Day Between Days...

Driftwood.
Six pieces. Grains of sand and salt crusted in the smooth grooves and crevices.

Found in the slush and mush of a seaweed tideline on a sloped beach of grey pebbles and shining silver sand, where oystercatchers divebombed black backed gulls and the sun crackled on the surface of the water - and we couldn't help but turn to it and close our eyes.

We got there by mud-sucking path that was drenched and saturated after days of rain, past curious scraggy cows with long highland horns, clumps of muck clinging to their bellies, past gorse that smelled of coconut if you crushed it in your palms.

It was a day between days, a day of casting off clothes, of cares; for gazing in happy awe at rock pipits courting in the crevices of the cliff face, at the winter-starved pipistrelle venturing from his sleepy hollow to catch a snack in the sun, at the flash of  a redshank's legs.

Driftwood. Drift. Drifting..

One piece is long, round and smooth like a relay runner's baton, another is broad and rectangular, worked and worked by the sea until it is all but hollow. A third is long hard and spiralled, as if someone has taken each end and twisted and twisted.

They smell of wet sand and sea and seaside air and, fleetingly, of woodsmoke, and I collect them and add them to the pebbles, shells and stones in the rucksack.


Around the cottage we have eagles and otters, shiny, chunky rocks and water, water everywhere.

There is a stove with a creel hauled above it where we dry the tea-towels; there's a supply of too-damp logs, a torn, raggedy patchwork quilt on the lumpy bed, a bath with a spider in it and chairs that sag and tip you out.

Our home squats on a peninsula and we wander from window to window constantly - spotting birds, watching the snowline drift on the mountains - and at night we watch the flashes from distant lighthouses. By day we have it to ourselves and at night it is blacker than black outside and we hunker down.

Today the hills across the Sound of Mull are dripping with grey, heavy, slung-low cloud and on this side of the cottage - the sea side - the wind whips the water and every ripple is an otter's slick back or shiny snout or a porpoise fin. Light flinking and flashing, playing tricks on the eyes.

On the loch-side of the cottage, in the little harbour near the front door, the water is millpond calm and in each passing moment, the tide slides away exposing oily, pulpy seaweed.

It's sheltered from the wind here and the long grasses springing from the deep muddy prints left by Highland cows are russet brown and dipping gently, heavy with raindrops...although the rain stopped long ago.

I brought you here once.

 I don't know what you made of it. We sat together on the rocks on a beaming blue day and watched porpoise, scores and scores of them, rolling and rolling in the blue. The sea glittered.

Then we had a snack of yoghurt, bananas and juice on a rug at the foot of Ben More and we rode on the Mull Little Railway. You chuckled as it clattered on the tracks, as if you couldn't believe your luck.

It is one of my happiest memories. That special week, all of us together....

Time moves differently here, more slowly.

Or perhaps we just notice more, second by second.

On the little pier near the cottage, the sea sucks, gloops and slurps.

Black-headed gulls hunt one last time before flying to roost. They lift on a bank of air, hover, spot something beneath the surface - and dip, settling briefly, before they paddle, paddle, paddle, feet pattering on the water, and up again.

A curlew lifts and makes his lonely, rippling call and a grey heron stalks the shallows. And as day turns to dusk the wind finally finds us and brings with it icy rain.

Driftwood. Found on one of the days between days, between the day you died and the day you were born.

A week of anniversaries this. Lifted, lifted by the soar of golden eagles in Glen More, by the otters and their rings of bright water, by the mother and cub swirling and twirling together near the shoreline - the little one swimming for the beach and leaping and bounding as if for the simple joy of living.

By the white-tailed sea eagle languidly coasting low over grey waters; by the bright eyes of fallow deer; by sheep-infested seashores.

By oysters collected on a desolate, deserted beach; by a hen harrier dipping and looping, pausing and swooping over hillocks and heather-strewn wilderness.

By wild winds, driving snow, bitter cold and, on that one day, by a gift of spring.

A week of anniversaries, of  memories of birth and death, of days before and days before that . Of a whole life lived and then lost.

And here, on our island sanctuary, the wind strengthens, the rain is hard against the window. A log drops down in the fire and the sea is a constant gentle roar.

And it is so very peaceful.

xxx

Sunshine, planets, stars and birdsong

This morning I watched the sun rise.

It was quite something.

After a sleepless night in our new flat it seemed the thing to do.

I stood at the windows of our east-facing living room seven storeys up. Everywhere the sky was that clear blue-grey, the last stars had blinked out and the dawn chorus had quietened.

It was obvious where the sun would emerge - one patch of the horizon a dusky purple turning pink, orange, brighter and brighter - and then a flash of gold between chimney stacks, just a peek at first, but as soon as it appeared the whitewashed walls of the room turned rosey and I could see my faint shadow.

It always seems that the sun speeds up when it rises and sets. The rest of the time we barely notice its progress across the sky. As I watched, beams tentatively fingered their way across the rooftops rendering all into silhouette and suddenly, wrenched free of the horizon, it blazed and it hurt to keep looking.

Such a scene! If only I could paint!

The nights of course hold a different wonder. Anyone glancing upwards can't fail to notice the triangular conjunction of our moon and the planets Venus and Jupiter in western skies.

I wonder how this unusual, stunning, happy circumstance of orbits - all science, gravity and physics - would have been received long ago when people turned to the heavens for portents or omens.
What would they have read into this spectacle that so dominates the sky and generates wonder now even in those who have previously taken little interest in things astronomical?

You know I always loved gazing skyward, have always taken comfort from the great wheeling heavens, the vastness of space a reminder of our utter insignificance, of the miracle that we are here at all. Even more so now, I think, since you left. That old saying, we are all made of star dust...not just some romantic phrase to me any more.

And so I spent yesterday evening, restlessly hopping from the living room where Mars rose in the east, all pinky hues, to the back bedrooms where through one window Orion stalked the skies, its angry red giant star betelgeuse glittering while, through the other, Luna, Venus and Jupiter hung low, odd, almost unnatural decorations, before dipping beneath the horizon once more.

That's the fun of a new place...working out where everything goes, not just on the inside, but outside too. Perhaps little wonder sleep wouldn't come.

After the sunrise, and a glorious day beckoning, trying for shut-eye seemed pointless - so I sit here on the terrace, watching and listening.

I can hear a chiff-chaff - a true sign that spring has arrived. Also a great tit (they seem to have a different song here - instead of 'tea-cher, tea-cher' they go 'tea-cher-cher, tea-cher-cher - collard doves and wood pigeons, a dunnock. And joy, a blackbird.

I can't see waterbirds but I can hear geese honking like they do, from the nearby Ixelles ponds and two ducks fly overhead.

The parakeets are, as yet, quiet. Late risers perhaps. My enchantment with these new, bright flashy red-beaked creatures has turned to irritation of late - their harsh shrieks drowning the gentler notes of the native songbirds.

There are crows here too, strutting the roof tiles and I'm struck by the glossy creature perched on the roof opposite whose caw is exactly the same as a mallard! It's doing it again! 'Quaack quaack' - it sounds a bit camp, a bit foolish, and I'm thinking he needs to gruff up a bit if he wants to attract a mate.

Some birds are such impressionists and he reminds me of the starling who thought he was a curlew, who fooled us for so long with his burbling, bubbling spiralling call; who had us scouring the fields near our Hipperholme house with binoculars until we saw it on our roof, giving an exact impression, there in suburbia, of a bird of the wide marshes, the salty shores, the desolate moors.

It's not all birdsong here though. There is, of course, the constant background roar of the traffic and the sirens - always the sirens. And the planes weaving contrails across the sky always heading right to left, right to left, parallel to the rooftop horizon. Tiny, slow moving, like toys.

But at least here, in our new pad, I can hear the birds and from this terrace I see trees and green parks and blossom and buds and forsythia and magnolia.

And I can see the stars at night and, best of all, I can watch the sun rise from our living room.

I'll be window-hopping again tonight, never, never able to get enough of the wonders of our skies...

Where the heron is king

Dear Thomas
I have never seen a heron* this tame!
It's odd. It's not normal. They are without doubt among the flightiest and most nervous of birds when humans are near. This one clearly enjoys city living.

It might seem an odd thing to note when there is all Brussels to explore and the sun has turned everything, everything that was so grey into glorious technicolour.
But it's the birdwatcher in me. I can't help it.

He boldly, brazenly, stalks the cropped grass by the water's edge, eyeing passers-by, completely unphased, parading around a flock of pigeons feeding on chunks of bread. And I wonder, does he KNOW he's a heron? Perhaps he thinks he's a pigeon.

There are two people who think it's a game to chase him. One is a toddler, wrapped in his red winter coat (it's still brisk in the shade).
He is all glee and energy as he runs and stumbles at the bird with his arms open wide, yelling with delight, and the heron leaps into the air, spreads his wings and casually lands a few hundred yards away, as if gently teasing him.

The boy's mother runs after her little son and scoops him up, laughing, gently scolding him for running too close to the water.
Then a second person picks up the game - and he is old enough to know better. He must be in his 60s! He creeps and creeps and slowly opens his arms and I want to shout at him to leave the bird alone.

The heron is motionless, fearless in its stance, its blinking eye scrutinising him.
The man moves closer and, just as it seems he might actually make a leap to grab it, the bird lifts again, all elegance and smooth take-off.
Unbelievably the man runs after it, flapping his arms like wings. Fool. He doesn't chase the pigeons though, for them he pulls out a plastic bag and throws them more crumbs. Perhaps he feared the heron would steal their food.

This time the bird lands in the shallow lake, its long legs making ripples through the reflection of the Crowne Plaza and the Hilton.
It's a beaming day and we are a strange and not entirely comfortable mix in this little oasis, the Jardin Botanique, right in the centre of Brussels where we are surrounded by the glass-fronted commerce of a buzzing city.

A woman reads a novel in the sunshine, an elderly man in trilby, black coat, black trousers and black shoes reads a newspaper, its front page dominated by the faces of the children killed in the Swiss coach tragedy.
A couple stroll with a pushchair and a woman walks her French bulldog - so hard does it pull on the lead it's very clear who is in charge, and it isn't her.

We are all here of course because the sun is shining. Because we need to feel the sun on our faces, because we are all awakening from a long, long winter. We are emerging, I think....just like the buds opening on the hawthorn bushes.

Typically, having dressed entirely inappropriately for the weather: boots, jumper, big jacket, I park on a bench out of the direct glare, in the best sunlight of all, the dappled kind.
Although only a few hundred yards from traffic and its constant roar, only a step or two from the big hotels and big business, a stone's throw from the grinding and growling Gare Du Nord, this is a park teaming with wildlife.

Near the heron, in an island of bamboo, sparrows whizz in and out and chirrup loudly. A dunnock pierces the traffic racket with its shrill song.
I recall reading a piece about birds of the city, how they apparently sing louder than their country counterparts and, as a siren wails by, it seems it must be the case for these are the loudest of sparrows.

There is a rustling in the leaf litter under the bushes behind the bench and the yellow beak and bright eye of a male blackbird is easy to spot, flipping leaves, seizing a centipede, downing it in one. His dowdy brown mate is nearby.

Another rustle and this is no blackbird. Too much noise, heavier somehow..and I sit quite still.
It seems herons are not the only bold creatures of this park. Just an arm's length away, the pointed nose and black eyes of a brown rat emerge. It sees me. I move slightly to pick up my camera and it scuttles back into the undergrowth but in a second it is back, eyeing me and nibbling on crumbs near a waste bin.

I'm trying to think when I last saw a rat. Probably the ones scampering along the waters' edge on the other side of the flood wall near the car park of Yorkshire Post Newspapers in Leeds. Or, actually, no, the very last time was on the muddy bank of the River Don in Sheffield, me looking down from the Lady's Bridge. I remember feeling repulsed on both occasions.

Today I am surprised that I feel benevolent towards this creature. His eyes suggest an intelligence and his cute boldness impresses me. Though it would make me think twice about putting down a picnic rug. Perhaps those old yarns about never being more than a few feet from a rat in a big city are true after all.

Blue tits play kiss-catch in the twig-ends of branches above, stopping to nip a bud before it has even had the chance to sprout; another dunnock sings its spangled song from its habitual perch - the very top of a bush, and egyptian geese scull lazily across the water, not the least bit interested in the lumps of bread being hurled in their direction.

There is a group of older men in the shade near a cluster of benches on the other side of the lake. They have cans of beer and they are standing, staggering occasionally and eating from plastic bags. They aren't noisy but they are drunk.
They have been there some time - under one of those Narnia-style old-fashioned lamp-posts that looks still lit with the sun's rays bouncing off the lantern. A woman walking her dog spots them and about-turns to walk the other way.

You could speculate endlessly about who they all are, why the hell they're blathered before the clock's even struck 11, whether they have any other place to go. When I ask about these men and others like them, so many of them, randomly asleep or perched on benches, cans at their feet, I'm told that supermarket beer is ridiculously cheap and people get used to seeing them...and it's true, most seem quite unperturbed by their presence, oblivious, even.

At the top end of the park, as lunch-hour approaches, the benches fill with office workers who bring baguettes and fruit juices and teenagers plonk on the lawns with paper MacDonalds carrier bags and tinny iphone music.
The doors to the grand, domed iron glasshouse are thrown open. No greenery inside now -  it is home to the French Community Cultural Centre and hosts plays, concerts and exhibitions.

 This end of the park is altogether more cultivated, cropped and polished and quite formal with its maze-like box hedges and greened bronze statues. It is stunningly beautiful and a joy to sit, watch and listen to the plashy fountain.

But it's too hot to rest here, unbelievably. And taking a longer route to avoid the men who look as if they are there for the day, I head back to the shadier areas where trees are sprinked with blossom and offer welcome shade.
I prefer this bit, the bit that feels more woodland than garden. Where the heron is king and struts his turf as the sirens wail.

xxx

* Yorkshire Post birdwatching columnist Bill Teale has queried the type of heron mentioned above. I can confirm that it was, indeed, a grey heron. To reassure Bill of this and others who prefer further evidence here's the chap himself!

And while we're at it, here's the rat...Cute little fella!