of shelves come off the marble floor. The red food signs reflect a neon light.
The light picks out rich browns from the mud, milk chocolate instead of dark; shining the greens. Nothing is happening, just as I thought it would.
The banners are in lurid reds and blues: Must End Soon, Loan's Sale, Perfect Valentine's Day. The people queue on the floor; the lights do the same on the ceiling.
The trees stand tall in sackcloth gold and frozen shadows. The hedgerows are dusted with the sweepings from the warehouse floor.
They are standing at the checkout. The voices babble in neutral faces, attentive, kind faces, on overdraft faces, I'm approaching my prime faces.
I am in a room without a ceiling, and it's glowing.
Cars don't care. They purr, they pootle, flash their rubber muscles, wheeze and whine their hydraulic glands. You'd never think that oil is at the bottom of this
Did you know that the richest men are the packagers?
I was not going to find anything today and I wanted to be happy about that.
Into the big-ditch termite voice storm traffic graffiti
I collected nothing, ticked no boxes. I put a feather on a fence-post. I always do that. I walked the hidden part of me until it walked me.
The mind engine mind fender history doodler and me
Up they shoot, giraffes on one leg, dancing their blades around the stem, the top ones arching

City Linx

The cars sweep through the rain in that distinctive way as if they are hoovering the road.
At Clattinger, the rain whether light or heavy showers falls soft into the meadows as if the silence is inexhaustible.
It’s rush-hour and everyone is going from one end of the city to the other. It happens every morning and evening. You can tell the time by it.
There are no cars at Clattinger, street lights or petrol stations, or roundabouts. The cattle move from one end of Mrs Ody’s meadow to the other; the burnet moths float over the grasses as if their lives make a net of long, wiggling lines.
In the city, time is measured by watches and is strictly repetitive. It’s always the same time, going at the same speed.
At Clattinger time is nature’s increase, is erratic, and is measured by the dead weight of the cattle. And the orchid weight and the fly weight, and the weight of the fattening grasses.
One day a van will take them to the city. It was always their destination, where the lines of our lives finally cross.

Finding My Feet

I bring my brooding mood to the meadows. Who am I alone with? There is no escape. We can never stop being ourselves.
First impressions: I resist the almost tactile cloud of midges which refuse to get out of my way. I brush them from my face and hair. The rain motors out of black Dogger banks in the sky. I sweep the moisture from my face and hair.
I keep to the hedgerow margins startling the rabbits. Is there a monster coming? They think so, and show me the finger of their white tail. I am their excitement spot of the day. The belted Galloway cattle blocking the way don’t care one way or the other. They have a Master’s in stoicism. I walk around them feeling their sweet outblowing breath. This morning it steams a little.
My energy dwindles until I am sure that I am walking with a pale-faced youth who escaped by mooning with nature. Is this what I am doing? Escaping again?
Come to your senses boy.
I am finding them by using my feet on this wet day.
The rain is switched off and the sun miraculously spray-paints the meadows with gold and mellow pinks. I stop before the sea of grasses. Already the soft bromes and bents and tufted hair-grass are half-lying down. It’s autumn in mid-summer. Crazy.
I notice a red spot in the distance. There is a multitude of dark red spots, the flowerheads of great burnet. You have to see one before you see any.
I marvel at clouds, the juxtaposition of darkest blue and silver linings in the sky. There is nothing half-hearted about them. It’s what I would like for myself, to come into dramatic focus.
I lose my way, I find my way. The insects lie low in the grasses bringing down the swifts to find them. A dozen sweep over my head, make sudden right-angle turns to track a morsel. Wow! I think. Where do I keep my wings?
I walk the margins of my favourite fields; the moon daisies are white lights beside the royal purples of knapweed and saw-wort. I touch this familiar ground obliquely. It’s enough. I give the pale youth a bear hug.

Perfect Day

It’s like this: the frogs are on the move and so are we.
They are the size of fingertips hop-stopping along the damp field margins. They wait at the road edge to Minety. ‘Don’t do it! You’ll get killed.’
‘Are you mad? We are on our way to somewhere else today.’
It’s a perfect day for a frog: the loaded sky threatens point-blank showers. They don’t happen – confounding the forecasters – and even the sun makes a guest appearance commanding our faces, all botanists’ faces indulging in a little feeding frenzy on orchids.
Clattinger is a temperate rainforest today. The Common Spotted orchids are blinking purple beacons in the sea of grasses of Upright Brome, Soft Brome, Red Fescue, Meadow Oat-grass, and Quaking grass. You have to see one before you can see any.
It’s all touch and feely with the sedges: stroking the hairs of Carex hirta; folding the leaf of Carex flacca to see the two–tone greens; putting four fingers between the fruits of Carex distans; using a lens to see the fine felty hairs of Downy-fruited sedge, Carex tomentosa, one of the rarest plants in Britain. It grows among the False Oat-grass in the ditch field: there are no signposts to the national treasures.
The 5 and 6-spot Burnet moths cling to every other Lesser Knapweed flower dotting the meadows with the cool side of purple. A Bloodvein moth and a Blackneck noctuid moth come sluggishly into view. They are in every insect book but these are the first I have seen.
The sweet smell of Burnt orchids – the emblem flower for Wiltshire – survives where they were found last year. But where are the Wasp and Bee orchids? They have flown. If every orchid germinated their tiny seeds we wouldn’t be able to get out of our front door.
And still come the frogs making their first journey on land. Is it this way or that way?
Don’t follow me kiddo. I’m lost too.

Clattinger Real

I stood at the back of the meadow. I had wanted to stop, and so I did that, and turned to look back across the grass. The low light levels, the rolling ridges of murky cloud, the vivid sense that no-one else would come here on a day like this, and so I found myself in that ephemeral place of being alone and knowing that to be so.
The red fescue grasses combed my sensibility. The multitude of darker, upright stems became crowded as a nation within the walls of the hedgerow trees. The wind played them, moved them. This is how I found myself, alone and abroad and walking somewhere. Where it did not matter.
And this is England in my northern heart and I am walking under the grey sky with the damp earth coming up to meet me. I felt that I belonged yet all the time I could not express this.
And what did you find?
That I cannot find to order, that some things arrive under my nose as it were. They appear when I stop. They were always there, but I wasn’t.
I don’t understand.
That’s only a small part of it. I did not resist the sense that I had nothing to say. I wanted to be a boat landing on the shore. I arrived because I had nowhere else to go. The inescapability held me.
I sank into my seat in this field of grasses which could have been the sea. I let the false perspectives tease me; how a feather a few feet away and caught by a yellow-rattle flower could have been someone waving at the far end of the field. What was big could be little: so the great poplars lining the roadside meadow I could almost touch. I looked for and found the barrelled seedheads of snake’s head fritillary. I had to see one before I could see that there were hundreds.
This is Clattinger, it’s flat and unexceptional from a distance. I had forgotten more than I remembered about the flowers. I listened to birdsong but I could not see their faces. I preferred the oscillating flight of the melo...melo hoverfly, the one with the beak, the one like a drop of amber floating among the grasses.
I was not going to find anything today and I wanted to be happy about that.
I collected nothing, ticked no boxes. I put a feather on a fence-post; I always do that. I walked the hidden part of me until it walked me. I spoke to no-one, made no decisions. Yet I did something that I had never done before: I never opened this journal. I wanted to walk in the field as my shoes became steadily soaked. The pollen coloured them yellow. I did not mind. I would write something later.
And this is what I see now: I am standing at the margin of a nation of grasses. How outnumbered I am, and that people are like this when in crowds. I cannot tell one from the other, yet they, the grasses, appear as one. People are one.
I loved the sense of going nowhere this day, of arriving, of having only absences to call my own, and that I belonged. I cannot express it any other way. That in each and every one of these moments I felt real. (Clattinger/Bath, May 25, 2007)

Noise of Stones

In one of the back lanes of the old city of Chania - a city fusing East and West styles, and a Christian church with a minaret - I was reminded of Clattinger.
At 5 Defkalionos str. is the Eco Forum store belonging to Stalios and Zeta. They fly the flag for organic, ecological and traditional produce from the Chania hinterland.
Look past the trader and so often you see the backstop peasant growing his own olives on a small farm. Stalios had come back from the mountains with his bags of mountain greens - the young shoots of poppies, carrot, sow-thistle, fennel and wild asparagus, and offered them with Cretan feta cheese pies.
Their summer pastures are now the city.
Do you like the noise of the stones? he asked when he discovered that I was walking with Crysse Morrison along the south-west coast of Crete from Plakias to Paleochora.
I liked his techno-peasant style, using time and money as currencies: money to front his business in Chania, time to walk in the mountains, and time for these strangers.

Ensconet - Kiss of Life

If Clattinger is the refuge for some of the UK's rarest flowers, then here in Chania is a refuge for the most threatened plants of Crete.
A few kilometres out of the old city is the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania's (MAICh) garden for the rare and threatened plants of this Greek island.
1734 plants are recorded on Crete - and, of these, ten percent are endemic to the island and grow nowhere else in the world.
The garden was established in 2000 with E.U. funding and is part of the ENSCONET initiative to establish a network of European seed banks for endangered native plants.
In Europe one fifth our our natives are considered threatened by unrestricted developement, pollution, intensive agriculture and deforestation. Climate change is predicted to accelerate this loss.
The big idea is to combat this threat by storing a seed under special conditions which can prolong its viability by reducing the seed's water content.
The main problem in Crete is unrestricted grazing from sheep and goats. Nothing can regenerate, and only those which can turn themselves into pincushions or develop powerful aromatic repellents can survive.
One solution is to develop micro-reserves - under 20 hectares - to protect the rarest plants. The Thorow-wax Bupleurum kaliskale grows on limestone cliffs at Linoseli in the Lefka Ori mountains and nowhere else in the world. Zelkova abelicea is a tree endemic to Crete in the Omalos region - there are only between 50-100 adult trees surviving in the world.
If we have taken from forests to maintain our lives, what can we give back to maintain the life of forests?

The Wou - Clattinger's Moon

The Wou comes softly off the tongue woo wo woo, strange and familiar as the wind calling in our ears.
Who has heard of The Wou?
Not one in a million – yet.
Viewed from Brown Rigg, this Scottish Border mire is coloured red and bulges out of a sea of dead-looking grass. No-one comes here except the Swaledale sheep, their shepherds, and the deer nosing out of Kielder Forest.
A wild place for Southerners, it was long considered a wasteland, an empty quarter, out of sight, out of mind. But not for the Snipe and Emperor moths, and Adders and Golden Plovers and lizards, and carnivorous Sundew.
It is a primeval bog created from the meltwaters of the last ice age, circa 13,000BC, and millimetre by millimetre has been buried by sphagnum moss.
Miraculously it has survived the Neolithic farming revolution, the Roman occupation along Hadrian’s wall, the Border Reivers, the Forestry Commission’s creation of Kielder Forest, and Government grants to improve drainage.
Like Clattinger’s hay meadows, it is a site of Special Scientific Interest(SSSI).It has never been ploughed or drained or improved with fertilisers – only sheep graze the Purple Moor and Deer Grass.
The Wou is finally recognised for what it is: a wetland of global importance, 300 acres of prime carbon-sink bog from the Old Stone Age.
It is on the frontline of global warming, and in our minds. These hinterlands are coming of age.
The Wou conceals her radiance, as Clattinger blooms her orchids.
And the last word?
Are there any nature reserves of the mind?

Woo Poem

wo woo wo
wowoo woowo
wowoo woowo
wo wow woo wo
wowoo woo wow
wo woooma wo
wo ooma woo
o wooma wo
wo wooma woo
woman o wow
owooma woo
o man

Factfile(1)

Clattinger Farm is unique - it's the only lowland farm in Britain never to have received agricultural chemicals.
These ancient hay meadows in the Braydon Forest area of North Wiltshire are considered the finest remnant of neutral grassland - the most threatened lowland habitat in the country.
The combination of high-water levels, soils developed from alluvium overlaying Oxford Clay, and traditional management of cutting hay in July(after seeding) followed by grazing, has grown a rich diversity of plants.
About 80% of the U.K. population of Snake's Head Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) can be found on the reserve, along with most of the Adder's-tongue (Ophioglossum vulgatum) population and the Red Data Book species, Downy-fruited Sedge(Carex filiformis).
Other less common plants include thousands of Green-winged Orchids(Orchis morio) and Pepper-saxifrage(Silaum silaus) and Great Burnet(Sanguisorba officinalis), to colonies of Meadow Saffron(Colchicum autumnale).
There are at least 40 species of grasses and sedge - including Carnation Sedge(Carex panicea) and Spring Sedge(C. caryophllea)- an indication of old, unimproved grassland.
The most frequent grasses are Creeping Bent(Agrostis stolonifera), Upright Brome(Bromopsis erecta), Meadow Foxtail(Alopecurus pratensis), Sweet Vernal Grass(Anthoxanthum odoratum), Red Fescue(Festuca rubra agg.) and Yorkshire Fog(Holcus lanatus).
The slightly less common are Quaking-grass(Briza media), Meadow Barley(Hordeum secalinum), Downy Oat-grass(Helictotrichon pubescens), and Tall Fescue(Festuca arundinacea).

Factfile(2)

ORCHIDS include:
Bee Orchid(Ophrys apifera); Burnt Orchid(Orchis ustulata); Common Spotted-orchid(Dactylorhiza fuchsii); Common Twayblade(Listera ovata); Early Marsh-orchid(Dactylorhiza incarnata); Wasp Orchid(Orchis apifera var. trollii).
DRAGONFLIES + DAMSELFLIES include:
Common Blue Damselfly(Enallagma cyathigerum) by the thousand; Banded Demoiselle(Calopteryx splendens); Four-spotted Chaser(Libellula quadrimaculata) and Black-tailed Skimmer(Orthetrum cancellatum).
MOTHS include:
Forester(Adscita statices); Brown Argus (Aricia agestis); Small Rivulet(Perizoma alchemillata); White-spotted Pug(Eupithecia tripunctaria); Ruby Tiger(Phragmatobia fuliginosa); Flame Shoulder (Ochropleura plecta); Common Rustic(Mesapamea secalis) and Burnet Companion (Euclidea glyphica).

Any Direction Poem(2)

mortal ++ calling ++ register
mud++ silent++ silver
singsong++ water ++luxuriance

Field Corner(1)

A wren drums down furious that I should stop here. It machines me for ten seconds.
I hesitated before kneeling at this dogleg corner between two fields. Here the path crosses into the roadside meadow by skirting a pool of brackish water. The electric fence ticks and crackles continuously.
I imagine the faces of farmers. They are always invisible, like the animals.
The tangled boughs of willows obscure the view from all sides. A little sunlight shows the thumbprints of submerged leaves. I hear the puttering of small birds, the scratchboard of blackthorn. The breeze hushes the shingle in my ears.
Nothing is happening, just as I thought it would.
The light picks out rich browns from the mud, milk chocolate instead of dark; shines the rusty bramble greens. Here light flickers, shadows vibrate, something quickens.
A few Blackthorn petals star the surface, a bit scummy and impervious to the breeze touching it. I like the way the petals are sheltered, tethered in this natural, safe harbour. What is a company of petals?
There is a quiet, forgotten quality as if nobody ever comes here. I am happy just to see, not like the wren literally quivering its tail with rage.
The surface quivers, it is still, it is silver, it is full of black holes. It is inscrutable, a perfect miniature place I would have visited as a child. No doubt for the same reasons. I would have dallied, poked about with a stick, perhaps snapped a flower or dropped a stone.
A fly slips in and rights itself. I lose my way and its simply a way of turning round. I am lost and it's a way to discover. The plaintive, single piping note I take to be a Hedgesparrow.
Somewhere a lorry charges into the day.

Field Corner(2)

I do nothing and things start to appear.
Two rabbits spring out from the ditch. Who is more startled? A survivor Dronefly throttles by, a Coal-tit drops in, something taps the hollow bark. A Goldcrest sneaks along a branch, probing it with its beak.
This forgotten wildline is a native place. Nothing is sown or cultivated here. Is there a connection between what's in my thoughts and what appears? What I am able to see?
In spring, Watermint creeps by arching back its neck; the long, vernal legs of Yellow Iris march across the water to the other side. The breeze will finger the dense, reflected undergrowth of Blackthorn and Hazel.
The luxuriant mud will grow a single clump of Kingcup, the cool aristocrat with its head of gold, the only bright thing in this murkiness.
In autumn there will be the budget golds of the last hazel leaves, the purple shadows of Sloes.
The soft earth yields underfoot; a warm vernal light splashes the shadows. A few flies are mesmerised by the weak sunlight. A small brown bird swings under the rims of my eyes; others, always out of sight, tie knots in the air.
I make no faces here or smiles as a defence. I steady a bit, I am touched. Still come the outlines of generous women. I smile at that. I picture the local supermarket, the red glitter end of the spectrum, the chained lights and check-outs. There is a connection, but not today.
Everywhere I see seeds and fragments. Who am I alone with?

Field Corner(3)

When I went away the first time it came with me, this pitchy scrap of water in the corner of two fields.
In summer I wanted to come back. It's not what I know, I reasoned to myself, but the gaps, the silence, the obscurity which draws me back.
First thing: the Blackthorn petals had gone, the mud had gobbled them up. The Kingcup had fallen over as the water retreated. The mud grew a dimpled mud, a soft sink-into-the-mud. The tideline of sallow covered the far shore.
Today I am at home in this forgotten place, somewhere beautifully unknown.
The sky floats in the water, a ship across the underworld of bare branches. The light falls muddled, grey with changes; this moment of lost remembrance. Winter comes trampling the leaves, ridging the eyes with the debris of woody limbs, the brown confetti of fragments.
The barbed wire fence strikes out into the field on straight posts. A defence against what? The Passchendaele of mud, the voices of longing. I lean my head away from the breeze; incessantly it calls, demands my attention.
Here come the faces, the soldiers in brown marching off to Ypres singing the ecstatic of going somewhere together. Where do all the people come from? And where do they all go? The soldier archetype is just below the surface waiting to step back out.
I shake with the cold air as no sun reaches here.
This is the forgotten corner, out of circulation, in the trembling of wire shadows, the odd posting of birds.
What kind of fool are you?
I laugh at that. The breeze replies squeezing the brambles, lush-ploughing my ears, creaking old growths. I will fail I know I will. I will make no sense out of this. Here I shall fly my flag of discovery, for in my heart that is what I wish for. I want to change nothing or expect to find anything. I come alone and I will go alone.
Here I have arrived.

Rain Mandorla

Here comes the rain falling on my head.
But it’s not. You’re sitting under an umbrella.
I’m on the last bit of firm ground beside a flooded gateway. I'm in a still-life of winter rain.
If only he had listened to us.
Today I want my questions, not your answers.
It's everywhere this soft rain, the drip, dripping isolation. And not one drop is lost on its way down.
How did I land in this water meadow?
I knew it would end like this.
I wanted this wet day! When the Clattinger hay meadows are knitted yellows, browns and greens - a discarded cardigan. A day when I knew I would see nobody.
He’s not doing anything.
Water finds the common places of earth, lies in wait for the sun, pumps the hearts of Southern Marsh Orchids, circulates the dead.
Did you know there are thousands of Snakes-head Fritillaries(Fritillaria meleagris) in this unimproved meadow? Their flowering is linked to a wet winter.
It's the same rain which falls on the tower blocks in the city. We are christened by rain, the liquid transmission of fertility from the soil bacteria, to the grass, the animals, to us.
The idle talk of rain: listen carefully and it could be fire crackling on the umbrella.
Everything rolls off water’s tongue. Nothing is above or falls below, and so one for all and all for one.
Every floating grass-blade traps a bubble coming up for air. The puddle reflects back the sky, a tremor of breeze; every movement it magnifies.
It’s always changing and always stays the same. How is that possible?
Every raindrop is a mandorla as the flight-path of rings cross over.
Just for a moment, I see that.

Not Knowing The Speech Of Birds

I wrinkle my nose at such foolishness as this. I am beautifully inarticulate.
Here he goes again...
You have to start somewhere, at this place of listening.
I close my eyes. Birdsong is croaked and honked, a cronky honken baseline pumped out as air under pressure or as a song-net of flutes turning corners. They whistle as they fall out of the sky: Fieldfares churring and chuddering, a Goldcrest zipped-up and diamond-hearted, a Thrush flicking, ticking her aureole eyes in mine.
Words, we stand by our words.
You can't put them back in when your beak's open.
Single notes are plaintive in their own orbits; some are thoughtful as if posing a question; others seek an admirer: Listen to my bullet melodies they say, step to my tapping heartbeats. Some don't care as they throw away their lines. I'm out of here.
Just what I was thinking.
I am drawn into their world. I am always saying that I would like to see the face of birds as they sing, but where is my mentor?
My hands are warm as I write this. I am closer to myself in some indefinable way. I do not want to tick the boxes that know this or that.
All this knowing and there is less in the world.
All that I know is a handful of sand but it is the whole world to me. I listen, I know I am. I inhabit this moment.
You can't be anywhere else kiddo.
I write for the discovery as much for the not-knowing, the line that recedes as I come closer. I acknowledge this yearning for the speech of birds as remote and close, and I am beautifully inarticulate.
There is a bird in my heart. I am touched by this infant yearning and the delight of listening.
Cock-a-doodle-doo.

Winter's Shield

First impressions, I say, count. Clattinger is flat.
Of course it is. It's a hay meadow.
Did you know that 98% of wild-flower rich hay meadows have gone since 1940?
It sounds like a continuation of the Second World War - against insects and orchids.
But what I mean is you see it is really flat by the way the trees give back the sunlight. They stand tall in sackcloth gold and frozen shadows. The hedgerows are dusted with the sweepings from the warehouse floor.
I am in a room without a ceiling, and it's glowing.
In the supermarket the stacks of shelves come off the marble floor. The red food signs reflect a neon light.
On this February day the air is beautifully still. The blue sky is smudged by the palest of clouds, the crows are lumps of coal in the Ashes. Grey watches grey, the meadow is shorn except for the tussocks of Hard Rush.
The sun casts a solid black shadow of me.
The glory days of summer are abandoned as fallen black leaves; thistles are on their knees, moss gleams, dogwood smoulders, nettles show new heads as does Yellow Iris and Hemlock Water-dropwort. There are tufts of leaves in worm holes, single gossamer webs, fresh molehills in amorous, straight lines.
Winter's shield is embroidered with tallow and pink. The bramble archers are as rough as a badger's back, cold bending into the sun's path, bending to catch the failing light.
All find refuge here: the dead uprights of umbellifers, the summer-long grasses, the fallen branches caught on the way down, an oak-leaf impaled on a thorn.
What catches me on my way down?
Everything we see is the result of nature's rendezvous. We pick that up in the supermarkets.
Below are the rabbit runs and the tawny glints of frost. I hear the voltage of a robin, a snipe combs its alarm.
The labour of starting is overwhelming. Spring must be like this - I have only my questions today.

Noticing Insects

NOTICING INSECTS
I remember insects from the beginning - small, common woodlice, earwigs, flies. I never looked for them. They were a fabulous intervention in my playpen, along with the smell of cut grass.
And I could see their magnificence.
If I were a fruit fly
I'd like to lie on a bed of raspberry cream,
With apples and pears and strawberry eclairs
I'd sigh, oh! what a wonderful dream.
I'd bake on beaches made from peaches
With whipped cream instead of the sea
And for puddings and afters I'd float on chocolate rafters
And sing tralala tralala tralalee!
When I was six I went to the waysides as I had no money but I was rich with time in my pockets. Now the insects were bigger and brighter - Soldier-and-Sailor beetles, Cockchafers, Six-spot Burnet moths. I put them in a tiny tub garden. They always escaped.
It’s the phenomenal I remember from schools - the stick insects, exotic butterflies, Stag beetles. Insects had become aliens, and I jettisoned the small brown insects as I jettisoned my childhood. After puberty I forgot about insects.
I remembered them again at 4O on an emotional wayside after divorce. I saw black long-legged St Mark’s flies on Cow Parsley. And later I found them dead and clasping the shrivelled flowers. They appeared and disappeared together. That’s how a good love story should be.
I summon insects. I see their tribal markings, the Sunfly(Helophilus pendulus), the big-nosed Rhingia campestris, Volucela pellucens in the damp corner.
They connect up the worlds by travelling between them. They are nature’s cross-cutting ties. They draw us into a world without boxes (They are rarely depicted in flower books; it’s like photographing cities without people).
Insects revision the world for me, bring back the purple land of my childhood which had no signposts.

The Other Side

THE OTHER SIDE
We all come to this place.
I’m writing in this journal, I’m catching people’s eyes.
What’s he doing?
I’m not doing anything, that’s the trouble. While the world is moving I am standing still.
They are standing at the checkout. The voices babble in neutral faces, attentive, kind faces, on overdraft faces, I’m approaching my prime faces.
Where do all the people come from?
Home.
Where are they all going?
Home.
The security guards keep an eye on us all.
The light says GO, and the trolleys can’t wait. Everything I see is packaged for the eye.
Did you know that the richest men are the packagers?
The lights rain a grey silver; the banners are in lurid reds and blues: Must End Soon, Loan’s Sale, Perfect Valentine’s Day. The people queue on the floor; the lights do the same on the ceiling.
‘Is it true there will be no more snow in England?’
We all come to this place, as do the Ruby-tailed Wasps, the Green-winged Orchids, the Common Blue Damselfly, the Twayblades, the Common Meadow-rue.
They go to the stewing lamb, the beef cuts, the fat-free yogurts and milk, and the cheese. We take them away in our baskets.
Is it true that the food that we eat is the heaven for insects and plants?
I am standing on the other side of Clattinger. It’s behind the plate glass windows. I did this thirty years ago standing in a supermarket with a journal.
What has changed?
Where did we go wrong?
Where did I go right!
I’m still fruitcake. Clattinger is saved from extinction. The insects and the orchids are still standing behind us.
Make this an insect day. Say hello to a Ruby-tailed Wasp.
We all come to this place, to step forward. To be seen.

Any direction poem

catkins + calling + violet
whistle + drumming + now
water + feather + yes yes

Winter Changes

‘The sleeping and the dead how alike they are.’
The trees bring the sky into view - wrens are mobile winter leaves - the pink tallow and baby crease of old grasses, the bent ones are like broken ice - a badger's scrape on top, moles active below - the red ties on the Blackthorn are where the Brown Hairstreak butterfly laid her eggs - fox's turd on top of a mole-hill - four snipe in a ditch and white shite marks the place. Why do snipe return to these dens when there is clean meadow available to them?
In the shimmer place of water I place broken shadows. No-one comes here. I am alone with my thoughts. Green grass-stalks are beside sucked grey blades, the old with the new. Waiting here I come.
Clattinger is the purple land of my childhood. Once I had followed the railway to Crowthorne by stepping across old roots submerged in brackish water, loitering with the intent to do nothing. I walked the field margins going as slowly as I could without actually stopping.
I was going nowhere yet I was bounded by a visible domain of trees and hedgerows, of stepping stones and railway bridges, of giant oaks in grassland, of long dirt roads leading to woodlands, of trespassing and daring to be seen.
I was a strange child, still wandering the drags of my ancestral East End London.
I loved the texture of winter pasture, the smudged hedgerows and rugged oaks and the repetition of these elements as far as I could see. And the milky haze of frozen air, the ice in the cattle troughs, the grass stems snapped, the absence of people, the cold intake of freezing air.
I was alone in my world and this heightened the sense of my uniqueness, my right to exist yet paradoxically all the while I felt myself to be attached by invisible strings to everything that I could see - roots and snipe and oak - and that meant that I could never be alone.

The Purple Land

When I go to Clattinger my pockets are rich with time. That's what I do there, spend my time. I go without a plan and I go to wander. And because I am not looking for anything in particular, everything I find is a discovery. Something new.
This currency of time I had as a child and I had the habit of wandering in the marginal places then, the no-man's land between railway lines and sewage farms, in back streets, down country lanes and abandoned gardens, and old woodlands. I always went alone. I found things - Tizer bottles for the threepenny refunds, cigarette packets with naval ships and bearded men, interesting bits of pottery and metal, and in season apples and conkers and nuts. I brought them home and I sorted them out.
I loved the waysides where nothing was planned or sown. Here everything arrived by chance, like I did. They were places forgotten by people. Not like the fields of wheat and mustard and grass behind them which had to pay their way. I wanted this wildline in my life, away from the structured schoolworld where I had to deliver.
Here things crossed-over and made strange juxtapositions. Here people dumped their rubbish. Here I could be myself without trying.
I had arrived while the world was busy going somewhere else.
At Clattinger I have the same sense of being among natives, a rare indigenous line where nothing is sown or planted. Last year over a dozen Wasp orchids (Ophrys apifera var trollii) were found growing in one of the hay meadows. They had never been recorded before. They had just arrived.
This indigenous culture of natives and waysides go together with time in my mind. The ancient currency of exchange. They are my purple land, an image I borrow from the writings of W.H. Hudson, the South American naturalist who found his life as a writer by wandering in the English hinterland.

Talking to Fritillaries

The fool considers, I know not what really. Far less what to say.
Snake-Head nods its purple perfection. It sympathises with the dilemma of starting, of poking the nose out of doors. How did I come to be squatting in the corner of an ancient hay meadow, this scruff urchin from Streatham and Battersea, once from Old Paradise Street within whiff of Clapham Junction. How come I here? Yes my beauties, answer me that.
I place myself at your feet, liking the connection of April Fools day, liking the small birds that I cannot name for they never stay still long enough for me to see. First thought is an impossibly foolish one from another flat meadow, Streatham Common.
I am three or four and I have found an old rubber disc the size of a squashed football, and it is green and mouldy but to my mind it is the moon which has fallen down. I peer into the sky and I cannot see it, so my analysis must be correct.
It's a terrible thing for the moon to fall down, I think. I must put it back. I throw it above my hand and it lands beside my feet. I throw it higher and it does the same thing. I ponder my dilemma. This time I throw it as high as I can and immediately turn my back to it. It's still up there as far as I am concerned.
No moon is in Clattinger meadows yet something equally mysterious, distant and near, tangible and nebulous is before me. Up they shoot, giraffes on one leg, dancing their blades around the stem, the top ones arching, hovering as wings above the single blooms. They are as big as a baby's fist, ribbed and pendulous and fabulous in rosy purple and white checks. It's like holding the wings of an insect; they rustle when checked, squeak when brushed.
I tip the bloom and sunlight fires the tiny windows, glows on the yellow anthers. I am mesmerised. How does this startling perfection come out of a damp water meadow? And I know these two are the first ones. As far as I look I see only switchblades coming up for air.
So what am I doing here? I have no reasonable answer. I earn no money, I meet no people, I mutter these words as I write them. I stretch my legs in turn to release the ache from kneeling. I keep company with straggling blackthorn stealing into the sea of grass. I always choose the corner place. I'm sheltered from behind, slightly hidden, I liking the concealment. I notice that. A little sun burns through reclaiming my face. I turn to the south wanting this warmth, this collaboration with the day. A pair of chaffinches mate fiercely, fleetingly in the hedgerow, the male hovering, churring over his partner. Two or three times he comes and goes, pausing on his perch, wiping his beak on the pimpled blossom.
I blink. Gone!

First Impression

From a plane more dreary fields. They're all the same, flatlands, straight pencil lands derived from the enclosures; a few curling oaks, ash and hazel, curves combed by a century of weather, the rest bushy or straight-lined poplars crowded at the margins, loose-limbed, greenish or lighter than brown, winter's coat already in tatters but hanging on.
I think of a medieval street, no planning rules here, one at a time from different sources, all common and rubbing shoulders - and yet the strangeness works as harmony to my eye. A satisfying sprawl beside the green blocks of meadows.
And I think: these meadows are the other side of the city. They feed people in large numbers. And machines cut the hay, cattle eat that and we feed on their lives.

Some Facts

Clattinger Farm is a near-vanished type of grassland, the hay meadow. It is considered the finest remaining example of enclosed lowland grassland in the UK and has legal protection as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. This is a tribute to the previous owners who farmed it traditionally without artificial fertilisers, and resisted the temptation to sell it off for gravel extraction.

It was acquired by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust in 1996 as part of their strategy to restore a mosaic of woods and meadows in the Braydon Forest, the ancient royal hunting grounds. April to June are considered the best times to visit, and visitors are asked to walk around the field margins. The hay is cut in late July.

Getting there: From Malmesbury to Cirencester road (A429), turn at the village of Crudwell, towards Eastcourt. Turn left at Eastcourt for Oaksey. Go through the village and 1.5 miles after the railway bridge, turn right towards Minety. The reserve entrance (look out for a stile) is marked about 0.5 miles on the right, opposite the entrance to Swillbrook Lakes Nature Reserve. There is parking on both sides of the road at grid reference SU 017 937.
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Where to begin?

The way ahead is always uncertain even when you know the right direction.
That's how I feel about this place of starting. What on earth am I doing writing about Clattinger Farm, a little bit of floodplain in North Wiltshire which has never been fertilised or improved or sprayed, and subsequently is home to amazing wild flowers, especially the orchid processions, some of which grow here in their thousands.
I had been visiting for half a dozen years, and perhaps 18 months ago I elected myself (with the blessing of English Nature and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust) writer-in-residence of these famous meadows. I had no idea why, beyond a wish to be connected, to be part of this native culture of Bee orchids and Twayblades and long-horned beetles...
What's this got to do with cities? I hear myself saying. Most of us are going to be living in cities by the end of this century, if the planners get their way.
You're off with the fairies again.
Get a real life!
This is a real world to me and now I have put myself on the spot setting up this blogsite. Clattinger is in our shadow, that's why it's so hard to see. It's with us every moment of the day and night. All those flowers and insects make hay and grazing which feed cattle and sheep which support our lives. They are as much part of the real world as a roundabout is in a city. And there is so much more. Clattinger is about the land, about being a native, about connectedness. Although it is carefully managed, it is one of the few wildlines where nothing is sown or planted. it is a genetic memory bank of the land and who we are, how we arrived here. It is special and it belongs to everybody.
What are we going to do about him?
Of course I am making this up as I go along. I am not a botanist, or a wildlife expert, or a real-food campaigner, or a save the world Evangelist. I want to expand the idea of what community means, not just multi-culturism or offering solidarity and support to your neighbour. I want to speak for the soil bacteria and fungi that make our lives possible by recycling nutrients; I want to marvel at the million world splendour of Common Blue Damselflies, the soft wet isolation of being alone with my thoughts.
Who am I alone with? That is a question Clattinger can help answer.
I am not interested in the Titans, but the gods and goddesses of these pastoral meadows. I want what's within reach. I hope to take you with me on a journey of discovery. I will use journal writing recording actual moments at the meadows as well as this kind of narrative.
This is a kind of beginning.