We have a lot of low walls round here, convenient for sitting on; for example in the playground, a favourite haunt of drinkers. A couple were there yesterday morning, spreading their belongings and litter, a man and a woman. They chatted, played cards, greeted me as I passed and were relieved at my friendly response. This morning I passed a man on our street whom I’ve seen several times in the summer sitting under a tall buddleia shrub in front of the pharmaceutical warehouse, opposite the Baptist Church and the mosque next door. This morning he was just arriving there. I greeted him and I said I’d seen him there before. He has sad eyes. He replied that he goes there “to get away from it all”.
Later I went to see poor Mr A., for whom I’ve been renovating a shed door: burning off the old paint, filling and sanding, applying three coats of new paint. He was shocked by the bill for the labour involved. The money all goes to the charity I work for as a volunteer. So we negotiated and I agreed to charge for fewer hours. It was wonderful to see his relief. In some of these cases you know that there’s a wife involved in the background, pushing the husband to make a stand. I was very relieved too, for I’d known he was worried: more out of pride than not being able to afford the true cost.
Yesterday evening in a light drizzle I decided I must go out and lie under the Gift Horse—the 1991 luxury car I bought for £100. I’d poured the antifreeze into the expansion tank but thought it would not circulate. So I had the idea to drain out some water from the radiator and pour it back in the top. It came out so murky I could not tell if it was already blue from a dilution of antifreeze. But I poured it back in the top, then tightened the drain plug. I couldn’t stop it dripping.
Nasty mess over my hands and everything whilst I smeared some plumber’s gunk over the plug. Still dripping, from a different place where it looked cracked and I couldn’t seal it with gunk. I remember from when I had my first car in 1966 being told that you could seal a radiator by popping in a raw egg. But this morning, whether it was dripping or not, the water level was still high, so that was another relief. This car is worth a lot more to me than a hundred pounds. It is worth whatever it would cost to replace it, which might be several thousand.
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Yesterday I went in search of a fencepost where two years before I saw some tiny ladybirds hibernating. Though I found the location with no difficulty, I couldn’t identify the actual fencepost, suspecting there has been an alteration to the gate. I’ve noticed that successive generations of insects return to the same spot to lay eggs. For example peacock butterfly larvae on a particular patch of nettles, or queen wasps trying to locate an old nest in our loft whose entrance under the eaves has long been blocked.
It was pointless to seek these tiny creatures nearby or anywhere else in this rural landscape. They are almost invisible, and I have no idea what determines their behaviour. I returned to another haunt nearby: an unofficial rubbish dump the other side of the main road. Here, in what resembles a former layby with a well-made concrete base, are strewn hundreds of items over at least half an acre. Many have an engineering connection. There are many small toolboxes of various types. The designs must go back fifty years. I could not solve the mystery. I picked up a small golf club, a Slazenger iron, from amongst the detritus, and used it for a walking stick as I penetrated the woods through a broad avenue, developed for pheasant shooting. There were little numbered signs left from the last shoot, and a place for the chicks to feed, with small barrels of grain and a canopy against the marauding red kites. These birds, almost extinct a few years ago, are now seen everywhere, even in town. I can watch them them from my study window circling on thermals, solitary, not social like seagulls). And they have a soft high call, like whistling, very human, just one or two gentle notes. What do they feed on? How can they thrive?
I know so little about the world. I think I mean the world of Nature. Is there another world? If there is, perhaps it is the world of illusion. I don’t know. Not knowing feels like a good place to be.
a wayfarer’s notes 