87.

Jan 27th.

 That day again. The wails of those lost souls echo down the years. How many like the amazing, sturdy and bright light survivor  Alice Herz-Sommer  were lost in that Holocaust hell. Though I am uneasy at Israel's present position on Palestine, uncomfortable with a perception of tangible hypocrisy; I hope that those lost voices are just that: lost but not forgotten for ever.

 The village holds a small procession around the square and to the mairie. Just a few are wrapped up and walking. The sun is bright and warming although the wind edge is sharp. An aperitif warms the belly too and instills in me a short spell of guilt. We are subdued but whole,  and here. The mayor drinks to memory and coughs repeatedly.

Sparrows scuffle under the tiles of the mairie and are noisier than we are . I walk up the hill and am still touched  by the winter sun. On the bird table a male black cap shovels its thin beak sideways to scoop up the remaining grains of the peanut flour. It has the tenacious energy over and over again to drive off  another, a female with russet cap, attempting to take the food. Soon their hormones will change, their plumage colour will intensify and  glow and relations will be different! And I shall hear their song.

 

86.

Mid January.

In the 2 hours of  warm sunshine a yellow brimstone butterfly has woken from its winter hide and dips into the grass humps and marjoram seed heads running the river banks. From a blackthorn thicket 2 yellow hammers pipe weakly. But to me it is a strong song, a joy to  hear which  gives me a sharp pang of hope for spring. I heard a song thrush at some point in my stroll but couldn't place it.

The relationship with landscape:  its shapes and sounds and memories; they are like a pocket book. I will look at it occasionally when I`m too old to be out there and when there are other landscapes to deal with,  and say, this is the way it used to be, this is how people like me experienced it. 

85.


Early January.



I have just received a text which begins GUESS WHO AM I? Clever ruse. It goes on to advise me to check out a website. So I do out of curiosity. Here it insists the Qu'ran states clearly that to kill one person is a sin; it is as bad as to murder many. So far - good. Then it continues to claim one absolute truth after another in the mathematical ratios and calculations inherent in various natural phenomena. By this time I'm a bit lost. Haven't I heard this somewhere before? The loping, stilted, gappy English is beamed across the ether to be picked up by gullibles.

 Still, the early, grey dusk belies the real truth; that a dunnock pours out its songs so early in the year and that there is the smell of woodsmoke if you  try hard to remember it.

84.

End December.

Snow melt. The black caps are  no longer puff balls but sleek warblers again,  feeding on the ground peanut meal. A male blue tit is inspecting a nest box in the eaves and carrying out a little homework. A great tit chimes out its territory. Greyness pervades and I think I might prefer the bright cleanliness of the snow. Now the litter and  plastic hedgerow decorations sing out. Isn`t a society's condition reflected in its rubbish? And Britain one of the richest nations in the world?