Horror movie

There are some phrases which should never occur out of a horror movie.
‘I have something to tell you’ which usually implies ‘and I think you ought to sit down first.’
‘I want a word’ and even worse ‘I’d just like a wee word.’
‘Can we have a chat?’
‘I feel it my duty to tell you’ (old fashioned but terribly foreboding)
‘I’m afraid that …’ Nothing good ever followed that.

Any of these phrases make me want to hide under the stairs with my fingers in my ears saying: ‘la,la,la.’

So what opening gambit really chills your blood?

Wind hover

Hopkins caught him riding the dawn (in fact, caught her, for he describes the dapppled female). I caught him at sun down, hung up against a red broken sky. I take my hat off to Hopkins, as always. He avoids saying the one obvious thing – which I could never resist. The falcon hangs in the air cruciform, as though riding his brokenness. The link is there in the poem but unspoken. What mastery of the wind is that?

And I take my hat off to Robert Bridges too – such fostering of the greater talent. That is another mastery.

The quality of light.

The days are short, and I push them out to their boundaries. The light starts to die by 3pm. Suddenly the warmth goes out of the sun, and the brilliance from the air. But it is still light. By four you would be well advised to use your car headlights, though you can still see perfectly well at ordinary human speeds. Then the quality of vision changes. Water becomes gun metal, glinting and glowering. Trees are figures out of Greek tragedy. The odd last stand of beech leaves fire up against the gloom. The sky, when it is something more than solid flat-roof-lead, rifts and builds up in towers, or glows and transmutes into patchwork. It is still light. Nearly light. I can walk, see the pheasant before it explodes in front of the dogs. The sun is gone now, but you can still see the glow thrown round the earth’s curve. If it is clear, the edges of the landscape are cut out against it. But the pheasants sink back into their holes. I can only see the sheep. Then they, too, begin to fade. But it is still not yet night, not yet, not yet. Then the sky blacks out. If it is clear, there are a few stars, if it is cloudy and there is a moon, then there is still light. No stars? No moon, even hidden? That is real dark.

… if winter comes…

Each winter, early, some acts of faith take place. Today two. The broad beans were planted. Polly and Cassie went to the tup. That used to be difficult – catching sheep, loading them into a vehicle, and saying good bye, until summoned to catch them again, and re-load them. This latter usually took place on the least convenient day and in the most impossible weather. If there was a day when sleet was horizontal, and driven in a force eight wind, that would be the day for wandering a vast hillside rattling a bucket, and shouting :’Polly! Polleeee!’ Every sheep would run from me until at last two valiant little figures would come hurtling towards me and the bucket (especially the bucket.)

Here it was breathtakingly simple. Catch Polly, mark both sheep with the painless orange spray just behind the head, giving a general impression of fierce coloured highlights, and walk them out of my gate and straight through the shepherd’s field gate – all of five yards. Now they are just over the fence, where I can keep an eye on them while they wait for the sudden madness which will overtake them and turn the tup into an object of irresistible desire. And when I rattle a bucket, it will be in just two medium sized fields, for a short walk home.

Degrees of home coming

The lunch with a friend well enjoyed. The presents for birthdays deliberated on, purchased, and sweetly singing on the seat beside me, and now the home coming starts. Leaving the motorway. Reaching Galston – that is nearly home. Then the quiet road, and the track, the track. Once I am on the track I can be sure there will not be an accident, I won’t be a car sandwich as on the horrible occasion in the spring. Then the first gate. There. Shut behind me. This is really safe territory now. Only the friendly neighbours and myself live and move and have our being here. Then the bumpy track. Can I spot an owl? Oh I know that old ewe. Look, the barn owl, that’s the male. Then the second gate. There are the lights of Killie – let each one stand for a friendly soul. A pony calls out to me in the dark. Another answers him – will she feed us, do you think? Then the door, the room. Home. Really truly home.

Save as

I am slowly working my way through a revision of the biography. Each chapter in turn goes into a new folder. Each in turn is re named – 3 or 4 or 5 finished. It makes me feel quite wobbly.

Tragedy

‘It’s time to stop thinking about the children. They are with their father,’ he said, ‘It’s time to think about yourself, and about us, this relationship.’ But the overweight young woman in Matalan was buying teddy bears.

Alexander Peden goes home

Tonight Sandy Peden went back to the hamlet where he was born to attend a Halloween Party.

I most sincerely hope it offends the Vatican. But it is unlikely to offend them quite as much as their attitude to LBGT people and to women offends me.

Strength and weakness

In most people, they are intimately related. I remember discovering this in R.E. as a teenager. ‘Describe the strengths and weaknesses of x’s reign’ read the question. Answering I realised his strengths usually lead to his disasters.

So I don’t know whether to be delighted or dismayed when one of the children lets their hearts rule their heads just as I would.

But I do know my youngest is sometimes quite dismayingly like me.

Desperate? Romantic?

Generally I am not a romantic about tradesmen. Or country people. But occasionally one sees a face which should have been by one of the great painters. I have now engaged two new tradesmen to work on the barn roofs. The first comes highly recommended. He puts on tin roofs. He lives in the community, and has a face by Dürer, I think. He appears highly rational, experienced, and well aware of the balance of cost and possibility. He is amused but not outraged by my insistence on hatches to allow entry and exit for birds. I have at various times a kestrel roosting, swallows nesting, and barn owls prospecting.

The second comes from the larger parish. He also seems competent and he talks unpretentiously and knowledgeable about slate roofs, and the desirability of preserving slates. The superiority of the older slates. I’m not quite sure who his face is by. One of the artists who used thickly layered, broken surfaces of oil. Perhaps Rembrandt himself.

Desperate, yes, I am. Let us hope that between them they can preserve my slates, and re roof my barn. Let us hope romanticism is not in any way carrying me away. They are wonderful faces, though.