Another Hay Festival comes to an end with its garnered ideas and excitements, all fuel for mind and soul. I enjoyed the panache of Digby Jones and Stuart Rose making their case for the sustainability of big business, inevitably in the Barclay's “Wealth” Pavilion. If Government would back off and unleash the creative power of the market, all would be well in the world. Where on earth is the evidence for that? But I accept their point that Government is hopelessly risk averse. In a time of trouble and change we need something different, and Caroline Lucas and Andrew Simms (New Economics Foundation) made passionate and convincing pleas for just that. Lets get on and do it, working from the grass roots was their message. That sounds like community, and making it work with all its messiness. Even Caroline Lucas said that we have to look to what some of us would call spirituality. Small is beautiful as Fritz Schumacher argues; it is also possible, thank God, and it is desirable and even inevitable.
Now let me jump to Melvyn Bragg in one joyful bound. He had the longest applause I have heard at the Festival for his passionate talk on the King James translation of the bible. Whether you are a believer or not, he was saying, just look at the effect of the book of books on lives and society and history. Commerce, with its ruthless efficiency turning capital to profit, gave us wealth and slavery, lifting hundreds of thousands of our countrymen out of poverty. How could we resist this dispassionate engine working for our comfort? But the word of God changed men and women, from missionaries and the slaves to parliamentarians and merchants. A deeper fundamental prevailed, not thanks to big business of the day but to individuals with courage and consciences. Such clarity of thought and the courage of conviction is needed to confront the injustices of our new age of slavery and the threat we helplessly pose to the natural environment.
Today was a Sabbath day for us, more of celebration than rest, because this book of books has entered the conscience and the life of Piete, who was baptised in the River Arrow. He has started out on the huge adventure of the pilgrim life, walking with God, the creator of all the earth, and indeed all wealth, both spiritual and material. Wilberforce set out on that path, and John Newton did the same, changing the world as they found it according to deeper fundamentals.
1 May 2011 – Farewell Tammie Norries
Deciding to celebrate the royal wedding as far away from Westminster as you can get without leaving the country turned out to be a good choice. All those public holidays and not a cloud in the sky which is very unusual for Shetland! Trish, Rosie and I took the ferry from Aberdeen on a calm sun-setting North Sea, slept soundly in a tidy cabin, and awoke to see Shetland's Sumburgh head passing to port in the morning sun. We arrived off Lerwick as if in a dream on a glass-calm sea, blue sky encircling the granite grey town, black guillemots coral legged fishing in the sound, seals resting like boulders on rocky shores.
We soon found our cropped grass brilliant green camp site beside a loch with a broch across the water. One deserted tent and all this space to ourselves. If this “between weathers” fresh brightness reverted to westerly gales we had a whole leisure centre to enjoy nearby. No time to lose with northerly sun and tanning fresh breeze at 20 degrees north, up there with Bergen and even southern Greenland. We took the bikes on the ferry across to Bressay and then on to the enchanted isle of Noss where the strange airs are all avian. Liveried black-white eiders grunted lovingly on sheltered shores, Great Skuas (Bonxies) flew dark and menacing on their pirate patrols. lapwings called and displayed over the green turf, and there was fresh otter spraint on the rocks where the little inflatable brought us in.
Noss has some of the finest sea bird cliffs in Shetland and after an hour's walk we sat in the grass by an old stane dyke overlooking Cradle Holm in a theatre of birds. Tammie Norries, puffins to you and me, courted around nest holes on cliff tops. Incredible to think that these birds had spent the whole winter out in the ocean only returning to their island nesting sites for a brief few months to breed. From out of a crevice in the wall a Shetland wren appeared and sang its strident golden song against the blue of the sea and the murmur of surf. Moving on we came to the great gannetry, a rocky citadel of noisy and pungent gannet society towering above the sea, blizzards of wide-winged white hunters noisily passing to and fro, often in patrols of several birds.
In a few days we enjoyed superlative music at the Shetland Folk Festival, though we couldn't cope with the “after parties” that went on most of the night. We took the bus to Sumburgh which the driver assured us, while we waited for a plane to land before we could cross, had the longest runway in the world; it starts in the Atlantic and ends in the North Sea. More puffins, kittiwakes, razor bills, guillemots, beautiful rock doves, twites. We explored the ancient broch and farm settlement at Jarlshof. Here Picts may have supplanted Celts, and in turn Norse invaders vanquished the Scots and ruled these islands for several centuries. The dialect and many of the names, especially of birds, boats and crofting, are Norse. We even saw the great broch of Mousa in the distance, mentioned in the Orkneyinga saga, where one chief abducted another chief's wife taking her off to the broch of Mousa. Now it is only the storm petrels enjoying the well appointed copulative seclusion.
Finding the kirk on the Sabbath we worshipped with the islanders. I enjoy the Kirk's Calvinist tradition. When the service starts one of the elders carries in the bible and places it reverently on the lectern in the middle. The pulpit is also in the middle, towering over the congregation. No papism here. The Word is central and sufficient, honoured and preached. In this remote but lively community the idea of the Sabbath is still apparently important. The Sabbath, it can be argued, is the climax of the Creator's work rather than man's appearance in the firmament. That puts the emphasis on man the worshipper rather than man the worker and governor. We have power to transform the creation, but more importantly our work and worship should honour the Creator to whom it belongs. And where would you find a finer pulpit to hear the Creator's sermons than the great amphitheatre of island seascapes and bird cliffs; for certainly, as the fifth book of Moses puts it, “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it”. Everything in it! And everyone in it.
Caring for the Shetland Islands must come to terms with oil. So much oil and gas brought change and prosperity. The roads are stunning. Leisure centres and public places like the superlative museum are generously provided. Music teaching is free to keep the islands supplied with fiddlers and players. But is there a Transition Towns movement? With hardly a tree to be seen, except behind sheltered walls in Lerwick, it is tough to grow things. Even the sheep looked spread out. So where are the poly tunnels and sustainable enterprises? Salt spray shouldn't stop visitors enjoying watching birds and otters but eco-tourists were hard to find. One day, successfully I hope, Shetlanders will return to fishing, salting and drying summer abundance, and coaxing meat and milk from lean livestock; they will use again the survival skills of their hardy forebears of many races where the northern lights flicker rose hued in the “simmer dim” of a mid summer night.
20 February 2011 – In love with bitterness
Amber translucent beauty, sweet on the lips, bitter on the tongue, obsessive, possessive, glorious breakfast consummation, a cruel memory by Eleven O Clock. I am of course talking about Seville marmalade. It is that time of year. Cargoes of bitter oranges come from Iberia, I like to think across the stormy winter Bay of Biscay, to reach these shores for the New Year ritual of marmalade making. Gathered in winter orange groves by “los Moros”, shipped by the truck load to small ports, and sent over the Atlantic rollers to our shores bringing all at once the smell of salt and the bitterness of citrus.
In seems that men like to take control of such an important family ritual, perhaps because it only happens once a year. Our neighbour has invented a special peel cutter to make fine long peels that create the bitterness. In our household it is an early season opportunity for cooking outdoors on storm blown sticks gathered from the woods. The oranges are boiled vigorously out in the frosty dawn, and then the orange and yellow skins are cut up as far as perseverance allows, which is never quite far enough if you were aiming for visual perfection.
If the making of Seville marmalade is an annual ritual, the eating of it is happily a daily ritual. Breakfast is that moment, if you are lucky like me and work from home, when the sun shines in and turns that jar of marmalade into a translucent amber beacon of pleasure and vigorous vitamin charged health. No, seriously, its name comes from “Ma'am est malade”; Marie Antoinette's secret for royal good health. A secret, incidentally entirely lost on Eastern Europe where any old jam is called “marmalada”. Consequently, and very happily, if you offer your precious marmalade to a Serb or Hungarian, they will recoil in disgust with wrinkled lips and cries of dismay. So sweet is bitterness!
1 February 2011 – Requiem for an Ash
Outside my study window there was a huge and venerable ash tree. Its partner toppled over one night with a mighty crash revealing a hollow trunk. My dear and wonderful ash tree has impressive fungus bodies growing from its base so clearly this hollow giant's days are also numbered. A whole world seems to live in this tree. Countless are the moments I spend, distracted from work with binoculars at hand, watching nuthatches, tree creepers, woodpeckers; often I have enjoyed the acrobatics of tits hunting for insects, or plump pigeons watching our vegetable patch, or during summer, the shy and beautiful stock dove calling high up and hidden among the ample spreading branches.
Alas, the inevitable. A roaring of chainsaws, a climber swinging around in the top, and our giant was dismembered limb by limb until only the three centuries old trunk was left stark and amputated. What history it must have seen. When that ash was a sapling there might have been common ground all around the small droving town of Kington. Herds of small dark cattle and flocks of wiry looking lambs might have been penned for the night right beside that tree on the road to London. Perhaps the landlord enclosed the land with hedges and sent the commoner and her cow off up the valley to higher wilder moors. Children may have played under this tree whose names appear on the war memorial.
But there is something redemptive about the woods. On a raw February day there are snowdrops on sheltered banks; who planted them and how long ago? In the case of the ash a great cargo of firewood has been gained. Our generous landlord has left half the tree for some of us “commoners” to gather up and store for next winter. There is nothing like ash and oak for a woodburner, especially when you have cut it and split it and stacked it yourself. However, most wonderfully the ash will spring again. By mid summer there will be a great sprouting of new shoots from the stumps of branches. There are holes there too where sooner or later nuthatches and then owls and then bats will call their home. Our tree may yet grow for another century, a veritable citadel for bats, European Protected Species no less.
I wonder if they will still need protecting in 2111? Will they have become extinct due to changing climate and shifting food sources? Or perhaps you can buy them as genetic kits ready for incubation just like the real ones. Or, a more radical and hopeful possibility, perhaps, like the woods with their endless cycle of life and death, our valley will be enjoying a post-oil age when people have returned to the land with its “wildness and wet”, and stock doves will still be calling from the diminished old tree and the bats will be fat from abundant insects. Lord, let it be.
Deciding to celebrate the royal wedding as far away from Westminster as you can get without leaving the country turned out to be a good choice. All those public holidays and not a cloud in the sky which is very unusual for Shetland! Trish, Rosie and I took the ferry from Aberdeen on a calm sun-setting North Sea, slept soundly in a tidy cabin, and awoke to see Shetland's Sumburgh head passing to port in the morning sun. We arrived off Lerwick as if in a dream on a glass-calm sea, blue sky encircling the granite grey town, black guillemots coral legged fishing in the sound, seals resting like boulders on rocky shores. 
We soon found our cropped grass brilliant green camp site beside a loch with a broch across the water. One deserted tent and all this space to ourselves. If this “between weathers” fresh brightness reverted to westerly gales we had a whole leisure centre to enjoy nearby. No time to lose with northerly sun and tanning fresh breeze at 20 degrees north, up there with Bergen and even southern Greenland. We took the bikes on the ferry across to Bressay and then on to the enchanted isle of Noss where the strange airs are all avian. Liveried black-white eiders grunted lovingly on sheltered shores, Great Skuas (Bonxies) flew dark and menacing on their pirate patrols. lapwings called and displayed over the green turf, and there was fresh otter spraint on the rocks where the little inflatable brought us in. 
Noss has some of the finest sea bird cliffs in Shetland and after an hour's walk we sat in the grass by an old stane dyke overlooking Cradle Holm in a theatre of birds. Tammie Norries, puffins to you and me, courted around nest holes on cliff tops. Incredible to think that these birds had spent the whole winter out in the ocean only returning to their island nesting sites for a brief few months to breed. From out of a crevice in the wall a Shetland wren appeared and sang its strident golden song against the blue of the sea and the murmur of surf. Moving on we came to the great gannetry, a rocky citadel of noisy and pungent gannet society towering above the sea, blizzards of wide-winged white hunters noisily passing to and fro, often in patrols of several birds.
In a few days we enjoyed superlative music at the Shetland Folk Festival, though we couldn't cope with the “after parties” that went on most of the night. We took the bus to Sumburgh which the driver assured us, while we waited for a plane to land before we could cross, had the longest runway in the world; it starts in the Atlantic and ends in the North Sea. More puffins, kittiwakes, razor bills, guillemots, beautiful rock doves, twites. We explored the ancient broch and farm settlement at Jarlshof. Here Picts may have supplanted Celts, and in turn Norse invaders vanquished the Scots and ruled these islands for several centuries. The dialect and many of the names, especially of birds, boats and crofting, are Norse. We even saw the great broch of Mousa in the distance, mentioned in the Orkneyinga saga, where one chief abducted another chief's wife taking her off to the broch of Mousa. Now it is only the storm petrels enjoying the well appointed copulative seclusion. 
Finding the kirk on the Sabbath we worshipped with the islanders. I enjoy the Kirk's Calvinist tradition. When the service starts one of the elders carries in the bible and places it reverently on the lectern in the middle. The pulpit is also in the middle, towering over the congregation. No papism here. The Word is central and sufficient, honoured and preached. In this remote but lively community the idea of the Sabbath is still apparently important. The Sabbath, it can be argued, is the climax of the Creator's work rather than man's appearance in the firmament. That puts the emphasis on man the worshipper rather than man the worker and governor. We have power to transform the creation, but more importantly our work and worship should honour the Creator to whom it belongs. And where would you find a finer pulpit to hear the Creator's sermons than the great amphitheatre of island seascapes and bird cliffs; for certainly, as the fifth book of Moses puts it, “To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it”. Everything in it! And everyone in it. 
Caring for the Shetland Islands must come to terms with oil. So much oil and gas brought change and prosperity. The roads are stunning. Leisure centres and public places like the superlative museum are generously provided. Music teaching is free to keep the islands supplied with fiddlers and players. But is there a Transition Towns movement? With hardly a tree to be seen, except behind sheltered walls in Lerwick, it is tough to grow things. Even the sheep looked spread out. So where are the poly tunnels and sustainable enterprises? Salt spray shouldn't stop visitors enjoying watching birds and otters but eco-tourists were hard to find. One day, successfully I hope, Shetlanders will return to fishing, salting and drying summer abundance, and coaxing meat and milk from lean livestock; they will use again the survival skills of their hardy forebears of many races where the northern lights flicker rose hued in the “simmer dim” of a mid summer night.
Amber translucent beauty, sweet on the lips, bitter on the tongue, obsessive, possessive, glorious breakfast consummation, a cruel memory by Eleven O Clock. I am of course talking about Seville marmalade. It is that time of year. Cargoes of bitter oranges come from Iberia, I like to think across the stormy winter Bay of Biscay, to reach these shores for the New Year ritual of marmalade making. Gathered in winter orange groves by “los Moros”, shipped by the truck load to small ports, and sent over the Atlantic rollers to our shores bringing all at once the smell of salt and the bitterness of citrus. 
In seems that men like to take control of such an important family ritual, perhaps because it only happens once a year. Our neighbour has invented a special peel cutter to make fine long peels that create the bitterness. In our household it is an early season opportunity for cooking outdoors on storm blown sticks gathered from the woods. The oranges are boiled vigorously out in the frosty dawn, and then the orange and yellow skins are cut up as far as perseverance allows, which is never quite far enough if you were aiming for visual perfection. 
If the making of Seville marmalade is an annual ritual, the eating of it is happily a daily ritual. Breakfast is that moment, if you are lucky like me and work from home, when the sun shines in and turns that jar of marmalade into a translucent amber beacon of pleasure and vigorous vitamin charged health. No, seriously, its name comes from “Ma'am est malade”; Marie Antoinette's secret for royal good health. A secret, incidentally entirely lost on Eastern Europe where any old jam is called “marmalada”. Consequently, and very happily, if you offer your precious marmalade to a Serb or Hungarian, they will recoil in disgust with wrinkled lips and cries of dismay. So sweet is bitterness! 
Outside my study window there was a huge and venerable ash tree. Its partner toppled over one night with a mighty crash revealing a hollow trunk. My dear and wonderful ash tree has impressive fungus bodies growing from its base so clearly this hollow giant's days are also numbered. A whole world seems to live in this tree. Countless are the moments I spend, distracted from work with binoculars at hand, watching nuthatches, tree creepers, woodpeckers; often I have enjoyed the acrobatics of tits hunting for insects, or plump pigeons watching our vegetable patch, or during summer, the shy and beautiful stock dove calling high up and hidden among the ample spreading branches. 
Alas, the inevitable. A roaring of chainsaws, a climber swinging around in the top, and our giant was dismembered limb by limb until only the three centuries old trunk was left stark and amputated. What history it must have seen. When that ash was a sapling there might have been common ground all around the small droving town of Kington. Herds of small dark cattle and flocks of wiry looking lambs might have been penned for the night right beside that tree on the road to London. Perhaps the landlord enclosed the land with hedges and sent the commoner and her cow off up the valley to higher wilder moors. Children may have played under this tree whose names appear on the war memorial. 
But there is something redemptive about the woods. On a raw February day there are snowdrops on sheltered banks; who planted them and how long ago? In the case of the ash a great cargo of firewood has been gained. Our generous landlord has left half the tree for some of us “commoners” to gather up and store for next winter. There is nothing like ash and oak for a woodburner, especially when you have cut it and split it and stacked it yourself. However, most wonderfully the ash will spring again. By mid summer there will be a great 
sprouting of new shoots from the stumps of branches. There are holes there too where sooner or later nuthatches and then owls and then bats will call their home. Our tree may yet grow for another century, a veritable citadel for bats, European Protected Species no less.