dawn
It’s dark, now, at both ends of my journeys to and from work. Which means that sunrise is getting closer to the time you are coming in to work. The above photograph is rubbish, but even if I was a half-decent photographer there is no way I could have got close to doing that sight any justice. In fact nothing in my artistic armoury is up to the job: I couldn’t draw it; I won’t even try to describe it; we’ll skip anything in the music line altogether to spare Ashleigh’s feelings. The Muses won’t help us so you’re going to have to see it for yourselves.
Dave has agreed that this is probably a good tradition for us to start—the staff that watches the sun rise together…come up with your own hippy nonsense. We’ll tentatively agree to about seven o’clock one morning on my next early-shift? (That’s in three weeks time.) Let me know if you are interested, have issues, suggestions…
mushrooms
There are quite a few mushrooms poking up on the lawn just now. The best time to see mushrooms is in the morning, when the sun is just up and the dew soaks your boots. If you’re lucky it will be bright, and cool, and there will only be a few people around. Perhaps the guy sitting on the semi-circular wall having a loud conversation in Chinese; perhaps the personal trainer torturing that poor woman with his ropes and medicine balls; perhaps one of the barge folk putting the greyhound out for its morning stretch and yawn; perhaps a couple joggers. It’s a neo-metro way to start the day: mushroom hunting in the city.
The mushroom above really is a morning thing, by midday it’s a black mushy mess, if you can find it at all. There are a few more substantial leathery things dotted around too and the hot, dry summer followed by the rains may bring forth some surprises yet.
I saw my first geese of the season this week. I was doing the bins when I heard their honking, I scanned the sky but no geese appeared. Later that day I saw a big skein flying north-ish to feed on the Firth; they’ll fly south from there.
I have feelings about geese which I can only describe as a fierce wistful joy. I don’t cry much as a rule but seeing geese flying over often makes me well-up. This must show on my face as my wife mocks me for it. I can’t think of any reason why I should have this strong reaction; I mean I remember watching them as a child but there’s no incident that I can recall that explains why they should affect me so strongly. Perhaps they make me feel safe. They herald a change but a reassuring change; the world is still working properly. Even their call—We come, we come, is comforting.
I once met a guy from Ghana, where they winter, who was in to fix the automatic door on the sundeck, his memories of geese were of them waking up him feeding on the stubble outside of his house. Together we watched some geese flying over, pivoting together as they passed overhead. When they had gone we shared a sheepish grin, as if we’d been caught in an emotion that men shouldn’t have. He feels the same way about geese as I do.
mornings
There are some good things about being a janitor. See, there we go, making it all about me. I should have said that there are some good things about being a human being on this marvelous planet of ours. The next bit will be about me but that’s just because I don’t know what you do for kicks.
One of the great unlooked gifts I’ve been given has been being forced to crawl from my bed in the middle of the night so that I can open up some school. When I was young and had a social life I hated it, I was forever being disciplined for sleeping in. Now it can something of a pleasure.
There’s something about the early morning that’s so entirely different from the rest of the day; something seasonal, something about the way that planet time interacts with the human clock. A six am dawn is a completely different dawn from a seven-thirty dawn. Nature doesn’t change really, it just that more people arrive and nature does recede a wee bit. To be fair much of nature is scared of us.
At this time of year dawn is at one of its best times. I get to walk along the canal in darkness with the sky looming vast and banded with clouds above me. Harrison park is a scene from Narnia, there’s even a fox, then the long dark stage to the Polworth bridge, then the brick wall where you can see the graffiti when it’s meant to be seen, then there’s the school with its lights and the blackbirds hopping around on the lawn with their feathers askew.
When the dawn starts off properly it’s off out into the playground where there are autumn things: the rowans; the sparrows and the smell of wet grass. There’s a type of light at this time which some language somewhere will have a word for. Crepuscular came up in creative writing club but that won’t do; it’s an evening word and it doesn’t capture the spacious calm cold grandeur of the thing. We’d just need another word for the same time of the morning in the spring, when things will feel different but the same. We’ll run words before this planet runs out of wonders.
commuting
This week I got to walk to work with other people. I haven’t been on day-shift, which is the only shift I get to do this, for a while. It was a nice wee change — I got to watch my fellow humans watching nature. Or not. I noticed that a lot of these other people were listening to something which I wasn’t hearing, or speaking to someone that I couldn’t see. And I know that they weren’t paying full attention to their surroundings because most of them walked past the house with the un-curtained bedroom window about six inches from the towpath without peering in. Which is a hard thing to do. This inattention is a shame really, there’s much to see and hear going on at the moment.
Most of the birds have finished with whatever parental duties they had during the summer, so they migrate, or hide, or change their behaviour. The Wrens are noticeably noisy just now, although I might be noticing them more as most of the raucous hoodlum Herring Gulls have decamped. The Blackheaded Gulls, sporting their white winter heads, have taken up residence instead of merely visiting and the first Goosanders have arrived.
The Goosander is the bird that Elvis would undoubtedly pick if he was forced to be reincarnated as a duck. With its quiff, its attitude, its sleek nodding head, you can almost hear it saying —— thank ya ver’ much. We usually get a small gaggle wintering with us.
I probably enjoyed walking home even more. Dawdling in a dwarm, looking at leaves, listening to leaves. At the moment they’re every colour from green, through all the yellows, copper, brass, bronze and shining gold, to Vermillion, plum and scarlet. They’re on the ground, in the air, still on the branch in every stage of falling off. They rustle, whisper and roar, their branches groan and squeak, the wind sizzles, howls or gently moans. The world is a shimmering lambent dapple against a bright dark sky.
Then suddenly it’s Friday, the dusk is falling in, the streetlights buzz on, windows are lit, people hunch homewards clutching bags. It’s been a fine soft week.
the maturing sun
It must have been this bit of autumn that Keats was warbling about in that poem we only remember the first line of, and didn’t even know was a poem. Most of the leaves are still turning bright and crispy on their branches like deep frying chips. On gusty days the few that have already fallen stream rattling into heaps, heaps which then whip into upward-swirling columns that twist and explode into sprays of jinking copper; on still days they dapple the bright obsidian of the canal like scattered golden coins.
Even more than usual the weather sets the mood. In the wind all is energetic roaring noise, on sunny days it’s chipper brassy-bright, gray and overcast casts a pall of thoughtful melancholy. Only a driving rain chases the sad joy from the world.
The only flowers left are those from that family of purple Asters, all of whom I call Michaelmas Daisies, and the Ivy. The Ivy is in its pomp right now, overflowing the towpath walls and covered with star-burst green spheres of spheres that the wasps seem to love. For red we have the Hawthorn berries (don’t bring these inside). We should also have had the black of the Brambles but something happened to these. One day I was looking forwards to a bumper crop, the next they had shriveled to crumpled dark husks. A blight or something to do with the summer’s drought?
Next week it’s holidays for you lot and we try to de-kipple the school. Then it’s the Halloween party, where there had better be treacle covered tattie-scones dangling from strings, hollowed out neeps and dooking for apples. We don’t want any easycarve® dayglo pumpkins and plastic wrapped treats here — Scottish young adults require a dose of formative misery with their fun. A bit of praise for Lewis’ fine door wouldn’t go amiss either. Lewis, the English teacher had decorated his door with spooky things for Halloween. Then the days get shorter, autumn turns gloomy and long march into winter begins. I’ll find another poem for then.
lucky
I’ve taken to walking around town during my breaks, well the nearby bit of town. I picked this habit up during the lockdown. It was nice having the place to myself — not many people, not many cars. I could concentrate on the city itself instead of its denizens. When there are people about you have to pay them a certain amount of your attention; they may be attractive, have odd shaped heads, about to bite you, other people are our apex predators after all, especially when they are inside cars. It pays to be wary. You’re also conscious that they might be looking at you, which can make you walk funny. But you really get repaid for concentrating your focus on the buildings.
Edinburgh is a beautiful city, it’s also a fascinating one architecturally. It’s a jumble of styles, often in a single street. You can see where more modern buildings have been inserted amongst the older ones, often a long time ago. Jarring but somehow harmonious. When you look up there’s every kind of odd embellishment on show; simple to convoluted, gilded to weathered. There are cupolas, weathervanes and funny little windows that I long to look out of. Shop windows, office foyers, churches, statues, peoples’ curtains, wrought-iron railings, streetlights, gardens, window boxes — everything is interesting. You don’t get bored.
Yesterday I was coming back from one of these strolls, I was at Lochrin basin, when I saw the Heron. Herons are a bird that you see of a sudden, you don’t notice it — then it’s there in its longness. They are so still and grey, which is camouflage around here, that they are easy to walk by.
I took some pictures, not good ones. My phone’s camera may have a zoom function but I can’t find it. To zoom I have move closer, which I couldn’t do in this case. I spent a few minutes watching it watching the water, which, in the basin, is deep, pellucid, filled with long columns of frizzy green vegetation and, I suppose, fish. It slowly lifted a long, cantilevered leg, made to move, stopped, changed its mind and replaced its foot carefully. Feeling chuffed I wandered on.
I was coming up to the Viewforth bridge when I saw the Kingfisher. I knew that there was one about, Dave of the bees had seen one last week and I’d been eaten up by jealousy. It was fishing between the barges, a dart of blue. For a while it perched on the rail of a barge, russet-brown. I tried, without success, to get a picture. Then it shot off towards the basin, a crossbow bolt of cold blue neon.
I was going to say that it had been my lucky day. Then this morning I saw the Heron slide over the bridge, framed by dawn-red clouds. It settled in the rushes between the barges, along from the preening Swans. Maybe there’ll be a lot of lucky days.
evening of the year
This week the clocks went back, we are entering the season of dark’s dark domain. Actually we’ve been there for a while — the equinox was back in September. Autumn is hanging on by its last stalks. We are passing beyond the sere of the yellow leaf, the colours fade, white days and black nights are in our future. Soon we will have to unpack the sharp, harsh, strident words suited to the wrack of winter.
Wooden bones and sinews are appearing through the remains of the leaves, the abandoned nests and drays of summer are revealed. The last leaves flitter and twinkle in an un-felt breeze on the extreme ends of their twigs. Crows perch in these branches, in the park they hop and bounce on invisible strings like lunar astronauts, they stand sentry on lamp posts, they scutter on the roofs of cars. This is their time. They gather in the evenings to jostle and scream at one another before making off to their rooky beds.
Crows are a bird where it’s obvious that something similar to us is at home. Some birds, Pigeons and Jackdaws for example, are aware of us but take no notice. Some birds, Robins and Blackbirds, give you the angry eye — a look clearly meant for you but who knows what they are trying to convey. There’s a certain sharing of the minds when sharing a look with a Crow. I’m projecting but they always seem to harbour plans for me, nefarious plans. It’s difficult not to sense a personal animus when they’re looking down at you with cocked head and single eye, croaking a fatal entrance.
It is a time of birds: of flocks of pigeons and starlings that burst into the sky; of gulls banking backwards in the wind; of lonely Jackdaws against a huge grey sky; of Magpies cackling witch like and plotting nature’s mischief.
I watched a gaggle of Goosanders fishing. They dived, sheaved in silvery bubblewrap as they faded into the green-brown depths. To pop up randomly in a fountain of bright water juggling a fish. I saw a Bullfinch fastidiously feeding in a Rowan; perfectly camouflaged among the berries and carmine leaves.
There’s a fin de siècle feel in the air. As if we are waiting for one big autumn storm, full of sound and fury, that will change… something. Then again maybe it signifies nothing and I’m an idiot.
light
Recently the light has been sublime. Morning to nearly night, even in full night some photomancer has been casting their glamours upon the skies. There’s certainly magic in the air. One night I stood in my door watching a gibbous yellow moon, with Jupiter in close tow, slowly meld into a silver-seamed cloud. Another time I saw a double rainbow, perfect, a complete hemisphere spanning a weeping watercolour sky. All is fleeting: moments of sudden bright or sudden dim as clouds cloak or uncloak the sun; banks of dark grey cloud approaching in a bright sky.
Except I don’t believe in magic, this is all down to the time of year and the weather. As the Sun sinks to its solstice nadir its rays have to shine through more of the atmosphere. This lets pollution and impurities and water add their hues. And as there has been little wind, much rain and much cloud we have a celestial kaleidoscope. Winter is coming.
There were moments during the summer when I could fool myself that I lived in Italy. I would walk home with the other flâneurs, watching children having fun in canoes and the salsa dancers in the park. Now Edinburgh’s soul is revealed, we live in a grim northern town. The canoeists have been replaced by the scullers, grimly lashing themselves up and down the same bit of the canal, being chased by a nutter on a bike. I notice that it’s the merchant schools that scull, which means two things: that it’s expensive and that they must think that it builds character. Which is fitness tosh.
How we, humanity that is, ever got the idea that running around expending energy is in any way good for you. Well I know the type of entity that has foisted this nonsense upon us — wellness attire manufacturers, lycra-mongers. It’s not good enough to just exercise nowadays, you have to have the correct apparel. Oh, and drink one of the fifty bottles of water that the manufacturers of bottled water claim that you must drink, lest you die. Mountebanks walk amongst us.
Fitness is a scam. I’ll stick to walking and enjoying the sky with the crows.
wind
Ah blessed wind. That pipes and roars, that whips waves along the canal, that lashes the trees, that booms in my chimney and rattles the bins as I lie in bed, safe and warm. I’d fought my way home through it, in the moonlight, often blown backwards, giggling and stumbling. A leaf whacked me right in the face, a rebuke from nature? While all around the trees raged.
The next day I headed out in the early afternoon, it was still blustery, but bright and cheery. The damage was slight. One of the Willows had a broken branch swinging over the canal like a hanged man Tarot but for the rest sticks and leaves.
The branches are now mostly stripped, leaving the soul of the trees exposed. The sleek, silky Cherries: prim; the Rowans with outspread branches proffering bunches of rosy berries: bountiful; the Birches still cling to their leaves, so gold and coin like that they should clink: a dandy; the Hawthorns, spotted with lichen, their bark dry and creviced, clenched against the coming cold: ancient. The Willows too keep their leaves, on slender yellow tendrils, louche, long-fingered, and sweeping in the breeze: witches all.
With the leaves gone the birds of the bush will be easier to spot. I saw a flock of Long-tailed Tits. Sweet little birds, with a sweet trilling song, all tail topped with a round body; they’re like quavers, their sine wave flight writing their song on the stave of the air. They don’t stay anywhere long, I was lucky enough to be walking their way as they swept the hedgerow along the towpath for insects and berries.
The world has been cleared. And it is bright.
graffiti
I was removing graffiti in the toilets the other day. This involves using a chemical that probably shouldn’t be used in a confined area, I found myself musing strangely.
The young adults’ graffiti is well-differentiated by gender. The young mens’ efforts lack both literary and artistic merit, they’re often personal and they display worrying anatomical misconceptions; the young ladies’ efforts are more interesting.
I won’t quote any here — I’m unsure about the copyright situation, but some of it is wonderful. A lot of it is rubbish of course (girl loses boy to girl of loose habits) but there are often genuine attempts to deal with
the problems of being a teenager that us older adults had too but don’t remember having, or now dimiss as unimportant, and some that can only be described as literature. I will have to share one: He was worthless anyway.
Just that. That’s only a few syllables short of a very good haiku. Notice the use of was rather than is which takes the thing to a different level — he is no more now. It seemed a shame to wipe it away.
To my be-fumed mind these daubings were spells, humanity’s ancient graphic magic against fear and insecurity. Entreaties to the latrine gods. The boys’ vicious orisons lashing out, a mask against weakness. The girls’ cantrips, on love, of love, counselling hope to others, praying for help. When we grow up we forget the fears we had as a child.
When I was young I was terrified of the night, not of the dark but of the things that might come out of it. Things real, things maybe and things that certainly aren’t. Of nightpads and bandits, of vampires and insects, of shadows and noises. I feared being poisoned, that I’d wished so hard for something that I’d accidentally sold my soul to the devil, that I’d die this night.
I was thinking about all this as I was walking home in the dark. The stars were out, Orion was before me, guiding me home. I came to the church at Polworth, inside a choir was singing. There’s something so pure and uplifting about unaccompanied human voices, I felt a finger down my spine.
At this point it would have been helpful, for the purposes of this tale, if I’d experienced a revelation. An epithany, a lightning strike of awareness, an insight that supplied a cogent meaning to these ramblings. But nada, just the finger, nothing profound. I’m afraid that that’s life — you must supply your own meaning.