Between Crickets and Nightingales....

A whole host of gremlins got into the Anna M's electrics over the winter, and the new fridge finally arrived, so there was much to be done, involving burrowing in awkward corners, while I myself was full of aches and coughs. I think I caught something from an old boy coughing all over the bus that brought us up from Vila Real, and was generally feeling ineffectual. Meanwhile the locals were delighted on account of some rain. In the circumstances there was nothing to be done but tie up to the pontoon in Sanlucar and see what the bit of extra convenience and human company might do.

Julian coming along the pontoon with Lily.

The sun was soon getting strong, I was feeling a lot better, and blow me if the Lord did not (after my smart remarks last week) send a wonderful Englishman to sort me out. With his Irish wife Martina and their second daughter Katy, they live on Carina of Devon*, to be seen in the left of the photo. With Julian's help those gremlins are on the run.

Rogan Wolf whom we visited in Clifton gave us a poem -‘A dotted line/ is like a prison window;/ between the bars infinity beckons.’ ‘... if I chanced/ upon infinity,/  would I ride it/ or just fall?’ Certainly not 'just fall', Rogan, but I'm not sure if 'riding' it is quite the right word for the alternative. And how does infinity beckon? When the sun comes out after the rain, the swallows are full of joy, the hills a riot of flowers, the nights a competition of crickets' song and nightingales', well, all this is a good start. Yet it is easy to miss.

Tom Jackson in his book on Darwin, subtitled The Poet Who Died, recounts how as the young man of the Beagle Journal ('surely to be numbered among the greatest travel writings in English') the great man was full of poetry and passion, 'unutterably thrilled by his wonderful experiences'; yet by his own account, in middle age all this deserted him. 'The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity.' Well, whatever it was, he lost it!

Our loving Creator works especially by way of the gaps, and uses them to gain access to us. But while He is indeed God of the gaps, the world does its best to ignore them. Poor old Darwin and his many followers want to stay on the solid ground of ‘science’, and Tom shows how he covered over the gaps with a lot of half-baked ideology about 'Natural Selection' and so on. Happily nowadays one gets the impression that even science is being forced to recognise the gaps.

 

Julian and Martina are scientists too, yet evidently seeking those 'gaps' here on the river. If perhaps not 'ride', what then shall we say, Rogan? 'Go with the flow'? Swim, sail, fly.... Here is Martina out walking the riverside path:

and here is Fiona on the same walk:

and here are more flowers along the way:

*see Martina's blog, just discovered and highly recommended  - https://carinaofdevon.wordpress.com/

On the River

Cistus, flower of Guadianaland.

Fiona and I came away from that mad day indulging dreams at the London Boat Show with one item purchased - a fridge, which precisely fitted the corner where I want to install it. It was supposed to be waiting for us here at Alcoutim when we came back, but it was stranded in a depot in Vilamoura. Having been chased up, it was actually brought as far as the bridge over the little tributary here at the top of town, maybe 300m from the waterfront on the Guadiana and the office there of Fun River where I had arranged for it to be delivered.

It was last thing Friday evening and raining. I got the driver on the phone as he returned to Vilamoura; a Brit. He said he could not find the Fun River office! But it is sign-posted, the town is very small and the Guadiana on the big side…. Could he not have asked the way? ‘I don’t speak Portuguese. I’m English’!!

Ay, probably hasn’t even learnt fas favor, onde esta, obrigado…., surely the basics one should learn wherever one goes. Will this kind of Brit ever learn community building? One is so used to wincing as they give off about the Portuguese, the French, the Irish  etc. Yet the same people come and throw themselves all over these countries! And now they hold this silly referendum!

Stop the world, I want to get off! I can only see it as a matter of nostalgia for another age, of a mythic time when Britain was indeed Great, wogs began at Calais, if God wanted something done, he sent for an Englishman while one could rob the world, glory in the buccaneer spirit yet generally convince oneself one was doing the world a favour.

That attitude may be largely discredited now, but how is one to account for the fact that (according to the London Independent) in a vote in the European Parliament on 25/3/16, all the Tory (14 of them), UKIP and DUP MEPs who casted a vote on the plan to ‘crack down on corporate tax dodging’  did so against it? Presumably all in the name of British sovereignty! One might be tempted to describe it as sinister.

I am currently on a second reading of Tom Jackson’s book Darwin and the Tragedy of the ‘Origin of Species’. In it he painstakingly evokes the great man’s state of mind and the philosophical, social and political context of his thought. While celebrating his insights especially as a young man, Tom goes on to a ruthless exposee (sorry you can insert all sorts of symbols on this machine but no sign of acute accents) of the way in which his insights were conscripted as a foundation myth for the great Victorian industrial and imperial project.

I consider that we are now witnessing the last stand of those whose main project, in their world of fierce and violent competition, remains that of ensuring that they will be among the fit who survive - but it has to be said this project remains deeply entrenched and persistent. Tom hardly surprisingly could not find a publisher for his book, though it is brilliant and very apposite. He published it himself and it is available on Amazon.com.

Tom Jackson signing his book.

I quote a key passage:- ‘Every society defines its understanding of itself and its relation to the natural world in a creation myth. The Victorians had embarked on bringing about the greatest change in mankind’s relationship with nature since the agricultural revolution, perhaps indeed since the appearance of self-consciousness, and it was for that reason that they already had problems about their own received myth of creation. For the first time in human history nature was being seen not primarily as a wonder to be contemplated but as a resource to be used and exploited. Genesis was no longer of any use, in fact it was worse, it had become a skeleton at the feast, a deep source of guilt and anxiety. The problem was that Genesis did not recommend getting rich at nature’s expense but, as God did, loving the natural things he had made. Genesis was therefore now a problem, even more for Christians than for secularists, but most of all for clergymen, for almost to a man the clergy were enthusiastic supporters of the middle-class project to become rich and then richer still.’ (pp156/7)

This project, essential to the life of a place like Downside, was seriously threatened from within in the 1960s and ‘70s. With some help from Teilhard de Chardin, some of us reckoned we had the makings of a new paradigm. We were no doubt somewhat naive, and we had no great triumphs in our undertakings. The gap between one paradigm and another is dangerous territory, as Dom Luke Suart, a leading protagonist at Downside, demonstrated dramatically with his nervous collapse and suicide. The other monks involved all left the community and were scattered.

Tom Jackson is one of the survivors. Well, God’s ways are not man’s. The work has been going on in so many ways and different places and people. The world is gradually learning, although frequently in perverse and misguided ways, to be kind - to nature, to ourselves, and to each other.

Acacia blossom

Acacia trees, Fiona at Sanlucar

And by the way, this old ‘drop-out’ couple here claims to have survived without major compromise, whatever about the yacht on the Algarve and the fridge, and there are quite a few of us here in Guadianaland who would say the same! Well we have at least learned por favor, fas favor, gracias, obrigado…. And with a bit of luck the Brits will vote to stay in, and we might all get on with a more courageous and effective approach to tax-dodging, refugees, climate change!

Azure-winged magpie.

Across the Water

At last I have time to post another blog; Fiona and I are a few nights together again in the one place, with our Mary Emma and Ross in Cheshire.

Mary Emma

 The huge flocks of Greylag geese, which I saw when I was last here in January, seem to have left the broad fields towards the River Dee and Wales. Across the marshes of the Dee estuary and the Irish Sea, the Minches with their wild islands, and the bitter ocean, they are probably in Iceland by now.....

The Dee estuary from Neston.

Some of the Greylag geese however seem to have been tempted to stay behind with the Canada geese on the quiet pond across the road - 

There is a monument beside the pond to the two sons of the squire, who died in the First World War. The plaque to the two young men, who bore the name of this village, is inscribed -

O God to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.

To contemporary minds, the idea that it is glorious to thus depart a fine old way of life sounds odd. Indeed it is surely not the will of the God of life to bring young men to such deaths. However, how does He give the wild geese the grace to leave comfort and security to find their wild northern breeding grounds? And what of those who are left at home? Will they ever be able to settle for the quiet life again? That family has left their Manor House, the heir is in Australia. 

The willows weep at Aldersey Manor

Here we have a crisis of meaning in terms typical of our times. We have come to the point where people shun the very notion of meaning. It is very easy to understand how our atheist friends come to hate the very idea of that God! But what have they to offer when it comes to the serious business of building families and communities, of educating our young and establishing priorities, all of which depend on an effective framework of meaning?

Donald Clarke, an atheist columnist in the Irish Times, went as far as to state recently (April 4th) that the idea of an “atheist community” is ‘preposterous’. Indeed it is, for as he said himself, one cannot base a community on disbelief. Yet still he goes on to insist that he is far from wishing to ‘suggest that the campaign against religious domination of Irish schools or Catholic doctrine in health practice should not be fervently redoubled.' 'These remnants of Bronze Age superstition are an outrage.' Heaven knows what kind of history he proposes to teach, confusing the Christian heritage with the Bronze Age! But then we have plenty of examples of the kind of society you are likely to end up with, working on such principles....

I see it as the most important job and privilege of old boys like myself to confront such issues of meaning, and to find the bridges, the ways across the water. We have been busy crossing them, here in Cheshire, in Scotland and south to Bristol. It is the chat with family and friends that I specially value. However it's not always appreciated, and it's no good if you just stick around honking too much. 

It will be good to be back aboard the Anna M soon. I don't reckon to be in the same league as the Greylags anyway, but it's surprising how going through the motions does help to train one up. I shall enjoy the good life down on the Guadiana again, but may the grace be given me to avoid too much shilly-shallying, to get the old raft and myself together for another bash round Cape St Vincent and Finisterre and on north to Sherkin. 

It may yet help me to acquire a better touch when I fly into the head-winds in my conversations! Take them obliquely if at all possible! Broad reach much better, when conversation comes together! Only power into the wind if it is unavoidable to stay off a lee shore! Respect, avoid if possible, but do not fear those sharp head-winds! There's a lot to be said for the quiet life, but I won't merely settle for it yet; I would still rather follow in the train of the great flocks heading north! 

Clifton suspension bridge

With Fiona and Raphael Appleby, my old housemaster at Downside on it.

Here she is with our John in Scotland.

And here is a bridge over the River Dee. Would that all frontiers were as peaceful as this one between Wales and England!