A Touch of Autumn (Apple picking time)

JOURNAL ENTRY

3^rd October, Thursday

“Afterglow of sunlight
Ash etched into ice blue
Overseen by a watching rook.

Smoke curls
Listless on no wind.
Cabin lights call me home.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

Tonight, we are afloat under an ocean of stars. October’s moon, new born, waits below the horizon for the dawn to rise. It is breathlessly still and silent, except for the quiet chuckle of ducks in the night and the whispered rumour of a far-off owl.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a moonless October night to you, wherever you are.

It is so lovely to see you, I was really hoping that you’d come. Come inside. It’s warm and snug. The stove is gently glowing just to ward off the night-time chill, and the kettle is singing on the hob. Make yourself comfortable and welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

Autumn continues to wrap snug and closely around the narrowboat Erica. Still not so much in the fire and blaze of leafy foliage – although that is coming. The copper, ports and burgundies of the chestnuts are becoming particularly evident. Conker time! Kicking through the scruff of golden leaves to find the prized winner to dangle from a bootlace in the playground at lunchtime. Willow usually drops her leaves first, casting yellowy shoals of fish-shaped leaves along the towpath and curling on the surface of the canal. But it is more in the feel – the texture and taste of the air, the bluster of winds that mops your hair. It’s in the softness of the light that favours the earth tones of land and water, and the mauves of the distant skyline; the smoulder and flare of berries along the hedgerows and towpath. The curling breath of morning mist and the silver pearl of dew on rope coils and iris’s broad green blades. It’s in the sounds, the whip and rustle of leaves, the scattered pebbles of heavy rain showers, the cauldron of crow-song and jackdaw chatter, the sigh of geese scything homewards under heavy skies. It’s in the smell of wood smoke and damp earth, and fox-scent and wet wood.

Within all this, the Erica nestles down, as content as a sleeping cat, and we within her. And with each sweep of the sun overhead, the days draw us ever deeper into this autumn of rain and wind and the Erica lets it wash around her in all its abundance, sailing upon the flow of nature’s change with all the embracing acceptance and grace with which she floats the still waters of the canal. A trail of blue-grey smoke curls up from her chimney. A gust catches it and kneads it like dough for a second or two, and then it disintegrates, unravelling like carded wool entangled on the wind. We had to give in and light the stove. Although we have had a couple of slight frosts, it was not so much for the cold, but for the clamminess of the damp air. And the rain. Heavy deluges, falling straight from the sky, beating and battering the ground, flattening the vegetation, willowherb, water mint, only the nettles are standing tall, and making the canal surface boil and dance.

Last week, we had the heaviest rain storm that I can remember. I expected to come back to the canal to see that it has broken its banks. There was some flooding a little lower down, but everything was fine here. The day after, I came across, Eric the goat, standing, with his back to the wind, mouth open, lips raised and nostrils flared, tasting the wind as another storm rolled across the valley towards us from the west. Anthracite-coloured clouds hung ragged over the patchwork of fields. He could scent something on the air that I could not. We normally spend a couple of minutes together. Sometimes, I pat his withers or rub the side of his face. He looks at me patiently, his jaws working the cud. But today, he was in another world – wilder, elemental. Lifting his head, like a baying stag, top lip curled back, the cloak of Pan is mantling his shoulders and there is something going on here far beyond my knowledge or experience. Maggie and I got back on board just in time as the first large drops of rain began to fall.

There has been a bit of sad news in connection with our swans. On Monday morning, I came across the body of one of the cygnets, floating under a tangle of brambles on the off-side bank of the canal a little way down from us. It was difficult to see clearly, but I couldn’t make out any obvious signs of injury or predation. I am wondering if it might be another case of Avian Flu that is causing so much destruction throughout the bird population. According to official sources, the UK has declared itself free of avian flu in March – although, I have to say, with our highly transient bird populations, I am a little sceptical. The other week, one of the cygnets did seem a little lethargic. Curled up, dozing as another of the cygnets and Mum foraged close by. I didn’t attach too much significance to it as there has always been one that has been a little more independent preferring to forage and explore on its own – although I could never really be certain whether it was the same cygnet each time or there just happened to be one of the trio that was spending a bit of time away. The little family was doing so well for so long. As before, they successfully nurture their brood of seven through the period that would appear to be pose the highest dangers. It is when they are almost fully grown that, each year, seems to cause the most problems. But now, the seven are down to maybe just one. I say ‘maybe one’ as I am not totally sure. The adult pair are pretty much separate again – as seems to be normal during this part of their calendar. Mum appears, often with one cygnet in tow. And then at other times, though more rarely, so does dad. It’s been a while since I have seen mum, dad, and the two cygnets all together.   

Whatever the cause, it is a sad outcome. A couple of weeks earlier, I was just around the corner from the spot where I had found the cygnet, watching them, from a bridge one morning, as the five of them swam up the canal. Mum, the three children, and then dad following some distance back. The sky was slate grey and a hint of mist blurred the fine edges of the middle-distance. Their progress was leisurely, their bodies making few ripples in the glassy waters. They stuck close to the offside bank and from time to time, they detoured into the vegetation, lifting their slender necks to where the hawthorn hang low and daintily pluck the ripe blackberries that hung in thick vine-like clusters out over the water. It was a study in contentment.               

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

A TOUCH OF AUTUMN (APPLE PICKING TIME)

[READING]

That was ‘Equinox’ by Roger Garfitt – and it seems to capture so well the autumn that we are experiencing right now. At the moment, this is no somnambulant last whisper of summer, with idling warmth jewelled with gnat dance and long shadows. If things continue as they are, this will be a year without spring and without autumn, a plunge back to the Anglo-Saxon calendar of the duelling battle between summer and winter, with nothing in between– and no prisoners taken.    

And yet, and yet, there IS something about autumn. There IS something about this melancholy autumn of battering rain and driven winds. It IS still autumn, even though we act like it is winter and close the hatches and bolt the doors and curl up beside the stove. Autumn’s magic is still there. There are hints and whispers of it on the wind, glimpses in the play of light among the storm-tossed oaks and the flattened and broken reeds. There is still enough there to remind me that autumn is here.

The autumn of John Betjeman’s ‘Autumn 1964’

[READING]

The mention in the first line about apples rings home fond memories of the autumns of my boyhood. Visiting my grandmother, Chick, in her bungalow in Long Itchington; funnily enough – not far from here! Back in those days, it seemed to be a far and distant foreign country. We’d leave early and follow the A41 all the way to Banbury and then swing out northwards to where they spoke differently and said ‘baath’ instead or bath and grass instead of grass – and called people ‘me dook’. It was nothing like us ‘Ertfordshire ‘edge’ogs who dropped our ‘hs’ and forgot to use our ‘ts’. Grampie and Chick’s village did seem to me to be a different world completely. Although the bungalow seemed modern (post-war), village seemed to be a remote outpost from the past, with its pond and its church seated on a small island of a hill at its heart. And each evening a local farmer would drive his cattle down to the farm at the lane for milking, past the neat little row of bungalows. And Grandpie would say, “we’ll have to wait until the cows come home.” And the grown-ups would groan and Chick would say ‘Oh, Fred, that is awful!’ And Wendy and I would wait at the window hoping that one of the cows would break free and plod up the small lawn and nibble the roses on the trellis as they had done once before.

At the back was a large garden with neatly edged lawns and which was divided into two by a thick hedge, beyond which lay a cluster of apple trees. The orchard. Beyond that was a large compost heap that smouldered and smoked. The two halves were connected by a grass path and a wooden arch – through which you could view the couple of thatched houses beside the main road. In one of which, it was said, Queen Elizabeth 1 had slept as she passed through. I have no idea of the truth of that claim, but it impressed me. It somehow connected me to the long-gone past. In history, at school, whenever Elizabeth 1 was mentioned, I felt some sort of personal attachment or affinity with her. After all, I knew the place where she had once spent the night. And hadn’t we both seen the village pond, heard the village bells? Perhaps she had even smelt the smoke from Grandpie’s bonfire on the compost and waited for the cows to come passed. She was almost one of the family.

After Grandpie had died, the garden became too much for Chick and so we would regularly come up and cut the grass and keep it in order. In autumn that meant that the apples needed to be picked. Green and red, story-book eaters – crisp and fresh. Cookers with rubbery skins, huge monsters of apples that made your mouth turn inside out (but I loved it!) and which you needed two hands to hold them, and Mum and Chick would say would make an entire apple crumble on its own.

As we grew older, we participated more in the apple harvesting. Carrying huge wicker baskets that came up to my thigh and I could only just lift off the ground. We stand around the wiry, witch-bent, trees and catch them as Mum or Dad, perched on ladders, would drop them down to us. We learnt how to place them carefully in the basket so that there was no bruising. “Wasp eaten!” or “Grubs” meant that they were placed to one side to be either eaten quickly or thrown for compost. Later, we too would take our turn up the ladders. Hearts beating with a heady excitement as we reached precariously for the ‘beauty’ that was just beyond our reach. The waxy sticky feel of the skin, the sweet smell of apple mixed with wood smoke.

There was a strange mix of emotions picking those apples. There was the excitement of climbing one rung higher than before. It was fun too, all working together, human conveyor belts, passing down apples from hand to hand. But there was something deeper than that too. An unsettling uneasiness. It had something to do with the sheer profligate over-flowing abundance of harvest. We did have apple trees at home, but not to harvest on this scale. Apples were not exactly scarce at home (outside apple season), but they were definitely a treat. I was just unused to mind staggering generosity of apple trees, that literally dripped apples onto the ground. This was a completely different economy to the one I was used to and it made me uncomfortable. I could eat three apples one after the other and it would not show. I could take a single bite out of one and throw the rest away, as I saw a boy at school do once, and no-one would be the wiser. I felt, as I still feel sometimes today, when someone offers me a glass of squeezed orange or apple juice – recklessly intemperate and self-indulgent. Oranges were rare treats, reserved for Christmas. How can we squeeze three of the into a glass and not even eat any of the flesh? It seemed insanity and I have to admit that it can still make me feel rather uncomfortably transgressive. I had yet to understand that the economies that we are meant to live by are so different from the economy of nature – or its generosity to those that treat it right. 

All the time, Chick would be hovering, worrying. Don’t fall. Don’t hurt yourself. Michael, do be careful of your back, that ladder is very heavy. Where are we going to put all the apples? Have we enough boxes? There was always something to fret about at harvest and a garden can be a wonderful thing but it can also grow worries along with the weeds and petunias. The baskets would be hauled up the garden to the garage. The garage smelt of apples, the sweet almost sickly smell that was in danger of being so nice that it became horrible. It’s a smell – along with the smell of tomato plants – that I need just one whiff off to tumble me back to the disorienting kaleidoscope of pictures and feelings of my childhood.  

Along with the apples, the garage was also where Chick’s next-door neighbour kept her two-seater Triumph Spitfire. I coveted that car and longed to be old enough to own it. Dad was not impressed with it though. He could see below the gleaming blue paintwork with its gold-lined coachwork to the rust and the pools of oil. I could only see – skies full of larks and country lanes stretched out before the windshield and a westering sun that never quite set. The storing of the apples was, for me, the worst part of the job. The endless task of carefully placing them in the wooden crates so they didn’t rub, covering some in newspapers. There were always newspapers there. Stacks of them, neatly tied up with twine the way you’d see them being delivered to newsagents. Beside them, there’d be a small stack of Women’s Realm and Women’s Weekly filled with knitting patterns Victoria sponge cakes and stories about flustered women saving men with sad smiles and trilby hats. Wendy used to call them ‘knit your Queen mother’ magazines. Sometimes Mum would tear out a recipe and keep it in the kitchen drawer.  And having carefully stacked the apples in their crates, Dad would lift them up to store them under the eaves where our old spangle coloured rubber bucket and spade were hanging – remnants from the bygone days when Grandpie was still alive and they lived by the sea at Beltinge.    

I guess that there was one autumn that was my last apple-picking time. That I would never again smell that sweet waxy smell of fresh picked apples in that same way, or feel the ladder shift below me as I tried to reach the last monster at the end of a branch, or feel the knotted wicker handle of her basket. But at the time I didn’t know. I wouldn’t know it, until too late. Until looking back it had merged with all the other apple harvests that we had in that back garden of a bungalow that Queen Elizabeth 1 had once looked out upon. Such are autumns – the mist and haze that blurs the boundary of summer and winter... and, sometimes, our memories.

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG