celebration
The end was now close.
last thing
I was walking home after the wine tasting, fretting about the Daffodils being in bloom too early, it had been another unseasonably mild day. We’ve had a succession of spring-like days and the birds are behaving in spring-like ways. The Ducks are flying their mating flights, the Swans are looking at nest sites and the Blackbirds are staking their territories in blood and song. It’s only the beginning of March but, our friends, the bio masses, have decided that it’s time to get busy. Too early. In the dark mornings winter is still in the air, its winds can still chill my bones.
How do plants and animals tell that it’s spring? Turns out it’s complicated. I’d assumed that light length was the most important thing. Not really, temperature matters more. I suppose that makes sense, it’s no good if the days are long on the feast of St. Mark but the snow lies deep and crisp and in the park. Nature can’t avail itself of firewood or the largess of Kings to keep warm. So the warm days, coming after an exceptionally mild winter has fooled nature into thinking that it’s spring. I won’t pretend that I’m not enjoying whatever season this is.
Walking to work earlier that day I’d seen a flock Redwings flowing through the park. I say flowing for that’s what it looked like, their movement had a liquid quality, an ever-shifting stream. There were about fifty birds, always some bouncing forwards, always some poking at the ground. Redwings are splendid wee birds, speckled and shining, Egyptian eyes sharp underneath their long white brows. Soon these will be off north for the summer. More change.
And so the day went and I walked home. At the corner of the canal I saw the church, blocks girt in shadows, framed by trees. My stomach lurched, I felt a gliff, a sense of end — this was my last wine tasting; there will be no more. Soon I’ll do my last commutes in the darkness and then sooner still I’ll do my last commute. The lives of the school, which, for years, have been mine will soon go on without me. And that’s good — all things must change, every winter has its spring. Ying and Yang must do their dance, jannies must, in the end, leave their schools.
rainy day #1235
The sky was white and full of water as I locked my door. There was a big fat Snail crawling across the letterbox. The flock of Sparrows who feed on the fat balls hung from the tree outside my window flew up in a great racket to perch on the Dog Rose above my gate. I ducked under their angry eyes.
The playground outside my house slopes down to a drain at my front gate. So all the rain that falls on the playground runs into my garden. I don’t know how often I’ve cleared that drain, it doesn’t matter, it soon blocks again. So on rainy days like Thursday I need to wade across a lochan on my way to work. The rain was bouncing off the playground, rivers were flowing into my garden, which was overflowing down the street. Some careful jumping was needed to remain dry-shod.
By the time I got to the park my feet were soaked anyway, and so was the park. Everywhere there were puddles of dancing mercury. Half a dozen Crows were squabbling over something, a pair of Magpies watched them, adding their cackling to the cawing. In the distance a flock of Seagulls danced for worms. The rain drew circles up and down the canal and ran down my jacket. I plodded on.
Further along, before the tenements, the Hawthorn’s feathery new leaves trembled in the downpour. Blue Tits and Coal Tits hopped along the branches, turning somersaults in their search for bugs. There was nobody but me about, the Moorhens took the chance to stalk the towpath, before screeching and splashing their way across the water. The Ivy slumped over its wall as more puddles grew under my feet.
Later, I walked home inside more rain. The sky was low and tinged with orange, everywhere there was the sound of water — running, dripping, gurgling. The trees looked as if they were leaning over especially to drip their fat drops into the canal. People swooped out of the gloom, deliveroo bikes growled by. The towpath lights arced before me as I lurched my way home. The loch was still there at my door, I plunged through it, it didn’t matter how wet I was now, I was heading for a bath.
morning
There’s a song, something about Blackbirds singing in the dead of night. The Blackbirds along the canal sing in the night, but there’s nothing dead about the night just now. The dawn is alive. Everywhere there are birds; Seagulls soaring far above, Blackbirds singing in the tops of trees, wee birds bouncing in the bushes and swooping back and forth across the canal. I’ve even seen a couple of Bats, flashing in from nowhere to flitter by my head. The noise is incredible, wide, sharp and rippling, a barrage of squawks, screams and trills. Spring is in high gear.
The big trees have woken, to push out fragile leaves and delicate buds that half-hide the branches with fluff and lace. Most are green but there are a few that seem almost orange. Everywhere there are Cherries in bloom, the blossom falling like snow in the wind. In the sun everything seems to shine, to sparkle, and in the morning there’s a strange sharp smell that tastes of green. Everything seems new.
Even the playground is busy. The lawn/meadow seems to be owned by a single Blackbird, he spends a lot of time singing in the trees, and brooks no rivals. He has to put up with other birds though. We’ve Pigeons, Sparrows, Jackdaws, Starlings, a couple of Goldfinches… there’s even a pair of Collared Doves. To me the meadow looks great, with the Dandelions a yellow blaze it looks like a Turkish carpet rolled out in the sun. We’ll get it cut and the end of May/beginning of June, and then it will no longer be my business. I’m getting a lot of that just now — noticing things that I’m doing for the last time.
It feels odd, retiring, or knowing that I’m going to retire rather. I feel the clutch of time, but there’s also that rising mood that I get in August (and maybe won’t ever get again?) — a new term, a new year, a chance to begin all over again. I felt a bit like this when we moved here from the old school. Except that here I’m leaving behind a growing thing, there, apart from in peoples’ memories, we are forever gone. I’m also taking stock, reviewing my life. A pointless exercise, I can’t change the past, what’s the plan if I decide that I’ve been a complete waste of time? I’m not going to change anything.
When I’m wandering the playground I see things that are here to stay, the Wisteria, the trees, the Vines in the Solar, the pond, when we stop the leak, and the Pear tree that we planted, which flowered for the first time this year. A blackbird may sit in it in fifty years time. I should be more like that Blackbird and enjoy the spring.
stuff
Like Socrates I know that I know only one thing — that the meaning of life is not to be found by running around in your semmet. And yet, despite it being a tenet of no major religion, many people seem think it is the high road (they must rune) to their salvation. I assume. What other reason could there be for running around half-naked in the cold? I’ve always thought that it was a cult, there’s the special clothes, the rictus grins and the lack of normal shame. There is a patron saint of running, Sebastian. And what happened to him? Tied to a tree and shot by arrows that’s what. That didn’t kill him, he was clubbed him to death after he recovered for upbraiding the emperor for his sins. Not sure where the running comes in. You’d think that would put people off. Not that I’ve got anything particular against runners, I detest all forms of exercise.
The reason that I’m more annoyed about runners than usual is because the warm weather has brought out a glut of them; human Mayflies. Actually, that might be it, perhaps running around in the semi-scud is some twisted kind of human mating ritual. It takes all sorts I suppose. For me, a propensity to exercise would be a deal breaker when it came to choosing a partner. I suppose that I should take it as a good sign, like the staff having babies — being a janitor is a bit like being a zookeeper, it’s a good if your pets are breeding, shows that they are happy.
It’s the same with the playground. We’ve set out to provide homes for wildlife. How successful have we been? We’ve had one major success. The gardening club were hacking away at the Buddlia in the third big raised bed when we found the eggs in the picture above. A duck has graced us with her presence. Of course at that point we made a withdrawal but I checked later and she is still on the nest. So happy staff, happy playground.
bookends
The longer days have snuck up on me, it’s twilight at both ends of my shift-pattern just now. For a few weeks I get to wander the playground in that half-world between the waxing/waning of the light in the coming, or going, of the sun. The honey hour, of lonely stars, between the transits of the night. I love the mornings best, where I have the world almost to myself; the lighter evenings hoach with people. Not that I mind people, it’s just that the world is a very different place when there are lots of people around. People frighten the animals.
In the mornings I play the intrepid wildlife explorer, breaking new ground in darkest Edinburgh. The voice in my head assumes the soothing cadences of David Attenborough…
——And here we see a fully-grown janitor thrashing around in the undergrowth for no apparent reason. He steps in something nasty, perhaps a puddle or a turd. He’s waves his foot in the air with a sour grimace on his pus…
Nature changes, every sunrise brings new things. Before the sun the lawn is the best place, an unruly rectangle of rampant life, where Goldfinches, trailing song, bounce between the tattered wisps of dandelion heads and every tree is alive with birds. Later, as windows bronze in the rising sun, I sit watching the insects, the bugs, bees and butterflies, a-bob, a-hover upon our Nettle beds. The Orange Tips must feed on the Vincas?
Up close the playground seems one thing; from a high-distance, as I water the Sundeck say, or from the extension it seems another thing again. Our playground has schizophrenia — the canted Mondrian mosaic of pallid concrete wrapping the vibrant green of the beds and borders. Lush nature edged, life amongst flat stone. I wanted it this way, and to me it looks very beautiful. Others may see something different.
Later still, when the sun has risen to shine down the solar I do some weeding with the sun warm on my back. I’m not sure if I ever knew what I wanted it to be — I certainly don’t know what it is now. With the Primulas flowering and the Coltfoot’s spikes of crooked fluff. Another unmeant thing, but something.
Come evening I water the Sundeck under a fat red sun and remember the summers that I’ve been here. The first summer we were here was lovely, another would bookend my time here nicely.
nose
My nose had a hard paper round. It was an ugly hooked thing to start with, but, after a series of mis-adventures involving other people and vehicles, it’s now a battered, slanted thing. Misshapen and useless, one nostril is completely closed. What with that and me smoking like a medium-sized seventies coal-fired power station, my sense of smell is banjaxed. My olfactory world is the equivalent of Norfolk: flat and dull. This week there have been a couple of damp, white, misty mornings which have given me a sense of what I’m missing — nature has arranged for my walk to work to include swathes of minging vegetation.
It’s now the white phase of spring; the yellow time, of the Daffodils and Dandelions, has passed. Now it’s a mass of pale white bracts that edge the towpath. The dust of angels hovering above the green foliage, dainty, damp and dense; dripping crystal droplets and trailing spider-silk. There’s a stand of Cow Parsley as I come to the park, some of it taller than my head. It seemed to appear overnight, one morning it was just there. An ethereal bank of whiteness, a fallen cloud, plucked from some dream to outlast the night.
The Cow Parsley smells floral, with a flat, musty undertone; slightly stale and yet very fresh. My streaming nose and itchy eyes reminded me to take my emergency anti-histamine. The bank of Hawthorn announced itself in stink as I pass under the bridge between the parks. A chemical smell, that catches the throat, and yet very natural. Branches of wet flowers hung low over the towpath, brushing my hair as I passed. All along both banks there are plants growing in patches, swatches of colour sown to nature’s random plan. The flowers are mostly white — Dead Nettles, Elderflower and that plant that looks like Honesty, but isn’t, but there are patches of blue Green Alkamet.
The long walls between the parks and the school are covered in growth. Lilac Ivy-leafed Toadflax, small sharp Ferns full of silica, Corydalis, there’s even a flowering Comfrey clinging half-way up a wall. I come to Fountainbridge green (that’s us folks) with its lawns and Starlings. The lawn in front of the student flats has been mown; it makes a nice contrast with our touseled mire. Our meadow doesn’t smell of much except wet. The white Dandelion heads look like alien spacecraft rising from a raft of Buttercups. We have two types of Buttercup, the creeping kind whose flowers hug the ground, and another kind that sends up sprays. Later, as the sun burnt away the cloud, and it was the first day of the world, I cleaned away the mess of the night. As the dew disappered I got the smell of clotted dust. Then nothing, my sense of smell was gone again. Our Wisteria is starting to flower and the Swifts screech somewhere in the bright blue sky.
a garden, east of fountainbridge
I was walking in my garden (your playground) in the cool of the evening when I spotted the hippy. He was sitting on a bench, wearing cyberman-style earphones and strumming an unplugged electric guitar. The man had long, wavy blonde hair. I’ll bet he spends a lot of time making that look unkemp I though unkindly.
—— Who has told you that thou wist musical? Hast thou been eating the special smarties or supping the frothing Frosty Jack?
He didn’t answer as he was crooning some dirge to himself. I noticed that he was wearing shorts, and sandals with socks; was there no end to his trespasses? I cursed him above all other cattle, which probably didn’t bother him much. Thankfully, being a hippy is its own punishment, as my mother was wont to say, “it can be no kind of a life.”
That’s the problem with gardens — riff-raff and undesirables sneak in. God had the same problem with his garden. Though I’ve always thought that the way he set the place up was asking for trouble, creating a big tree in the middle…
——You shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest you die.
I don’t think we even need to posit a subtil serpent — everything I know about humans suggests that the first breakfast consisted of roast fruit of the tree of knowledge, a slice off the nether parts of that small fat animal (unnamed at the time, later called the Tasty, sadly extinct.) and a Nettle latte. I suspect a set up, god created a honey-pot sting on the seventh day when he was pretending to rest. He was certainly quick off the mark with the eternal punishments…
——Thorns also and Thistles it shall bring forth for thee; and thou shall eat the herbs of the field.
This is still a thing, after however many years you believe the earth has existed for. Our garden has Thorns and Thistles a plenty, and I saw a strange thing last Saturday. Well not strange exactly, unusual shall we say? Some of the Chinese school ladies went through the meadow picking Dandelion leaves. Carrier bags full. I assume that they were going to eat the herbs of the field. I eat Dandelion leaves myself, they’re like a less peppery Rocket. Quite nice. The ones that they collected must have been heading for a fiery end in some wok. I rather like that — people using our playground for food. Later this year we should have Potatoes, Peas and Beans. That’s one aspect of our garden. But how does it look? And did I mean it to look that way?
The playground never really had a plan. I did watch a lot of YouTubes about Japanese gardens a couple of years ago when we were moving the rubble from outside the sprinkler house to create the Solar. I don’t know what the Solar is but it doesn’t have any obvious Japanese DNA apart from some Moss. The other thing I watched was something (I can no longer find it) about a garden in a derelict German industrial site. I liked that, wild nature wrapped in concrete, an aesthetic I was onboard with. I think we’ve managed something of that. But perhaps it’s only my eyes that see it? That’s another problem with gardens, two problems really — they never turn out as you imagined them and people don’t appreciate them. Perhaps we need a special tree? For sure we must discourage the hippies.
another morning
This week I was treated to a morning such as Adam and Eve must have known. A fresh new thing. A thing of crystalized peace; so still and sharp that I felt as if it might literally shatter. The sun was a fierce ball of molten cold in a porcelain blue sky. A sky daubed with stripes of wisp-like cloud that looked as if Degas might have done them using a comb. For the last part of my walk, along the long walls, the sun shone straight into my face, forcing me to keep my head down. Which meant that I saw things that I might not normally have noticed much.
All manner of things that creepeth were making their way across the towpath, going from wherever they had been to wherever they were going. Leeches, Slugs, Snails, Worms… Small sulpher-yellow ones with extravagent horns, nodescript brown ones of every size, huge ridged black ones oozing and writhing, knackered looking Worms like twisted gray inner-tubes. The verges were overflowing, every hue of green. Valerian and toadflax rules the walltops, beneath which Sparrows bobbed and hovered like fat, brown, Hummingbirds as they searched amonst the stone cracks for insects or salts. Insects danced reels upon the still dark water, or plumed in tornadoes in patches of sun. At the Green there were Starlings. The fledglings greedily chasing their parents, with a racket of springs.
Later, before the zombies came out, ears covered and eyeless, dead to the world, rushing along welded to phones, I wandered the still of the playground, changing the bags, feeding the birds. The undead appeared, teachers started arriving, another day had begun. Later still, watering the Sundeck, noticing with pleasure the amount of beasties, I watched my world from on high, the sun creeping across the tarmac. I put away my last exam desk ever this week; will I ever be able to force myself to rise again early and enjoy another golden, solitary morn?
tradition
All schools, perhaps all organizations, develop traditions — habits that they don’t want to shake off. Our main tradition would be the Remembrance Service, I suppose. My first experience of it was in November 1988. We were sitting having a coffee in the howf when Mike suddenly shot to his feet like a chubby jack-in-the-box, clutching his head lest it explode…
—— The remembrance service! the remembrance service! Why do I have to remember everything myself?
Yes, my first remembrance service had been forgotten. There was always a pleasing sense of peril about the service at the old school; we held it on the stair at the front entrance, where there was always the chance of interruption, someone banging on the front door, a random loony event… However, our greatest disaster was all down to us.
It was during Jack’s reign, it was to be a special ceremony, STV were going to film our service as a part of their national coverage. So come eleven o’clock, after the bongs, the camera shifted from one scene of sombre looking old white men in expensive looking black overcoats to another. Their mouths all firmly shut. Alas when the cameras settled on us Jack’s mouth was moving, he was still doing his pre-silence spiel. We had neglected to ensure that our eleven o’clock was the same as the rest of the country’s. Mock was made of us. It was nearly as bad a disaster as Sandwich-gate ☛, Jack has always been very sensitive about it, I remind him of it often.
The war memorial has always held a special place in my heart; when I did the school web site its page was always the one I designed first. The day they disassembled it to bring it down here was the first day that I really felt that we were going to be moving. Other janitors have clearly had the same feelings — when the bronzes were taken away for cleaning we found signatures and a story from the fifties written on the wood behind. That was when they’d last taken them away for cleaning. Danny, Daz and I added our marks and a tale before they were replaced. In fifty years or so another group of janitors (they will be called something different by then, still janitors) will make the same discovery and add their names. As is traditional.
I have my own traditions, mostly small things that I do, things that I say at certain times. For example, on the last day of the summer term I always say that we should do a, “massive mammoth damp-down”, (I mean close all the windows and lock all the doors), because that was what Mike had said. My main tradition, since we have been here, has been taking the sixth years onto the roof after the prize giving. For my last one some god, perhaps anubis hisself, arranged for a perfect evening — sunny with enough cloud to turn red. As I watched the castle smouldering in the sunlight, and listened to the happy chat, I felt a proper sense of peace. Of something worthwhile completed. This tradition was over, I was nearly gone, another thread in this tapestry of ours had been knotted off, my world was whole.
last…
The Natural numbers (that’s the counting numbers 1,2,3…) are well-ordered. They are ordered in the sense that 3 is greater than 2, is greater than 1 etc., and they are well because there is a smallest one — 1. So there are a finite number of, numbers, between any given number and 1. This means that we can use a proof by infinite descent, because there is always a l[e]ast. That’s what this is, a last. There will be no more nature journals.
I only vaguely remember why I started doing these journals — nature evangelism perhaps? Doesn’t sound like me. More likely I just wanted to do some writing again (I’d kept a couple of blogs when I was doing my OU stuff that my course-mates seemed to like) — I have form as a writer of tripe. Then one piece led to another, like drink — man takes a drink, drink takes a drink, drink takes a man. It’s the same with writing, only you are the ones being taken. As people were nice about my writing I began to take liberties, some of the stuff I wrote was well over-the-top! This would be your fault, you should have exercised better judgement.
I did use the journal (blog?) as a means to explain what I was trying to do with the playground. How successful I’ve been I don’t know — I know that I didn’t convince everyone about the lawn/meadow project. If you haven’t got the idea by now, (and I’m not sure that I have) then I have failed. I will say that the playground (my garden) has approached, in the last few weeks, something like I’d pictured it inside my dreaming head. The Sundeck is worth a visit for sure, and it should be at its best for the end of term party.
On a personal note writing these things has been good for me. Apart from the enjoyment that you get from writing it has made me look at the world more closely — what am I seeing? How can I describe that? It has made my journies much more interesting, even when the weather has been less than perfect. If I’ve got across even a smidgen of that joy of nature then I’ll be happy.
So my time is nearly up. I still have a couple of things to do. Over the summer I’ll fix the leak in the pond, and one warm day in spring I’ll plant out the five little trees, (the wee sisters) that are in the lone raised bed, out in the nettlelands. And then I will be gone.
…day
I woke early, around three, I knew that I wouldn’t get back to sleep so I read Waugh’s Unconditional Surrender for a while.
goodbye
Let me tell you a story. When I was at Craiglockhart there was this boy who everybody called Chris, but I called Christopher. He was a miserable child, always in trouble, always wandering around on his own at night. He was fat docket he came with a thick file from nursery, evidence of trouble. — he came from nursery with a full spectrum of issues, issues which continued, which got worse if anything. He was one of my kids from day one. I tried my best, I talked to him, I sought him out, I chatted to him when we met on his evening rambles; me chatting, him silent. Nothing I did seemed to get through. Then he was involved in a bad road accident — skull smashed, not expected to live.
He recovered. I remember the day he came back to school, I saw him in the foyer at the same time as he saw me. Our smiles were so wide as we stared at one another that if you’d stitched them together you could have bridged the Nile at Luxor. I picked him up, for he was still wee, and hugged him close. That was the last time I cried. I still see him now and again, we always talk for a while. He has a dueling scar all down one cheek, so I suppose he still has his problems, but he seems happy. Maybe I was of some help? Perhaps not, but he means a lot to me and at least I had the chance to be of some help. You don’t get that type of experience in a normal job.
If you work in education don’t expect to get rich (in fact expect to be poor), don’t expect a simple life, don’t even expect much thanks. Expect hard work and trauma, expect to feel depressed and useless, expect to suffer the slingshots of twats complaining about your easy life — the short hours, the long holidays, the minimal workload. Well if it’s such a cushy job why aren’t you doing it? Try teaching a class for an hour, then I’ll listen to you. But a life in education does have its wonders and riches. And if there are such things as gods and heavens our places are secure.
Forty years I’ve worked in education, I started as a cleaner on Friday the 24th of June 1984. I’ve had good times, bad times, hard times and evil times, but there has been much magic. I had a couple of years at Craiglockhart where I felt that, as a school, we were firing on all cylinders. That passed, ruined by an idiot. But it has been here, in this marvelous building, with you wonderful people, that I have enjoyed the happiest times of my working life. Perhaps even the happiest times of my life. And I’ve had a good life! Mostly.
Much has changed since that Friday when I scrubbed my first floor, some for the worse but on the whole I think for the better. We are much more professional, some of the more egregious behaviors acceptable in the past are gone. Of course we’re not perfect, this is planet earth after all. But here at least the trail ascends; I sense no slackening in our will to improve. There are no Laurels around here, but if there were they’d remain unbruised by any of our bottoms.
Soon, this evening, I will no longer be a part of the school. I will decorate no more doors at christmas, I’ve put away my last exam desk, there’ll be no more school events for me. I’ll become an outsider, no longer entitled to a vote. For each of us here matters, we all have our say, however small, in the business of the school. Traces of me will remain for a while, fading slowly, growing fainter, indistinct, a footprint in a stream. I’ve been so very happy here, but nothing is forever, it is time for me to go.
But remember me. Think of me when the Cherry blossom falls down the playground, when the screech of Swifts announces summer, when the Vines glow red in the autumn, when crooked talons of frost creep across the canal as evening falls. Think of me especially when the cry of the Geese in their ragged isosceles echos mournful off the tenements under a yellow sickle moon. For if I have a spirit, and it has a home, it will surely be here, in this playground, still watching over you.
Stay happy, step proudly, be tenex.
fini
Later I walked home along the canal, carrying the bits and bobs that people had given me.