Chip Tolson

Country folk in sarcastic mood might say of another: ‘The apple didn’t fall from the tree’, but I have chanced on a mystery. In our small woodland I have found windfall apples lying far from their parent tree – and ‘uphill’ of it.

Some third party must be at work. Sheltering from rain I took refuge under a mature beech tree and there amongst the beech must were two apples. Had a fox picked them up, found them bitter and gone on its way – they had probably fallen in the gales, not from maturity?

Then I saw further evidence of the culprit. There were unripe hazel nuts lying close by, their shells gnawed and the kernel rejected. The squirrels are at it again. I hope there are some nuts left on the tree when the time comes to gather them.

… to Rattray Head including Orkney. It is poetry and repeated each day in the Shipping Forecast. It is a wonderful way to start one’s day at 05.20 each morning. And on it goes round the coast. Even if one has never stepped off-shore, it is evocative of places visited.

And are we to lose this daily recitation of the waters around the British Isles? There have been threats that the forecast is yesterday’s broadcasting. Even the smallest craft are now fitted with technology telling them where they are and what the weather holds in store. But that is not the same as the romance and poetry of the Shipping Forecast.

And now the BBC in its effort to outsource almost everything at the behest of the government has put all weather forecasting up for grabs. Maybe the Met Office was too greedy in its bid for the next contract. Now they find themselves off the preferred bidder list. It is time to bang heads together, two British institutions knocking each other down. They need each other and a third party should adjudicate a proper fee so that the relationship can continue.

Selsey Bill to Lyme Regis including the Scilly Isles… Ardnamurchan Point to Cape Wrath… pure poetry.

I visited Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey a short while ago, the anticipated haven the poet quit Bristol for to live off the country, courtesy Thomas Poole.

In Coleridge Cottage Garden

Coleridge with his Jacobite sympathies was regarded with suspicion by local residents, not least for his night time walks with the Wordsworths.

The cottage is small, more so when you try to find room for his lodger, a small child, then another, his wife and a servant. The garden is as good a place to spend time as the cottage, the garden he wanted to tend for the bounty it would produce for the kitchen table.

In his time resident at Nether Stowey many of his well known poems were written –

Ancient Mariner statue at Watchet Harbour

the Ancient Mariner inspired by the stories that were told round the folk at the small harbour of Watchet and Khubla Khan during an extended walk to Porlock.

Now there is to be a Writer in Residence at Coleridge Cottage – Rosie Collis – a South West initiative by Writers Places (set up by Literature Works, the National Trust and The poetry Archive). They intend Writers in Reasidence at a number of NT properties including Thomas Hardy’s Max Gate.

It’s not all happy down in the woods; desease and deprivation are happening, and on a big scale. The Woodland Trust have highlighted the increasing problem of ash dieback. It is not a small problem, look at the hedgerows, particularly here in Somerset, then think what the hedgerow would be with all ashes eliminated – and that’s just the hedgerows; the woodlands have a large populations of ash. The woodland we planted in 2001 – some 900 trees – is thirty percent ash.

Young trees suffer a lot of depredation from the big herds of deer in the country nibbling or pulling on branches to break off new growth.

Squirrel damage, Spring 2015

And this year our horse chestnut trees suffered greatly attacked by squirrels pulling at the early season growth, breaking the young branches seemingly to get at the buds, obviously nutritious, but devastating for the trees.

And then came the gales!

We like deer and squirrels… and trees, but not gales.

With my son and family flying to the United States, one is aware of just how many people are in the air at any time. My late father would have been impressed two of his grandchildren with their spouses and four of his great-grandchildren were in the skies over the Atlantic yesterday, two families one eastbound and one westbound.

Even ten years ago, one would have been content to know which day one’s relatives were travelling. But in this ‘App’ age one has to know more. With internet access to airport arrival and departure boards you track further, then on flight intelligence apps you have the access to the whole flight whereabouts – timing, track and details of their speed and height.

In truth I don’t need any of that – a postcard ‘arrived safely’, always used to suffice, but the availability of information is compulsive.

With time to spare in Hampstead last week, I found myself close by Keats House, the small late Georgian house, then named Wentworth Place, where John Keats lodged from late 1818 until his fatal journey to Italy in 1820. He died in Rome of consumption – TB – a year later.

So brief a period between his giving up his medical training and his quitting England in the hope the Mediterranean climate would improve his health, yet in his time in Hampstead he wrote his major poems, hardly recognised at that time for the major poet he was, and remains today.

The small rooms, despite its name it is a small house and at that time was divided into two, the room where he wrote, and his bedroom in which he made his own terminal diagnosis, are compelling and reach into the visitors soul, whether they are well versed in his works or not. To be at that place is, in a small way, to share some moments of history and greatness.

Miraculously the house was saved from demolition in the 1920s and today is provided by The City of London Corporation. It is a worthy piece of our cultural heritage.

I live only a few miles from Coleridge’s Cottage in West Somerset, where Coleridge lived and worked over a few years in the late 1790s, while William and Dorothy Wordsworth rented nearby Alfoxton Park. The cottage is now a National Trust property, another wonderful survivor. I must visit the cottage again.

I’ve been doing a lot of gardening over the last few days seeking to cut back on the summer surge of growth of intruding grass and weeds. And my old, yes they must be ten years old, gardening trousers have taken it badly. This could be their last day as they have split at the knee.

But are they superannuated trousers, or the height of teenage fashion. Should I wear them with pride, an icon for the older generation, with a flash of flesh at the knee?

Perhaps not.

The split at the knee is vertical, not horizontal. That’s a fashion that will never catch on. No, it is time for the trousers to go.

Well, today was the day – and the rain Gods did their worst, not only that, a competing air display sent clattering helicopters overhead.

Lives Pass By – my play in which a Bronze Age Man, a Victorian Railway Inspector and Today’s Young Cyclist meet in the park.

But the show must go on and the Yeovil drama students, and all concerned behind the scenes, kept the show going performing eight, quarter hour plays around Ninesprings Park, with a morning and afternoon performance.

And a very good job they did in spite of the distractions. It was a fair hike for the audience, too, from play location to location, up hill and down dale through the Park woodland.

I think it is fair to say the company and the audience enjoyed the day.

And particular thanks to Nick White who produced, directed and conceived the peripatetic performance.

I’ve spent the morning stacking timber, now I need a cooling drink.  A real truth is that trees do us a great service in terms of the heat they generate many times as we harvest them.

A stack of logs piled ready for the house

At every stage they give warmth: when felling the tree, hauling it to the cutting place, sawing and splitting it to logs, bringing those logs to the house, the welcome blaze itself and finally taking the ash from the grate. At every stage warmth is generated.

I wrote a poem of it once, and Jane Hamlin set it to music to create a warming winter fireside song:

THROW A LOG ON THE FIRE.

Throw a log on the fire, burn another log yet.

We felled the heavy tree, zounds it made us sweat.

Logs burn bright in winter, a warming glow secure

Amidst the chill and dark, they’ve warmed us times before.

Throw a log on the fire, burn another log yet.

We cut it branch by branch, phew it made us sweat

Fire is hot in winter, it eases aches and pains

We look into the embers and sharpen cutting chains.

Throw a log on the fire, burn another log yet.

We sawed it in the pit, my it made us sweat.

Crowds sit round in winter, but dogs they block the heat

They stare at smoke and flames, we jostle for a seat.

Throw a log on the fire, burn another log yet.

We stacked them to the roof, oh it made us sweat.

Drink good ale in winter, taste the warming liquor.

The bottle soon is gone, the axe it warmed us quicker.

Throw a log on the fire, burn another log yet.

We hauled them to the house, hey it made us sweat.

Sleep by fire in winter, we’ve earned a quiet rest.

Often times they warmed us, the logs have done their best.

Throw a log on the fire, burn another log yet.

Clear morning ash away, will it make us sweat?

The remorseless task of mowing the ever-growing lawn had a small reward this week. A glint in the sun caught my eye and there nestled into the longer grass where the bluebells grew was a gold-foil-wrapped Easter egg, one of the small ones left over from our Easter egg hunt.

There was a bit gnawed away on its side, a snack for some small beast on a stormy day.