A flock of one's own

For years I have met my friends every two to three weeks for a walk.  We have it in common that we like to tramp along a footpath and spot interesting features of nature, geology or archaeology.  One of the tenets of our friendship is that we hugely prefer this to shopping or meeting for coffee in the town centre.

Over the Covid period, we would travel in separate cars rather than risk infecting one another, so it was greener to stay close to home.  Our adventures were curtailed, and we beat the same dull muddy bounds again and again.

Over the last few months, however, we’ve started to bundle into one car and go a little further and see a little more.

Recent highlights include a spectacular sunset murmuration of jackdaws, rooks and crows near Wimpole Hall, and a flock of hundreds of fieldfares and redwing devouring ivy berries in a hedgerow near Hitchin.  We also stood in slow-breathing silence as a goldcrest hunted insects on hazel twigs just in front of our noses. 

Last Friday, we spent some time simply puzzling over the curious ice structures which had formed in puddles on a track.  Now that’s my kind of girls’ day out!

A Midwinter Night’s Dream

Each year, our old university friends meet to catch up with one another and also to commemorate our friends who died young – Malcolm, Steve and Hugh.

This year, we struggled to reach a consensus. 

Proposals included:

A starling murmuration in Brighton – too far to travel for some,

Hieroglyphics at the BM – out of bounds to those of us who disapprove of oil company BP greenwashing themselves by sponsoring exhibitions.

Cezanne at the Tate Modern – popular, but already seen by some.

Avatar II at Leicester Square – other audience members seem not to like it when we chat.

Magdalena Abakanowicz – Tate Modern -  a major artist of the 20^th century (and beyond) whom we all should have heard of, but never had.

 

In the end, we split between Cezanne, Hieroglyphics and Abakanowicz.

Although we meet in midwinter, it often feels like a Midsummer Night ‘s Dream, with people at cross purposes, popping up in odd corners of galleries and narrowly missing one another.  A bunch of us were at the Tate when somebody spotted the contingent from the BM arriving just outside.  Several people rushed out to meet them, but since it was nearly closing time, were not allowed back in.  Meanwhile another group of us waited fruitlessly in the Turbine Hall beneath a massive arrangement of hanging white fabric, lace and nets said to represent the knot language of South American indigenous peoples.

However, finally we regrouped fully for dinner.  And reassuringly, we reenacted the ritual of many years when, as usual, despite some of us having impressive credentials in mathematics, we were unable to match our payments to the bill. 

Photo shows Annabel, Stephen and an Abakan (one of the monumental textile sculptures of Magdalena Abakanowicz).

Blowing away the cobwebs

 

My post-Christmas blog last year was rather melancholy – reluctantly waving goodbyes to my children and hauling down the decs the moment they were gone.  I expected to feel the same this year and had been strategising some midwinter cheer for myself.  However, this year I don’t feel so wistful and gloomy.

After three disrupted Christmases I was expecting Covid, flu, snow or strikes to scupper our modest domestic plans once more, but somehow they didn’t. The fact is, Pascoe, Perran and Carenza all arrived and at last we spent Christmas Day together and even several days either side of the festival itself.  Decorating the tree, roast dinner (veggie of course!), muddy walks and parlour games all happened.

I know myself to have been thoroughly Christmased, and the result is that I feel more buoyant, even despite the annual festival of sheet washing after the offspring have gone.  And best of all, the two none-work days after New Year have allowed Nigel and I to get out and blow away the cobwebs.

In the low, slanting sunlight I can already sense the days lengthening once more…