Threads out through the darkness

 I found some apples today. They were growing on a leafless tree at a project I coordinate. Larger than a cricket ball with almost translucent green skin they were hanging on with no sign of wanting to fall. Indeed, they put up some resistance to being picked. They had firm flesh with no sign of disease or deterioration. Apples. In February. A curious bonus from nature. We had them baked in the air-fryer, stuffed with dried fruit which had been soaked for a while in whisky. And there was ice cream to melt all over the caramelised tops. Simple but delicious. A wonderful, if oddly unseasonal dessert for a winter's night.

Similarly incongruous, the broccoli was covered in slugs this evening, all of which I picked off and dropped into salt water. Sorry slugs, but we are in competition and it is a mortal struggle. That is my food not yours. If I leave you to it, you will leave me none. You do not share. This phenomenon is unusual in February. As are the moths that fluttered around my head torch as I hunted the slugs. A very strange night indeed.

The frogs are happy in the pond. There must be several dozen all squirming and croaking. And there are huge amounts of frogspawn. This feels like some kind of endorsement of my pond building skills. I have built many ponds over the years. I hope they are all equally as habitable for wildlife.

The night's darkness, despite its relative mildness, seems to have an oppressive, isolating quality. The end of the garden, thirty metres or so away with its alliterative hawthorn, holly and hornbeam, seems like the edge of my world. There are houses beyond in what was a field only a few years ago. There seem never to be any people in these houses. Lights are illuminated occasionally but sometimes I feel like they are a stage-set put there only for show. I suppose given the shortage of housing, there must be occupants but I never see them. I could not tell you anything about them, or even if they actually exist.

It's a disconnected world tonight. I sit by the fire and I am in a tiny haven of warmth and light. Out of the dining room window I see nothing. The darkness is a suppressing medium of viscous Ether through which signs of humanity and its works cannot penetrate. There is no sound, even the distant motorway seems quiet. It is winter, though not cold, and this is an island of light in a vast emptiness. At least that is how it feels.

But there is this thread, thrown out into the world through the click of a mouse on the small orange button up there on the right. If I click that, these words go out into the world: A thread through the darkness. I had nothing particular to say this evening. I just wanted to say something, anything, to the world. Partly because I love how the words feel flowing out of me, from nothing, at no cost, without effort. And partly because pressing that button pierces the dark and connects me to the world. 

And so I press it. Hello everyone. I hope where you are there is some light. How are you?

Talent, Un-talent and a sense of relief.

 A new study confirms what we all knew here already: Writing is cognitively good for you. I won't go into the myriad reasons postulated for this, all of which are perfectly plausible, but I confess the lack of this form of exercise feels detrimental. It's a strange space this. Blogging is pretty antiquated now and my be looked upon in amusement or scorn by consumers of more modern forms of media. But this does not detract from its inherent value, at least for me. It is a space too, albeit not a physical one. But it can still get cluttered, even if it is virtual. Perhaps I'll clear out some of the muddles here at some point. Or perhaps they can remain as a testament to previous existences. It might be amusing, painful, enlightening to look back at words written an age ago, in another life: A life where an illusion of stability and respectability held sway. There was a family, a wife, a salary, a job title. Such definitions, though a prison, provided a kind of definition to life. There was a distinctness about obligations and expectations. And now it's all got a bit fuzzy. My life is a mostly-comfortable testament to entropy now.

 I am surprised at how easily these words come to me, how effortlessly they arise and are conveyed relatively lucidly on the page. I noted something recently, and there is a point to the ramble I am about to undertake.

I restrung my musical instruments in the hope it might motivate me to play them. Apparently learning musical pieces is also transformative for the brain. Once tuned, I picked up my guitar and played a few familiar chords. Yes, those are still there. A D comes easily, and E more-or-less, bar chords are still, as ever, problematic and uncomfortable. But the chords remain mostly available to my fingers. However, transitioning between chords feels clumsy and I reflected that actually,  it always had.

I picked up my banjo, put on my fingerpicks and played a few Scruggs rolls: Basic arpeggios which link together to for a syncopated tune with the melody contained within it. Again, I noted that it was no harder than it had ever been. It was ok, the right kind of sound.  But it felt inarticulate and quite effortful. Again, I noted that this never really achieved fluidity. 

I started playing the guitar at 18, the bluegrass banjo at 19, forty-mumble years ago. I played and played, practised and jammed. And always it was unnatural. I observed the fluidity with which friends and mentors could move their fingers up and down the fretboard. Some of them had been playing a fraction of the time I had and yet, their hands flew and wonderful melodic sounds came out. Me, I felt always like my hands were two Cornish crabs at the end of my wrists, chitinous fingers rebelling against my instructions to play this or that note, to assume the correct configuration of strings on frets without dull thinks or buzzes. It never got easy. Despite thousands of hours of practise. The conclusion is unavoidable: I have no talent for this. I bash out a tune in opposition to my natural tendency towards digital coordination. It's just no something I have any natural ability to do well, though I can bash out a tune and enjoy it.

In contrast, I went to a dance where I fell into conversation with someone who I have observed from afar for many years but frankly found her evident ability too intimidating for me to consider asking her to dance. She is very skilled and has a controlled physicality which I thought I could not match adequately to do her justice as a partner. 

She asked me to dance as the event was sparsely attended and I could not hide. And it was wonderful. Tentatively she asked if she could perform some moves she had seen but not found anyone adequately strong to perform and we went through some quite scary drops together. They were pretty cool moves and i learned them eagerly and could perform them well with only a few attempts. Dance is like this for me. I see a move, my brain assimilates the movements and trajectories, I try it and quite soon I can do it. easy peasy. This after much less time and practise than I had devoted to music.

Here we have a natural inclination, I hesitate to use the word talent, but it's that kind of thing, We also have an interesting contrast: Something I really want to be able to do (play music) eludes me even after decades of diligent practise. It just won't happen. 

Conversely, dance moves, even quite complex configurations of limbs and partner, are taken on board with, in general, a minimum of effort. There is a conclusion here, therefore, which must be acknowledge: There are things we, as individuals, are able to do well with little practise and there are things we will never excel at, or even be competent at, despite lengthy assiduous training. And, you know, I think that that's ok! I am fine with this now. The admission that music is not a talent I have takes the pressure off. I can stop trying so hard.

And so, back to the words. Self-expression clearly varies amongst the population as a normal distribution curve. Ok, most people can speak and the majority can write. But the translation of inner world to interpersonal communication varies immensely. For me, it is easy. I was shown how to write and once I escaped the bonds of having to use a pen, the words go straight from mind to page. Which I confess feels wonderful, cathartic, exhilarating. I am told that writing manually (i.e. paper and pen) is better but, to riff off an earlier theme, I was shown how to use a pen at about five years old and despite writing millions of words, the majority criticised brutally and painfully by educators along the way for their lack of legibility, I can still not make a pen go where I want to. And I've done a hell of a lot of writing for exams and qualifications. Practise did not make perfect. It's difficult for me. I just can't do it. And that too is ok. The admission is a tremendous relief.

But words, they just happen. There are thoughts. there is a vocabulary and grammar, and here they are, saying exactly what I intended and imparting a satisfaction which reduces my frustration with the world. The guitars, however, are going back under the bed. No more flogging dead horses. 

As always, I have no idea if this will be read. The thought that it might encourages rigour. It's nice if it is and someone recognises a concept they perhaps had yet to articulate to themselves, but I do this as a service to myself and because the flow feels good. So, here I am again. Unstructured, chaotic but less burdened by formless thought.

Escape to the city

Well, it didn't really happen, did it? It seems that particular muse has departed, taking with her any pretension or even desire to do anything with this big pile of words that I keep stepping over in my everyday thoughts. I suppose really, I just don't have time, especially with the longer evenings this time of year. I don't have my computer so I am forced to write on this tiny, unhelpful phone screen, which I really dislike.

Also, there is the issue of location. I mostly spend my leisure time in Bristol now. There is so much going on here. Cities are such vibrant places. Recently I have taken to wandering round the city during the day, photographing the excellent street art. I would add some but I am trying to write this on my phone and the mobile version seems not to make adding pictures particularly easy 

Nature is very beautiful in many cases and can inspire awe or reverie. But it seems to me that one can have too much of it. And I do. It is a privilege to work on a sunny day in a woodland or garden and probably very good for whatever neurological functions we interpret as a soul. But after a while the whispering grasses and the different murmurings of individual trees in the wind becomes a little too familiar. 

In the city there are many people. This really is a self-evident fact that verges on tautology. There is evidence all around of the workings of humans, for all the variety of implications. There is art, there is litter, there is industry and there is convenience. But for all the commonality of the Human Condition, there is unpredictability. People do, along with predictable behaviors, many individually unique things. Even gait varies between individuals. From the confident stride of the man in the expensive linen suit, through the care worn weary trudge of the lady carrying heavy bags of shopping, to the girl slipping self-consciously out of the gym in her. Lycra attire, there are myriad ways of moving, each of which might, truthfully or deceptively, tell a personal story. There is much here to occupy the curious mind.

That the refuge of solitude remains is a comfort. But for the mind to light up like night time photos of interlinked cities seen from space requires the novelty and stimulus of other human beings, at least for me. 

The Tiniest of Foes

 Our bodies seem to be battle grounds. One one side we have our immune system and associated allies and on the other, organisms that are out to get us. I can't imagine there is any intent on their part to do us harm but harm they do. I suppose it's a fight for resources: We have substances we have garnered from our environment, using effort and biological processes and they, the pathogens, want some of that but we are are their environment and it's the easiest way to get what they want.

For four days now, something has been troubling my digestive system. I will spare you the unpleasant details but suffice to say it is not a pleasant way to lose three kilos. Any attempt at eating causes abdominal pain and the symphony of hydraulic special effects from my middle is quite a conversation piece. Whether it was the ill advised fast-food "Louisiana-style" Chicken Sandwich I had in Oxford at the weekend, some detritus flung from the undergrowth by my strimmer into my face or merely a transmissible virus I picked up at a dance I really couldn't say. But I feel bloody awful and the probability is that this is caused by some organism I almost certainly couldn't even see with the naked eye. A number of them, even combined into some kind of community large enough to pass the threshold of infection in my seemingly poorly-defended constitution would still be too small to see without a microscope. Is this not humbling? Our hubris would have us think ourselves so adept at mastery of our environment but, as recent years show, some agent so tiny it requires optical instruments only readily available in a laboratory in order to see it can evade our control and render us miserable or even dead if we are unlucky.

I am not that unfortunate (at least, I hope I won't be. It's been four days and my recovery is open to interpretation). I suspect in a day or two I will be right as rain - an oddly topical and puzzling simile given recent weather where the rain has been decidedly not right by dint of its extraordinary abundance. 

So, thanks to Mr Van Leeuwenhoek and his marvelous invention, we are now able to know the nature of our adversaries when previously we blamed our physical ailments on "bad air", evils spirits, imbalances of the humours or witches. And now we know: In cases such as this, check the hygiene rating before you buy. Or wear a full-face visor when you strim. Tiny enemies lurk unseen everywhere.

Whoosh! goes the feather Duster!

It's an itchy-scratchy kind of feeling; A sense that some of those mental rooms that haven't been visited for a while need the doors and windows thrown open and the cobwebs brushing from the ceiling. It's always strange to me that spiders collude with dust to create those grey, insubstantial threads. These wraithlike strings hang down sometimes almost to your head if a feather duster or vacuum cleaner is not regularly applied. The shame of noticing a ceiling-spanning filament becoming an almost diaphanous grey fabric across to corners of your rooms is almost painful. It's enough to prompt imagined excuses to judgmental observers who, looking up from the coffee I might have made them, frown in disapproval at the neglect this house is subject to. How does this happen in such an unobserved way? I didn't see any spiders? And if they were there, how did particles of what, presumably, used to be myself and my clothing, end up becoming so ubiquitously incorporated, even in regularly frequented rooms?

And so it is with the mind. Why write? Well, it's the entry into the unused space; The visiting of a forgotten spare room, the brandishing of the wand of the Dyson. It's the waving of a cane coated with chicken feathers across an expanse of magnolia emulsion paint to reveal the feelings of immense relief and virtue. Well, I hope the rooms of the mind are a little more flamboyant than Pantone 7499C. I think I'd like to imagine my mental environment with a bit more vibrancy than that. Purples perhaps, or on an sunny day, primrose walls with eggshell-blue picture rails. Well, I don't have to look at it all the time, do I? It's a spare room, after all!

Alas, right now, the doors are shut and the curtains are drawn so the decor is all rather irrelevant. I have no requirement to enter. Other rooms require my attention more urgently, even if they are boring to occupy. Even so... As I type, I feel the light creeping in. The act of accessing this webpage was the tentative opening of the door. The first typed phrase became the throwing open of the curtains and, well, it's quite hard to see what colours the walls are under all this dust but I think I like the results. It's vaguely familiar and there are interesting objects in here I had completely forgotten about. The mundane can eat up so much of you.

Reaching up with a brush, it seems clear that the cobwebs are easily cleared. It's a trivial task in fact. A vague wave and order is restored. And so it is with the mind. It doesn't take much to banish the accumulations of quotidian grime and the layers of dust. It just has to occur to you to do it. And as with the physical chore of going around the house, just looking up and sweeping away the signs of neglect, so it is with the upkeep of the intellect. So many other commitments make demands upon our attention. The quote for Mrs. D's hedge-cutting, the seed order for my sessions at a local school for the learning disabled, paying the parking ticket I picked up last week. It all takes time and mental energy. Not to mention the actual physical fatigue a manual job produces. Carrying heavy pots and landscape sleepers up and down steps for hours and digging numerous holes for plants does rather take it out of you. Sitting writing is far less appealing than a crafty snooze in the armchair after a day's work.

But oh, how shiny the surfaces are when the detritus is banished! How light and airy and accessible it becomes! All I had to do was spend some time on it. It's not really an indulgence. It's actually essential maintenance.

Yes, this is something that needs to be regularly undertaken, even if triviality results. I feel better already!

Mortality and Hoarding

Today I am the same age to the day as my father was when he died. It's a sobering milestone and one which causes me great reflection. Whilst he was an alcoholic who hastened his end considerably through his illness and I am not, this strange mark upon the timeline of my life must by its very nature bring with it thoughts of mortality. Tomorrow, I will be older than he ever was. I'm not sure of the significance of this day.

Ok, I had my Memento mori eleven years ago when my brain went pop whilst dancing. But I was in my forties and this seemed like an unanticipated black swan event rather than part of the inexorable temporal process towards my natural end.

All of this is very depressing, I am sure. But I choose to eschew that view and instead examine a thought that springs naturally from a realisation of mortality: Where did all this stuff come from? And what should be done with it?

I don't own much. My car is elderly though still solidly functional. I have no jewels, no art, no baubles of any kind. My television is a cast off, probably state-of-the-art in 2008 and possibly the best I have ever owned or will ever own. I have a few tools which are good quality but worn out through many years of faithful service. Nobody wishing to rob my house would find much of value. I am, as far as lifestyle goes, not a materialist (though ironically, philosophically that is a close approximation to my view of existence).

But in the event of my death, what a mammoth task it would be to dispose of it all! The jars of assorted screws, bolts, small useful-looking squares of plywood and cedar planks. Boxes of springs, electrical wire of every gauge, old chair legs of exotic tropical hardwood. The list is endless. I may yet find a use for them, or perhaps they will languish, offering promise of a solution to an as-yet unencountered practical problem until my offspring tentatively enter my garage with a sigh and heads shaken in disbelief on some future day I will not see.

The inner debate rages: "You need to get rid of all this crap. You're never going to use it and one day, possibly soon, the kids are going to have to deal with this chaos!" and then "But only last week, I patched up my water butt with that piece of 9mm marine ply I have kept since I cut it off the bath panel in my first house thirty-mumble years ago!" 

So, I think it's going to have go. I may have thirty years. Or I may suffer another bleed in my overly fragile cerebral blood vessels and drop dead at the counter in Tesco. But opportunities for utilising a 4mm x 50mm strip of larch will probably diminish as time and inclination trickles away.

So, can I interest anyone in 120 pieces of fine sapele, 50mm x 30mm by assorted lengths from 120mm to 150mm? Or perhaps I'll glue them into a block and make another table. No you won't Pete. You know you won't. 

Perhaps, just these though. Yes, I'll keep them. Just in case. I blame you Dad. You young bastard.

I tried, I really did.

 It's too difficult. The news is too awful. There is too much tragedy and pain in the world. The awful weight of suffering renders any attempt at triviality, well, trivial. All the words that do come are just full of darkness. As the storm rages outside and the trees thrash in immobile torment, I am looking for some light and not really finding any. So, I am paralysed into mute submission.

This one weird trick will stop your brain turning to jelly

Where did all the words go? All the superlatives have been worn wafer thin with over use and full scale deflection has been repeatedly achieved. Current events send the needle whanging vigorously to the end stop of the meter, past the red and round the pin at the end of the scale. The world is in a state and no mistake. I choose to opt for understatement. Please refer to my second sentence above. It's all that is left. And we shall not fix it here, even were it fixable. No, we shall acknowledge the abundant awfulness and concede that further handwringing is unhelpful in the grand scheme of things. Elsewhere, we shall do what we can, but here, no solutions are to be attempted or even discussed.

And so what do we do here? We write words. Powerful things words. They can slap with stinging impact, jolt like a crash landing or caress like a lovers touch.

Or, as seems to be the case of late, I find they can elude, hiding behind the static and confusion that communication can often engender. Why, the other day, grasping for the phrase "tea towel" I resorted to "wipey thing for plates". How does one forget the phrase "tea towel"? But I did. Tragedy comes in many forms. Partly perhaps this is the result of my own particular cognitive challenges. There were bound to be some. But I don't have to accept them without a fight.

But this unreliability of our internal dictionaries should not deter us from trying  should it! Those neural paths across the landscape of our vocabulary if not regularly trodden become obscured by undergrowth. Our daily dialogues begin to be constructed clumsily from easily accessible but inaccurate nouns and adjectives; Words that merely suffice and yet do not accurately describe. The use of the exact word is a small triumph that leaves satisfaction in its wake. A cobbled-together approximation leaves a kind of existential unease even if meaning has been adequately conveyed

I have nothing to say but this really: Use it or lose it.  Really, it is as simple as that.

So, freely I fling words on to this page: Hyposthesis! Innate! Limpid! Picaresque! Ossified!

There! I feel better already.

Please note: There is no imperative to ready anything I write here. I am under no illusion any of it has significance beyond allowing the caged greyhound of my brain some escape to race unfettered upon the heathland of language. Significance or clarity of concept might occasionally emerge but it will have been largely accidental and incidental to the purpose of the exercise.

Well, that's  a start. I feel better already. Perhaps I'll try to do some more tomorrow. I think it's due to rain so I won't have much on. See you then maybe.

The return of the Ravens

Tuesday's project is beautiful. It sits high on a hill on one side a valley in the Cotswolds. It was a pub garden covered in brambles and buddleia, untouched for decades. With the volunteers and my direction it is being transformed into a terraced garden to communally grow fruit and vegetables. We are very proud of what we have achieved here but it is an ongoing project and will be more beautiful still as time goes by and the planting takes off. This is one of three projects I coordinate but by far the most joyful to spend time in.

The view is breathtaking, the major road at the bottom of the hill being obscured both visually and audibly by the trees that line either side. A vineyard is visible which wasn't there when I first lived near here as a boy. It seems oddly exotic to think of all the new vineyards on south-facing slopes around here. I know the monks of medieval times grew grapes for wine. Monks do seem to have a penchant for alcohol. Some of the world's most highly regarded alcoholic drinks were originally produced by monasteries. Their abandoned terraces are visible in some quite unexpected places nearby. Names such as "Vineyard lane" which I often walked along to school hint at a viticultural past. Of course names are just names and whilst saying the words "Vineyard lane", people only ever thought about the place. Nobody ever stopped to think of the meaning of the syllables and their implication that once there had actually been a vineyard there. Names are funny like that: Divorced from the meaning of their component words. I mean, who ever thinks about the origin of the word "cupboard" from an etymological perspective?

So, the vineyards are returning as the average yearly temperature increases. And increasing it is. An old gardener long past retirement age but still cutting grass told me that forty years ago when he started he would cease mowing in mid September and resume at the beginning of March. Now he mows almost to December and starts mid February. That's a personal observation on a changing climate which as a relative newcomer was not a perspective I would have gained personally. But there is it is from one who has experienced the change in seasons.

Today, as I looked over the rolling hills at Postman Pat's tiny red van, very far away, climbing the steep hill to the top of the common on the opposite hill, a commotion caught my attention in the sky overhead. Two crows were mobbing a raven in an attempt to drive it away. Though the shape is superficially similar, a raven is a much bigger bird and its call much lower in pitch. Also, its tail is a different shape, forming more of a rounded fan then the straighter edged tail of its corvid relatives.

The raven didn't seem unduly perturbed but was still forced to perform occasional avian shrugs as a crow flew at a wing or plummeted down at it from above. They obviously were not too happy to see their cousin. Eventually the three of them disappeared from view with the shrieking still echoing off the roofs of nearby cottages.

When I was a boy, I never saw ravens. I once glimpsed one on a mountain in wales and this was a cause to remove my binoculars from their case and watch awhile. It was picking at a carcass of some dead animal and seemed not the slightest bit concerned at my presence. But it was a moment deserving of that kind of hushed reverence one feels is deserved in the presence of a natural phenomenon. But I never saw one of them near home, though it was and remains rural.

And then one day, i was cycling down by the Severn and I heard a distinctive caw, perhaps an octave lower than a crow's call. And there, on a dungheap were two ravens, possibly Huginn and Muninn. Who knows? I was pretty thrilled to see them and suddenly my immediate vicinity seemed more exotic.

And now I see ravens quite often. Red Kites too, where once you had to venture to obscure valleys in Mid wales to view them at special feeding site. This must surely be some kind of progress? With all the changes to the natural world and the erosion of diversity, at least this seems a positive development. Dare I hope...? I'm not sure.

And the Machine Grinds into Motion again.

 And so I sit me down to write. Gosh! It's been ages, hasn't it! So much has happened! This is strange though: Where once a computer keyboard was the landscape of much of my life, now I am very rare visitor to it. When I think of the tens of hours per week I used to sit and tap away, it seems incongruous for it to now be such an unfamiliar activity. I spent this morning directing volunteers in planting a greengage tree and spreading compost on raised beds on the side of damp windswept hill: As far away, perhaps from the artificiality of the plastic office and online world as it is possible to be.

But I have been alarmed of late to note the decline in the availability of words to me. The regular beating-of-the-bounds of my vocabulary allowed a fluency which I have noticed is slipping away. The observational skills I used to spot noteworthy events and behaviours have waned. Life is merely pragmatic these days. Indeed, writing this is actually much harder than I expected because, well, I never write any more. 

And so, here, for my own benefit, is a small foray into the once-familiar but now foreign territory of attempting to be articulate. It's not for you, you understand,. It's for me. I compel nobody to read this and perhaps nobody will. And that is ok. The possibility that someone might helps aspire to clarity and discipline. But really, I just need the exercise if I am to be honest. What do I write about? I don't know. It doesn't matter really. As long as words are chosen, written down and are subsequently coherent, the purpose will have been served. It seems a shame to have the ability to compose a cogent sentence and not to at least try to do so. Previously, in my Old Life it was necessary to communicate clearly in order to earn a crust, but not now. Nobody needs my words now. 

I suppose, in order to regain some kind of verbal fitness, practice must be undertaken. Hence here I am, with nothing of substance to say, other than "I need to say something so here are some words". The house is a tip, the rain is coming through my roof and there are still some big pans which need washing up from yesterday's dinner. But this can all wait. Verbal composition is self-care (though so is cleaning the kitchen so as not to be unhygienic), just like exercise or eating your greens. There are things we must do for our own good. I seem to be discovering this is one of them.

Not only that, it is an enriching exercise to portray the seemingly mundane in  everyday life. One watches more closely and with a different frame of mind if something profound might be described. It makes you look at things in a different way. I envy those people who can look upon an ordinary scene with an artist's eye and capture it in a painting or photograph such that it makes you stop and look deeper at something. Words can do that too.

Therefore, with creaking reluctance, I shift my brain into a mode it had almost forgotten and I force words out of my mind, through these keys and on to a screen. Ye gods! But I am so out of shape! Time to try to put that right.

Soil and Sentient Trees

Here is a fact that astonished me when I heard it: Up to 40% of sugars produced by some trees through photosynthesis is sent to its roots to be exuded to feed soil organisms. Yes, it does all of that work making sugars from carbon dioxide and light just to push it out into the ground. Why do plants go to all this trouble? I shall elaborate.

Lately, I have been a bit bored. I used my intellect to make my living for over three decades and mostly now I do not. I mow lawns, I build raised beds and build wildlife habitats. Hence my intellect languishes largely idling apart from such direction as my idle curiosity bids it to take. And so, I decided to do some online courses to keep myself engaged with the world of thinking and learning, lest I otherwise become slack-jawed and monosyllabic. There are some excellent free online course and I have learned many fascinating facts such as that above. And I have begun to get some sense of how we might, in some small way, make our little patch of the Earth healthier and, anthropocentrically, more productive.

Everything we eat has, in one way or another, its origin in soil. Plants obviously grow in it (though hydroponics can also be a way to raise plants). Animals graze on vegetation which grows from soil and are also fed from other plant products. And of course, we ourselves eat plants grown as crops and some people eat animals fed from plants. Soil is the origin of all of our food, ultimately.

Strange then that soil is given so little thought. Moves are afoot to bring about a realisation of soil's importance and to protect and nurture soils, identifying soil as  a resource which is largely though not completely, finite. Recognition is also growing of the damage caused by common and accepted agricultural practices such as ploughing and digging which persist despite an emerging understanding of their contribution to erosion and degradation of soil structure.

Looking with a little more focus at the dirt beneath our feet, I discover we have been underestimating it for some time. It turns out that soil is a lot more complex than the stuff you tread all over the carpet when you come in from a walk in the countryside. It is not a simple, homogeneous substance that fills in the gaps between rocks or sits passively at the side of the road with grass growing upon it. Certainly, it contains mineral particles (The "parent material") and this is what most people think of when they talk about "dirt". But in addition, soil contains a world of living complexity which is still not fully understood. What is understood however is that it is a community, a living ecosystem of its own and how to nurture, feed and care for it is becoming clearer as research progresses.

So, back to our small but explosive factoid from my opening line. Plants push out sugars into the soil to feed bacteria, fungi and a class of intermediate organisms called "actinomycetes" from which we get many of our antibiotics. These latter seem largely to be similar to bacteria but produce spores and filamentous networks like fungi.

Fungi and bacteria do not photosynthesise and so have limited ability to produce their own food from their surroundings. Certainly they break down wood and other materials for food but a plant offering a shortcut to actual sugars is very welcome to fungi. It is very difficult not to anthropomorphise about this, but essentially fungi undertake trade for these carbon resources. In return via their networks of mycelium they transfer to the plant roots elements such as phosphorus and other substances necessary for plant growth. Indeed so intimate are the relationships with some of these soil organisms that they have interfaces within the cells of plant roots where these exchanges can be easily transacted: A bit like a subcontractor having an office in the building of a major customer. It is estimated that the surface area of mycelial networks on a plant root have seven times the surface area and reach of the roots themselves, extending the plant's reach to gather nutrients massively beyond what the plant itself could manage.

Fungi like carbon. They can't get enough of the stuff and to be provided with it by a plant is a huge ecological boost. Similarly, plants need elements such as nitrogen which certain bacteria like rhizobium, will supply in return for food and a comfortable place to live such as in nodules on the roots of beans or birch trees. 

We have then, networks below the ground where symbiotic relationships flourish to the benefit of all concerned. Millions of years of evolution have ensured this process exists everywhere plants grow. If we let it.

And here is the thing: These wonderful networks of existence and transaction are fragile. And what do we do? We come along with spades or ploughs and we smash them to bits by turning over the soil. This is how most farms work the soil and to be fair, they have reasons for doing it this way which are quite compelling. Vegetable gardeners everywhere know that beans are good for the soil because they add nitrogen. But then Autumn comes and the plot is dug over and all those networks are disrupted and the tiny particles of carbon held in the soil are exposed to oxygen from the atmosphere resulting in the production of carbon dioxide. The carbon could have stayed in the soil, nourished fungi and bacteria and hence our plants, but it is now floating around in the atmosphere warming the place up. How much better to leave them in place for the next crop to take advantage of?

So, five years ago, or thereabouts (although not actually being aware at the time of these actual mechanisms) I ceased digging my vegetable garden. Every year, I just add 3 -4 cm of compost on top and I plant into this. This adds beneficial organisms and, of course, carbon, locking it up safely for a while and feeding the soil organisms that feed my vegetables. Also, this results in the soil having better water retention  and being beautifully crumbly so that what few weeds do germinate are able to be pulled up very easily. Not turning the soil over also has the benefit of not exposing weed seeds so they stay in the soil and rot. My yields are higher and best of all: I don't have to dig! Win-win as they say.

Now, taking this a step further, I looked into the further significance of mycelial networks and discovered something even more profound: Plants communicate!

No really. You read that correctly. An experiment took bean seedlings and stripped them to two roots, placing one root in a test tube of nutrient solution with the single root of a neighbour. The plants were, in effect, "daisy chained" in a line.

A plant nibbled by a grazing animal will produce salicylic acid (a component of aspirin) in response to the damage. It was discovered in the experiment that if the first plant in the chain was damaged deliberately, all the others would produce salicylic acid in response. Obviously some information about threat had been passed down the line.

Even stranger it was discovered that when a pine tree was given carbon dioxide containing a radioactive isotope of carbon, those atoms appeared in seedlings near the "mother" tree. But they only appeared in seedlings who were offspring of the mother. They did not appear in unrelated seedlings of the same species at the same distance. Now I don't know about you, but I find this utterly profound and somewhat disconcerting. Trees exchange information as well as resources along networks of mycelium. Giving one seedling food but not another, even if it is the same species, implies a decision of some kind. To call it "intelligence" might be premature. But is does seem to suggest trees don't just stand there unaware of their surroundings.

What are we to make of this then? Well, firstly, soil is far from inert but is bustling with life, information and trade. mycelial networks are vital to vegetative commerce and healthy crops. Also that plants are not passive but respond almost "intelligently" to their surroundings. I am not sure if this will make me regard my plate of spinach, carrots and chickpeas in any way differently but it is, if you'll excuse my shameless pun, food for thought.

The Benefits of communal Endeavour

A while ago, a friend of mine was complaining about having to attend 10 p.m. conference calls from home and how disruptive this was to family life. I commiserated. This kind of commitment is tiresome and intrusive, blurring the boundaries between work and home. He asked what I would be doing the next day (since my work is quite varied these days). I replied that I was teaching a group of volunteers to make houses for solitary bees. I think I saw a twinge of envy flash momentarily across his face.

It was, I suppose, an unexpected response. It seems somehow unreasonable for "work" to consist of such activities. I am not sure why. perhaps the idea just seems too much fun to fit in with out protestant work ethic.

This is a project I was asked to lead for a local not-for-profit organisation. An allotment site needed some development in order to make a more inclusive community space to be enjoyed by local residents. The intention was to provide a focus for communal working-together and increase accessibility to gardening and the Great Outdoors for those who might otherwise find it a challenge.

The site was partly already developed into traditional allotment plots but other areas were extremely overgrown and in need of taking in hand. So, for over a year now I have been turning up with my tools and enthusiasm every Wednesday morning to greet my slowly growing band of volunteers. In that time, we have built raised beds to enable those with mobility issues to garden without having to perform the arduous tasks of ground clearance and digging. We have installed a large communal shed and best of all, cleared a large patch about the size of two tennis courts which was under two metres of brambles where we built a beautiful wildlife pond. 

March 2020

September 2020: We built this!

I confess to having a soft spot for ponds. I have installed several this year for various clients. each one soon becomes a world in its own right. Wildlife discovers a new and unoccupied place to live and moves in very quickly. It becomes a habitat within days with all the attendant life-and-death struggles an aquatic life entails. A pond brings an irreplaceable dimension to an outdoor space where birds and small mammals can drink, snakes can hunt and insects can spend important periods of their lifecycle. I have had one in each of my gardens over the years. But more on ponds another time. I could write on pond for hours and this is but one aspect of this wonderful project.

Indeed, we did make bee hotels the next morning. I had some lengths of seasoned cherry branches which I tasked a couple of volunteers to cut into short logs. Into each log I had others drill 8mm holes about 80mm deep. Then we attached hooks to hang them on south facing walls and tree trunks. We were all very pleased with ourselves, especially when only a day later two holes had residents as could be seen by the plugs of cut-up beech leaf stuffed into their entrances.

It was an incredibly satisfying session. Several people learned to use power tools for the first time. Initially they were cautious and a little intimidated. But the look of delight and empowerment when it was discovered that one could, at the press of a trigger, drill a hole in a piece of wood was a joy to behold. Suddenly a single tool opens up a world of possibilities and opportunities for construction and creativity!

It is difficult to to realise that something one does almost every day and takes for granted as a standard technique of household maintenance is unknown to others who you consider lead a similar life to yourself. Indeed, perhaps I need to be open to the idea that there are tools I myself have yet to discover which may bring equally profound revelations for me. The thought is pleasing and not a little exciting actually.

And so, that day, my morning's work, "playing" as it seemed, provided leaf-cutter and mason bees with a home in which to lay their eggs and raise their offspring. It provided new experiences and education in tool use to those who had never encountered it before. And it provided, in of course a socially distanced way, somewhere for people who might otherwise see few other individuals over the course of the week to meet and spend time in this beautiful place, enjoying the presence of nature, the  joy of making things and the companionship of shared endeavour.

And perhaps now I understand that flash of envy: Whilst it might not seem economically or professionally significant, none of these things is something you get on a 10 p.m. conference call.

Weeding the Path to Enlightenment

I didn't go to work today. It was too hot. And i was too tired. Manual work is culturally regarded as "good for the soul" and were I to believe in such a concept, I might find it so. But it is tiring for the body. MY step count shows as approaching or exceeding 20000 steps a day fairly consistently, most of this carrying or pushing some article of garden machinery. As a job, it is very good at finding out those injuries you thought had healed twenty years ago or more - in my case a torn rotator cuff ligament that really does not like me cutting hedges.
And so, it was a sunny day and the man was due to come to sort out the misbehaving internet so I decided I could afford not to do any work today. Well, the internet didn't really get fixed, but I did mend my puncture and go out on my mountain bike in some local woods which was glorious.

Thought must be given to the problem however: Injury. When we are young, we do stupid, crazy, catastrophic things, fully believing that any damage will be temporary and will heal in a given amount of time allowing us to carry on with our lives and activities. Well, it isn't so. That broken wrist from 1994, that sprained ankle that beset you in 1989, they caused you grief for some months certainly, but you had faith that in a while, an unspecified but finite amount of time, you would be up and running again and it would all be a comedic episode to refer to when anecdotes were being exchanged over future beer or coffee. And it seemed to be the case. Bodies heal, don't they?
One day, twenty or thirty years later, you reach for the salt, not a risky undertaking in itself, and a sudden twinge in your should makes you wince, reminding you of a long-forgotten pain which you thought you had seen the last of. The next morning, you can't put your socks on. In the shower, washing your hair requires your "good" hand to help lift the other unwilling hand to your head in order to get a good later and not have half a head of clean hair like some 1970s shampoo advert.
And so it goes. Weeks later, it still hurts and your own mortality and fragility are brought into sharp focus: Insults to your body accumulate. The body does not forget.
Oh, I am sure that I will find a way to manage to do my job with a complaining shoulder joint. But it sets a time limit to the job. This chapter in the strange and varied course of my life will by necessity be short lived.
Well, that's ok. Whilst there might be a perceived dignity in honest physical toil, it is pretty dull. In Siddartha, by Herman Hess, the rich Brahmin merchant gives up his fortune to become an ascetic. Ultimately, he becomes a ferryman and lives a simple life of contemplation, listening to the opinions of the river day in day out. And I am sure this is all very spiritual but after a while surely didn't he just get bored? Of course, he is a fictional character and as such has few limits on the credibility of his responses. He could as the narrative unfolds transcend to Nirvana if the author wished it so. I cannot. The only author in this story is me and the only character I have any control over is myself. I suspect spiritual transcendence will not result from weeding.

Weeding is tiresome. I do an awful lot of weeding. Other people say "I like weeding. It is satisfying. It lets me go into a flow." That may well be, but my goodness does it lack an intellectual dimension! How does one take a brain which enjoys an active life of the mind and expect it to remain happy with tedious exertion and without intellectual stimulus?

Of course, there are certainly simple pleasures and small instances of beauty; a bee entering a foxglove, a patch of cleared ground, ants busily carrying disproportionately huge loads. But after a while even these cease to be very interesting. There are only so many ants you can watch before you have seen most of what ants are likely to do.Plus insects bite me a lot. But I digress.
So yes, this cannot be more than an interlude, a pause for reflection, a change of perspective. A research project perhaps.
But what then? As Zen calmness descends from the repetitive toil and the mind falls quiet like a prairie with tufts of rustling grass but no other sound, how does one not turn into something akin to the vegetables one cultivates? Serenity is all very well, but eventually it becomes stultifying to the point you forget how to talk to people.
I plan on continuing to work as a gardener for a year. After that, I may continue do some of my more interesting jobs and visit those clients who I have grown fond of, but effectively, I shall retire. My impecunious state will not be quite so acute after that as certain humble plans will come to fruition. So, I shall regard this few years as my own ascetic phase and move on with such enlightenment as I can interpret and post-rationalise.
In the meantime, I must endeavour to find the time (not easy at this time of rampant Spring growth) to tap out these small missives in an attempt to remind myself that once I had an extensive vocabulary, even if it rarely gets used these days, and an intellect which used to run fast and effortlessly over vast landscapes of the mind, surprising myself and occasionally others. I suppose it is still there to be uncovered? Do such faculties wither and atrophy beyond recovery? I suppose I shall either be delighted or disappointed.
But it would appear that the nobility of working with the soil is not as healthy for the mind as it is for the plants. And so some extra fertiliser and trace nutrients are required if my own growth is to match that of my herbaceous perennials.

Corvid 20

Sitting here in the summerhouse, contemplating how the rain is getting in, I am playing a soundtrack of forest sounds over two bluetooth speakers. Combined with the sounds from the garden, it is impossible to distinguish which birdsong is coming from the trees and which is digitally propagated. Except the recording seems to offer no goldfinches with their twittering cheerfulness. I know that to be actually present. It has been glorious weather for a few weeks of beautiful Spring, until a couple of days ago when the much-needed rain appeared. The water butts, all daisy-chained with blue plastic pipe, filled up overnight from their state of dusty emptiness and the bark paths in the veg garden now squelch with every footstep. I can almost hear the broccoli growing so fecund is the season.

So, I sit down to write and the rain stops. The milky polycarbonate windows (the frames are too flimsy for glass) allow in the newly-reappearing sun and the temperature starts to rise. I insulated the walls quite well so quite soon it will be unbearably warm in here. But for now it is merely pleasant. I feel it is a good place to sit and write as the the birds both real and digital chirrup away. I am hiding in here because the house, in this lockdown, is occupied to capacity and I need the peace and quiet this luxury affords. I acknowledge how lucky I am to have a garden, let alone this (rather shoddy because of budget) summerhouse and that others are suffering intense enforced proximity in strict confinement with no such escape possible. But I am lucky and I am here.
I have no idea what I will write and no burning topics press themselves forward demanding expression. But I am compelled to write because I feel I am losing my ability to express myself and perhaps like the control of physical musculature, the ability can be strengthened by practice. My arms and back are strong from working as a gardener but a commensurate lack of use of my mental faculties causes me concern that some ability might be diminishing. Perhaps some regular writing might help avert this perceived decline. Here's hoping.

I have just been watching a crow. on the lawn, pecking about haphazardly for  birdseed spilt from the feeders.  He has what looks like a club foot and walks with an awkward gait clumsily hobbling on the back of it. We know this crow  well and call him Charlie (I think he is actually a rook, but I shall refer to him as a crow because it feels more familiar). I have no idea if his disfigurement was congenital, as, I think is talopes, in humans, or whether it was as a result of some kind of accident early on in his life. It does, however, cause him to appear distinguishable and easier to find affection for. To see his struggles on the bird feeder, which all the other crows and jackdaws ravage with ferocity when humans are not obviously present, does engender pity. He can't hang on and peck and hence loses out. So, I try to make sure that when titbits are to be put out for the birds, he gets a generous share.

Charlie Clubfoot is our affectionate moniker for him and I hope one day to train him to recognise that when I shout "Charlie!" food is subsequently forthcoming. I know this can happen because my father used to have a Charlie at the rubbish tip where he worked who would come to his name and by way of reward receive a piece of cheese (from the rubbish pile. Crows are not choosy). Operant conditioning is usually easy with crows. We know corvids to be unusually clever amongst birds. They have a large social aspect to their lives which tends to require complexity of cognition because dealing with other individuals is complex and necessitates intelligence.
Our Charlie is not so bright. He still hasn't realised that he gets special treatment. I chase off all the other crows, the number of which has been increasing in recent years, but not him. Charlie has been visiting, as far as I can recall, since we moved in. That was nearly four years ago. Crows can live as long as twenty years if circumstances are favourable.  That Charlie, being disabled and shunned in polite crow society should still be around and healthy after at least four years is a testament to his tenacity and cunning. I am sure a club foot, withered and useless for perching or grasping, must be a serious impediment, but I was pleased to see last year that he had appeared with a female and a youngster and appeared to be showing what I presume to be his offspring, how to forage. Baby crows are curious looking; Cute in an avian kind of way, as if they are wearing a fuzzy grey balaclava. It's nice to know he found a mate and had a family. It feels like a kind of happy ending occurred at some point in his life. And Charlie Junior is able bodied and so doesn't have to hobble about on the lawn in an asymmetric fashion.

In the natural world any disadvantage usually weeds out individuals from the gene pool. It pleases me to see Charlie and his family prosper. I know all corvids can be, as we deem it, cruel: Most omnivorous or carnivorous animals will eat pretty much any creature smaller than themselves and songbird fledglings probably form at least a part of a crows diet at certain times of the year. Hence I am not sentimental about Charlie's lifestyle. But he is a character in the garden amongst so many other wonderful but hard-to-identify individuals and I would miss him were he to disappear. I am under no illusion that he is as opportunistic and voracious as his comrades. But I like to think he is a bit special.

As an aside, crows, jackdaws, rooks and ravens (which we also have around here but which are very shy) are able to see in the ultraviolet so individuals indistinguishable to us are probably vividly and characteristically marked in this spectrum, possibly striped or patchy. But to us, they all look black, occasionally with grey bits. Charlie doesn't appear to be very popular with his kin. They seem to shun him. But their uniformity provides no distinction whereas Charlie's poorly foot is very distinguishable and so, in a perverse way, to his advantage. Sometimes, it seems, it pays to be different.

Some Hope and Curmudgeonly Best Wishes.

The inescapable gravity of the concept of New Year is hard to avoid. It pulls all minds toward its imperative to reflection and conjecture in a way that is both predictable and tiresome. So those few words are my only concession to the Turning of The Year. Of course, custom and actual intent on my part bid me to wish you a Happy New Year in 2020 and to venture no further about the global or personal probabilities of that. So, Happy New Year. I hope it is indeed a good one for you.

In the turmoil that is Western Politics, I have been putting my despair aside to focus on the considerable good news for Humanity as a whole. After reading the extremely hopeful "Factfulness" by Dr Hans Rosling, I realise that although the news and individual testimonies do show some awful and undeniable suffering, the human race as a whole is experiencing some serious improvements in standard of living if we look at a global picture.:The rise of vast numbers of people from extreme poverty, the story behind worldwide life-expectancy (which is now a biblical three-score-and-ten years), the world fertility rate (currently at about three children per woman) is slowing dramatically as a result of the incredible drop in infant mortality since 1960. This is all very good news which almost never reaches our minds.

In the book, the lovely Doctor explains a little of why this might be: Negativity bias, the need to sell newspapers (or garner likes), the wish to lead a population by the nose to an expedient but incorrect view of the world for political gain. It's worth a read. And if you don't have time, the transcript is on youtube for you to listen to whilst performing some 9 hour menial task (as is common in my line of work these days). Do it. It will change how you see the world.

In this, I suppose I am exhibiting an uncharacteristic evangelism. But I feel that we should build a world view based upon verifiable facts and data. And these exist if we only care to look. I know the Amazon, Australia and even the Arctic are burning, but without faith in our own abilities to improve things, we really have no hope. And I don't know about you, but I really need some hope right now.

So, whilst I was mowing lawns, building raised beds and pruning apple trees, the year rolled by and suddenly, without noticing, it was December and I hadn't bought any Christmas presents. Perhaps sometimes we need to look up from what we are doing and see that a Bigger Picture (though not a cosmic one, because that will mostly not help on a day to day basis) needs regarding.

The book again: Dr Hans Rosling "Factfulness"

Also look a the Gapminder.org website where you will find information on how to bridge the gap between your likely incorrect assumptions about the state of the world and the facts that can give a more accurate and hopeful perspective.

The View From The Garden

I ought to be working. But it's raining again. I spent a horrible wet day on Friday building a fence for a lovely lady whose gratitude shames me because, well, I feel my work was not as good as it could have been. I mismeasured, or misremembered the length and as a result, no standard panels would fit meaning I had to build them from scratch using feather-edged boards. It's an ok job, but it could have been better. And I still have one more panel to build to fill in the odd-sized gap remaining. It wasn't satisfying. I am better at plants.
I should be making that last panel. But it's raining. Again. I can't use the necessary power tools outside in the rain so that is out of the question. But I could be building the panel in the workshop. Instead, I am here, writing on the computer in the warm and the dry because, today, somehow, I needed to.

Leaving aside the stark and surreal contrast between this life and the other one I wrote about for years - the one where I traveled on aeroplanes, stayed in hotels, had meetings in cities far away and had a salary, this is a disheartening day. The East Wind blows rain-laden clouds of such leaden grey intensity that the atmosphere underneath feels tangibly compressed by their weight. In the workshop, I wouldn't see this. It would be out of sight and out of mind. So why am I procrastinating?

Well, partly, I feel the need to write something, to exercise this vocabulary that so rarely is given free rein in my new life. There are words in here which I have not recollected for months. Perhaps this beating of paths through the encroaching mental undergrowth might maintain some semblance of accessibility to the carefully collected lexicon. So, here I am, writing. I can still do it, it seems. At least, after a fashion.

And so, some ideas that accumulate over the days and weeks of manual labour  remain to be examined. Some evaporate before they can be acknowledged - a most frustrating phenomenon. Others lie there of sufficient weight and significance as to not be swept away by the torrent of distraction and chaos of everyday thought.

Most prominently one thought dominated this past week: I am struck by the dominant demographic of my clients. This can be explained most demonstrably by the phrase I hear most often: "Sorry it's a mess but my late husband was the gardener..." trailing off and accompanied by a wistful downward glance. It breaks my heart every time; The stoic acceptance of loss and the determination to keep living nonetheless. The full social calendars I observe hanging on kitchen walls demonstrate the almost convincing efficacy of inclusion and distraction.

I knock on the door and confess my forgetfulness: "I don't suppose you have a hammer I could borrow. I seem to have forgotten mine today". I am directed to a shed where neatly laid out hooks hold cherished tools, unused for years. I take down the hammer, respectfully. I think about whose hand last wielded it and what expectations were in the mind of the wielder. Of course I cannot no so imagination and speculation are all that can be brought to bear. And I put it back carefully in its allotted place once I have finished with it, with a nod to its deceased owner to show my gratitude. It is humbling and makes me want to go home and declutter to spare the pain and effort of my family when I am gone. Only, of course, I still use my tools so I probably won't.

The other phrase I hear, which is much more heartening, is a sincere "Oh! But that looks lovely!"; A matted forest of brambles and leylandii hacked back, paths and borders revealed, cleverly devised structure now once again evident. I see the happiness in the eyes and the genuine smile at a garden restored and allow myself some satisfaction.
This is something my old job never really gave me. There was never personal  gratitude for anything I did, at least not in this immediate way. It feels like it makes a difference to individuals in the way selling storage subsystems to large computer companies did not. Nobody ever viewed my work and was over the moon as a result.

It may feel like gardening is a slow route to poverty but it has it's other rewards. Of course they won't pay the mortgage, but it's healthy. There is the exposure to daylight and fresh air. There is the exercise: I can view my job as being paid to do what others have expensive gym memberships for (and it is astonishingly efficacious in this respect!) And I don't have to surrender. There is no reason to accept any subordinate position just because someone has employed you to weed their borders or cut their hedge. Indeed, only one client has attempted that and was gently reminded that respect is due to everyone, regardless of their profession. Being articulate is a wonderful and deeply satisfying facility to adjust the perception of others, especially when they have grievously underestimated one's intelligence.

I know it makes my knees hurt and this affects my dancing which is sacrosanct, but I think I shall carry on with it for a while. I can afford to, if I continue to be frugal. Gardens are beautiful places, even in November in the rain. And I have no Idiot Manager in Houston berating me for not completing some online course on diversity or pestering me for fabricated yearly targets. This has to be better, poorly paid or not, doesn't it? Better for the body, the mind and the soul I am unable to believe in? Yes, I think so.
And as for intellectual challenge, well, here I am, aren't I?

Manual Labour is not meditative

Ye gods! How long has it been since I sat at a computer to do anything other than register for self-assessment tax returns? A long time. It is very odd to think I used to sit at a computer for hours every day, it being my main means of communication, reference, organisation and entertainment. But now, most days, I am outside in a garden somewhere mowing, weeding or planting shrubs. It is certainly a healthier way to live and my arms are clearly now those of a man who lifts and carries heavy things on a daily basis. I have to admit; They gym is nothing compared to daily manual labour for building strength. As an aside, one of my younger clients, in her early 30s, required me to pick up slabs from a friend of hers for a project I am working on. When I arrived, he hailed me thus: "Aha! You must be Pete! She told me 'He's old but he's very strong'". I am not sure if that is exactly a compliment. There were a dozen slabs of 20kg each which I had to carry up 15 steps, through the garden, down 20 steps and into the van. No wonder I eat so much these days!

My concern though: The world can get quite small when your commute is within a 10km radius. It could result in perhaps narrower, less colourful horizons and I confess this is a worry. Conversations these days tend to be largely about plants or garden plans, with the occasional midwifery discussion when we sit down for meals at home. I know a lot now about invasive placentas at least. But this isn't going to maintain the sparkle, I fear.

The question is then: When one does not move outside of a small local radius for one's work and rarely has discussion beyond the prosaic, how to keep the mind active and wide-ranging? Travel, I am told, broadens the mind, and it certainly broadened mine in the decades I was on an aeroplane almost every week. Now I don't travel, will my mind narrow or just stay the same?
I barely get time to read my new Scientist magazine every week and a huge pile of unread editions are piling up. I fear the closing down of intellect and the ossification of opinion and political viewpoint that seems to result from living in a smaller, more familiar world. And I am not even retired yet!
What to do.......

A friend has persuaded me finally to write, due to the reaction my facebook vignettes seem to garner when I attribute character and opinion to the myriad creatures in my garden (real or imagined). My friend is a very switched-on kind of chap with an excellent grasp of human motivations and he suggested that this might have appeal. And so, I shall be setting up another  page on this platform, or possibly on WordPress, where I have other historical writings, to give voice to the frogs, insects, birds, small mammals and other less definable characters who inhabit my tiny parcel of Gloucestershire. I am not sure when I will get time to do this, though Autumn is on its way and by the nature of my new career, the amount of work must decrease, possibly to almost zero (though I have some community garden development projects that are all year round now). I shall have to ensure I make time.

Because, frankly, if I don't do something soon, I fear I shall regress to the intellect of a potato (albeit perhaps one of those interesting ones like Anja or Pink Fur Apple).

Right now, however, I have to rush off now to light my pizza oven for a small gathering. I shall of course make sure no wrens have taken up residence in the lovely dry wood stacked within. They would be very cross and berate me loudly from a safe distance.
In the meantime, watch this space.....

The Benefits of Writing on Mental Health

Often, I look at the figures for views on this blog and wonder who I am writing it for. On the face of it, being a public forum, anything written here could be read, reproduced and potentially used to subsequently beat me with. In the grand scheme of things, this little collection of hand-picked and carefully combined words has no purpose. I imagine it enlightens nobody. It is a self-indulgent outpouring of opinions and feelings which is just a tiny part of the great cacophony of what constitutes public discourse. So, why do it?

I have no idea if a parallel can be drawn between mental exercise and physical exercise. Constantly performing a physical action strengthens and ingrains the mechanisms involved. Repeating a mental action must then surely have a similar effect. Repeated practice of a language, for instance, improves one's proficiency in that language. And also, it has carry-over benefits into other areas of cognition.
Does writing work similarly to improve some aspects of mental acuity or fitness?
I don't feel on the face of it that not having regularly written for a long time has diminished my vocabulary or ability to articulately explain a concept. But would I be able to tell?
Regardless of this, there exists a body of evidence that says regular "creative" writing (as opposed to correspondence regarding one's gas bill or an inquiry about a mower seen for sale on gumtree) has a measurable effect on mental wellbeing.  I suppose "wellbeing" in this sense probably needs some kind of qualification. I suppose I mean freedom from anxiety and constant dark thoughts. Possibly also general a high level of "zest for life" might be a part of it. A wider definition almost certainly exists but I shall assume that we tacitly understand between ourselves what well-being means.

Firstly, I suppose, it seems that to tease out those formless and menacing fears which beset us in unguarded moments might clarify their composition from their tangled interconnections. This may allow us to examine their individual assertions and effects upon our mood. The linear nature of this method of expression means only one thought at a time can come down the fingers to be typed on the keyboard, making the others stand aside and wait their turn, or once examined diminish to the extent they no longer need saying, and hence become less troublesome. When I lie awake at night, fears of financial disaster haunting my existence, the precarious nature of my cashflow or workloads dominating the dark perspective, taking them one at a time does seem to disempower some of the more vociferous worries. So, we potentially have this as a benefit.

Also, whether as a result of my neurological mishap, my advancing age or merely currently having a lot on my mind. I get a lot of aphasia. Last week for instance I flapped my hand impotently at the radiator trying in vain to remember the words "tea towel". This is increasingly a frequent occurrence. Given the heightened risk of dementia in survivors of brain injury, I cannot pretend this does not worry me.  It causes me to practice vigilance towards all aspects of my mental behaviour in case any sign of decline becomes evident (though what I could do besides stockpiling opiates, I am not sure).

Maybe ranging far and wide over the full range of our vocabularies is a Generally Good Thing. It might be seen as a verbal "beating of the bounds" where we travel to the far extent of our lexicon to see what resides there. There may be words depicting concepts the expression of which might be useful to us in some current frustration. Like a tool found in the recesses of the shed which enables us to finally complete some household job which has been annoying us for a while, the discovery of exactly the right word might enable us to confront and clarify something which has been on our minds for a while seeking a voice.

In the spirit of discovery, I have enrolled as a research subject on a scientific study on the effects of writing about traumatic events on our mental states. I have no idea how well-conceived and constructed the study is but it seemed a fun thing to do in the furtherance of Human Knowledge.

So, with the assumption that using as many words as are available to me on a regular basis, in order to retain vocabulary, and that the principle that examining thoughts and committing them to writing must surely aid clarification, I think I may resume this blog. If nothing else, writing allows me to retain a pretension towards intellectualism that my new life and actual intellect may not really warrant. And for that alone, I shall keep tapping away!

Where do we go now?

Nothing is the same. Except me. I, as a general collection of cells, (mostly) endure but in all other aspects, everything is new. I read back to myself some of the posts from my Old Life and there is a strange ambiguity to them. As I sat on aeroplanes, pitching up in airports in Germany, Norway, China, the life that had seemingly constructed itself for me seemed like a kind of fortress: Its complete all-worked-outness seemed eternal, as constant as the continents. The house, the marriage, the kids, the job, all smoothly in place and there in the middle of it, me. We should never forget the shifting of tectonic plates however.

So now, just a few years later, everything that comprised that life has been replaced. Divorced, new partner, different (and eye-wateringly expensive though smaller) house in a different county, job gone, salary and professional status a mere memory, kids grown up and flown. Psychosomatic illnesses all disappeared.

And now I am a gardener. Whereas for over thirty years I made my living using my intellect, my technical knowledge and my affability, now I use my body. I mow lawns, I weed borders, I make raised beds. And all the mathematics and engineering I set about learning to ensure a prosperous future, back when I was young and not quite so cynical, all superfluous. And I almost never sit at a computer. Except to do my book-keeping - a necessary and tedious evil of being self-employed.

I confess, sometimes I shake my head in disbelief. I take my hand fork and jab the back of my arms as a surrogate for pinching myself (which would be difficult with gardening gloves on), just to make sure I am not dreaming. I am not, as far as I can tell. This is the reality. And I am happy.
Mostly. Oh, there are times I wake in the night and can't get back to sleep for the strangeness of it all. How such a complete life could, like the Roman Empire, be so all-encompassing, so perfectly administered, so well constructed and yet topple and disintegrate into a fact of history. But though life is incredibly financially precarious, I no longer have to deal with idiot Texan managers and their aggression, their self-important failure to grasp their own insignificance and mediocrity.
I grasp mine and am the better for it I think.

So, no longer will I write about being in a pressurised cabin 37000 above Russia, or hotels in Paderborn. I will write about my life as a relatively menial service-sector worker and the experiences of what I encounter as I go about maintaining order and careful disorder in the gardens of Gloucestershire. I may have left a profession behind, with all the trappings, but I take largely the same mind with me into this new venture. Observation is still just as possible. As Xavier Le Maistre catalogued his voyage round the confines of his room in autour de ma chambre so shall I remark upon the prosaic happenings in horticulture. I have no idea how interesting it will be, and I shall not do it here, because I feel a hiatus is required to mark the monumental transition. But I shall do it somewhere. Words need to flow if the mind is to be retained in a form I am comfortable inhabiting.

This post is not Gluten free

I make bread. I never buy bread. It's a habit of mine. It's quite easy but also, can be as technical as you want to make it. You can throw (literally) the ingredients into a mixing bowl, for an easy loaf for example: 500g flour, 9g salt, 290g water, 7g dried yeast. And you can mix it up thoroughly into a dough with the handle of a wooden spoon and just leave it for an hour or so. Kneading isn't strictly necessary. Time can have the same effect. And then you can tip it out, fold it and shape it and leave it half an hour somewhere warm and then bake it. The temperature will depend on your oven. I use 230°C for six minutes then turn the loaf round and take the temperature down to 190°C for about another half an hour. You can make bread this simply, with only a few minutes actual intervention. It really is that simple, and generally it will be better than what you can buy.

Why do I make bread? Well, it started when my daughter had her first anaphylactic attack in response to nut allergy about 20 years ago. Prick-testing showed her to be allergic to all nuts, soya (and all pulses), egg, gelatin, tree pollen and cats. This severely cramps your style when you are three and makes birthday parties a nerve-wracking affair for all concerned.

But we discovered that pretty much all "manufactured" bread contained soya flour, or even stranger, lupin flour. And the bread in the in-store bakeries ran the risk of contamination with nuts, which could have been fatal. And so, we bought a breadmaker and this was a wonderful thing! Every morning, for a two minute preparation and a setting of the timer, we could come down to fresh bread at breakfast. We made white bread, wholemeal bread, bread with olives or sun-dried tomatoes. what a feast every loaf was.

But soon, I tired of the "breadmakery taste" which seemed to characterise every loaf. Oh, it was certainly better than most bread you could buy, but because of the construction of the pan in the machine, you always got a slightly caramel flavour, which was not unpleasant, just samey.

Then, after my brain haemorrhage when I was rather rudimentary for a while, tasks requiring procedural actions and no decision making were all I could manage. So, I made a lot of bread. And I started making it by hand. And this was something altogether different. I did, as it might be described, catch the bug.

I think this qualifies as a Cornucopia.

A local and nationally renowned mill ("By  Appointment to HM The Queen" no less) runs bread making courses lasting a day and explaining about aspects of the process, and a splendid lunch was thrown in to boot. We came away not only with a huge box containing flours and our produce: cottage loaves, plaits, Chelsea buns, pittas and other wonderful types of bread I forget now.

During the course, a kind of conversion took place in me. The revered and eminently knowledgeable chap running the course, with some authority, explained to us how bread is made in industry.  He told us of the Chorley Wood process and how a loaf can be made from flour and other ingredients in as little as half an hour, by high speed mixing, extra fast yeasts optimised for carbon dioxide production, and how this caused fast rising but led to collapse of the structure necessitating the need for extra gluten to be added. He explained how the bread went into steam ovens to be cooked at 90°C meaning that in some cases, along with all the unfermented starches and unmodified glutenins and gliadins (the proteins commonly referred to as "gluten"), the yeast might still be active right in the middle of the loaf. And all this using the cheapest ingredients possible to still be able to call it bread.
The purpose of the bread industry is not to make bread, but to make profit.

And so, enthused, I now had good reason to indulge my passion. When we left the course, he also gave us some of his sourdough culture. This is a mixture of wild yeasts such as lives in the air and on the husks of the grain and bacteria such as lactobacilli which like to hang out with yeasts. In short, it is a community of micro-organisms which all resides in a kind of pasty mixture. You feed it with flour and it adapts to the type of flour and the environment in your kitchen. Each place I have lived has caused my sourdough culture to produce different flavours in the bread. I assume this is because the population changes to include the residents of the new kitchen and worktops.

Latest bakings: Seeded Wholegrain sourdough

The beauty of sourdough is that it is a gentle process which is in some ways the antithesis of the Chorley Wood process: It takes time. Of course, you can make bread using yeast. I often buy a block from the bakery at the supermarket. It is good and strong and will lift dough which is "enriched" (mixed with oil or butter) which sourdough sometimes struggles with. But for my daily bread, I use sourdough (which is not sour by the way. A healthy culture, well fed will not go "lactic". That only happens if it is not fed adequately.

A sourdough fermentation can last days. Personally, once it is kneaded for five minutes or so, I tend to favour an overnight dough, usually no longer than twenty four hours in a fridge or cool kitchen. This long process, usually done somewhere cool, allows the yeasts and bacteria to "do some of the digesting for you". It also produces the deliciousness lacking in too much commercial bread. fermentation by products are what give the deliciousness. And slower and cooler give more. Of course, it grows and you have to "knock it back" (knock the gas out) at periodic intervals lest it take over your kitchen.

As I said earlier, you can make bread simply. Or you can get into the more complicated factors like hydration levels and different protein levels in flours. Simply put: bread flour needs at least 12% protein. British flour struggles to reach this, but that makes it good for biscuits. french bread uses "stronger " flour i.e. flour with more gluten.

54% hydration, yeast dough. Traditional cottage loaf and rolls

Hydration is an interesting variable. It just means the proportion of water to flour. I use between 54% (for a cottage loaf, a sandwich loaf or anything requiring a shape to be retained during baking) and 80% (for a ciabatta or focaccia.) The less water, the "tighter" the "crumb". This just means the bubble are smaller and the bread is more dense. Perfect for a good cheddar and some pickle.

A lighter crumb is a lower density, light bread with big bubbles. You don't knead this, but fold it at intervals, usually 45 minutes or an hour, four or so times. It makes bread that is perfect for soaking up a good olive oil.

ciabatta loaves. 75% hydration. Messy but worth it!

I have been making bread for 20 years in one way or another. It doesn't take much time once the process is clear in your head. I do ten minutes mixing and kneading, put the dough aside, leave it a period of time, knock it back for a few minutes, shape it, leave it a couple more hours and bake it for between half an hour and an hour. Actual intervention time is about twenty minutes and  I bake usually five or six loaves. I like to fill the oven for the sake of efficiency. I can freeze loaves when cool and apparently they are lower GI once thawed and so better with respect to insulin response. My usual batch of bread costs me, in UK money, £1.50 or thereabouts for ingredients and obviously, a few units of electricity for baking. For contrast, the local farmers' market sells large sourdough loaves for £3.50 to £6 a loaf. Food once a staple of the peasant diet is artisan and out of the reach of normal people. Or you can make your own.

I am an evangelist for good bread. I believe the stuff made in factories is bad for us. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I just understand the economics, the processes and the chemistry. People who tell me "I bloat when I have bread" say in puzzled tones that they can eat mine with no discomfort. I think my explanation above may hint at reasons why this might be. And I now bloat if I eat shop-bought bread (and I am by no means a "sensitive type" I can generally eat anything pretty much that falls within the category of "food").

Now I no longer have a salary, I cant afford to turn up with an expensive bottle of wine to a dinner party. But I can turn up with bread that will stop the conversation in the room. And the bread is no longer just a vehicle for more exotic foods. It is a star in  its own right.

I also run occasional courses of my own, and the look of delight when people open the oven door to behold their first loaf of bread, all crusty and perfect is a joy I never get tired of. The subsequent proud photos I receive always give me a deep sense of satisfaction that someone else is now finding their way in this wonderful craft and may bring me to new ways of baking by their discoveries.

If you don't already, I urge you to give it a try. There are some excellent videos on youtube I could point you to. I am still learning from them myself. It is better for you, even a loaf such as I described at the beginning of this piece. The making of it grounds you and leaves you feeling peaceful but accomplished. Of course, you get the occasional failure, but generally, it is a pastime that only brings deep gratification.