Under the ghost of a Harvest Moon

JOURNAL ENTRY

 29^th September, Friday

“Early this morning,
We met the swan slipping
Light upon the night-time mists.

Behind us,
Cows stood knee deep
in milk- white meadows.

This is the stillness that falls
After the storm.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

[READING]

Tonight is the night of Neil Young’s harvest moon and although it is rising high a veil of cloud has muted her light and softened her gaze. But the owls don't seem to mind and wicker and hoot somewhere across the canal to the west. 

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the night to you wherever you are.

The dew is beginning to fall and there is a night chill in the air. So come inside where it is warm. I am so glad you could make it tonight. Welcome aboard.  

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

I am sorry for such a truncated episode this week. If you follow this podcast on social media, you might have seen that at the beginning of this week, we had lost our internet connection – or to be more accurate according to the diagnostics, we were connected to the internet and that the signal was strong, but as far as it was concerned there was no internet! It felt as if we were caught up in that old joke, “Oh no! I clicked on the wrong icon and have accidently deleted the internet!”

You might have been aware that last week’s episode was posted a day earlier. This was a complete accident. I actually did press the wrong key. Although each episode is launched on a Sunday, I normally upload it at least a day earlier, just in case there is a problem with the internet or we are in an area in which the broadband coverage cannot support uploading a large file (which has happened a couple of times). That means that all I need to do on the Sunday is to sort out the website page and post the links on social media. However, last week, when I’d uploaded it, I must have unwittingly clicked on publish which had been set to the date of the previous episode the week before! This was actually really fortunate as it was on Sunday that we first completely lost the internet and I wouldn’t have been able to post it.

Not having access to the internet has meant that I haven’t yet been able to read and respond to your comments and emails. As the week progressed, we have been getting at least some broadband signal, but it’s been rather tenuous. This has meant that we have been careful not to overload it by having too many devices connected to it and have prioritised it for Donna’s work for which it is essential. By Friday, it does appear to be getting back to normal, but we still have no idea why it disappeared and why it has now reappeared again. I did think I wasn’t going to be able to do a podcast this week – and am still not sure whether I will be able to upload the audio file – however, I didn’t want to not do anything and wanted to just say ‘we are still here and although it’s been an extremely stressful week for both of us workwise, we are ok’. I also want to say, if you have emailed or commented, thank you. I will reply to them, hopefully, this week.

This is also the reason why I am deliberately doing a shorter episode this week so that the file size will be much smaller.

Therefore, I have postponed the episode where I continue to answer listeners’ questions until next week. Sorry about that, but I have to say that I am really enjoying answering your questions as it gives me the opportunity to think through things that are so easily taken for granted. It’s been great.

Internet woes aside, the week has been full of weather and autumnal colour!

The ducks are getting frisky and there’s been a fair bit of sparring going on – among the females as well as the males. A cause of endless fascination and entertainment for Maggie. The drakes are also beginning to grow into the full glory of their splendid plumage. I suppose they must be beginning the process of pairing off, for the winter in preparation for the spring mating time. This year, one of the duckling hatchings here produced a brood in which there were two very light-coloured ducklings – not yellow, but a very light fawny brown colour, and one that was much darker, almost sooty in colour. I haven’t seen the two lighter coloured ones for some time now. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t make it, they simply could have fledged into their adult plumage and therefore not so visible. However, the little darker one – even his legs have a dappled sooty look about them, is still around. Over the last week, I’ve noticed that he is beginning to show that magnificently iridescent green-blue plumage on his head. I expect by the time winter bites deep, it’ll only be by his darker legs that I will be able to spot him and remember how, in the summer, each evening, he and his sandy sisters, hustled by a proud mum who always waited at a distance, would gather at Erica’s bows in a storm of whistling peeps and cheeps, to await a scatter of duck food from us.

This week has been referred to as an Indian Summer, although, in all honesty, it didn’t feel much like the Indian Summers that I use to know. But it has been warm, verging on hot at times, when the wind dropped and the clouds parted. Quite a few large dragonflies have been out and about, darting among the reeds and bankside vegetation. Swallows continue to make the most of the swarms and drifts of flies, fattening up for their long journey home – or is it their long holiday abroad? But it is the crow families that have taken hold of the skies and making it their own. This week has been a paradise for them as another storm barrelled over us.

Those crafty equinoctial gales that don’t really exist have struck again! I know that there is no statistical evidence for them. I have seen it with my own eyes, and yet this old myth of gales that attend the vernal and autumn equinoxes remains burning brightly in my imagination. The power of myth over evidence. Now that is something that requires more attention.

And the winds tore in from the south west, cresting the waves of Lundy's seas, tumbling and springing over the Cotswold uplands, before sweeping up across the plains Evesham. For a while, I stood with Maggie watching curtains of rain hanging in dark veils across the Malverns and Worcestershire, and hills of south Wales. I felt as tall and as old as Gandalf as the warm wind beat against us and the jackdaws scalded with delight and played upon the blusterings. I wished I had an ancient staff to bang upon the ground. If I had I would have been unvanquishable in those few moments – that are now eternally mine. Later the rains that we had earlier watched came – and it was glorious. Even though I reached the welcoming hearth of the Erica soaked with trousers clinging to my legs.          

It has also been a total joy this week having Vanessa and Zephyr on the Alice Grace from the Mindful Narrowboat vlog moored just a little way up from us. Maggie very much enjoyed meeting Zephyr – I am not sure that Zephyr was as equally delighted, but she was remarkably tolerant and long-suffering with this little whirlwind of chaotic exuberance that suddenly appeared in her world! Once again, Zephyr, we are so sorry for her appalling behaviour in destroying your toy! Thank you for your patience, Zephyr! It's funny how it is often during those periods of real stress and difficulty that you get those moments of pure sunshine, the memories of which and the warmth they bring will stay with you forever. Visting Vanessa and Zephyr provided those moments for us this week. Vanessa's infectious excitement and sense of fun with the world in which she lives and the eager enthusiasm with which she explores and embraces it, gave to us a spot of unalloyed joy amongst the difficulties that we felt overwhelming us. Vanessa was interested in our bat detector and before we met up asked if we could bring it with us to show her. The first time we got a few signals, enough to show her how the detector worked, but surprisingly there wasn't too much activity. And so later in the week, Vanessa, Zephyr, Donna, Maggie and I went out under the ghost of a Harvest Moon to see if we could find some more. The dusk was breathlessly still and thin clouds masked the rising moon casting a hint of wan light that turned the horses into phantoms that flowed like willow-the-wisps as they silently moved along the hedge-line. Passing under the tunnel of oak and ash the final clamour of rook and jackdaw subsiding into the night, we stood together on the towpath and began to listen to a world beyond our sight and hearing. Thank you, Vanessa and Zephyr, you will probably never know how much that special time has meant to both Donna and me.     

I must go now, but I want to leave you with something extra special. Equinoctial gales or not, it's been a blustery – if not at times windy – old week, so I am going to finish with the words of, Ryokan, an 18^th /early 19^th century Japanese Zen monk, who lived alone in his decrepit mountain hermitage, where, in the words of Eido Frances Carney, “In all seasons, mountain life spoke to him through the voices of wind, fox, deer, rabbits, snow in its quiet falling, rain pelting the roof, [AND] insects buzzing at night.”  

He is renowned for leaving no teaching, just the memories of him playing children’s games and his smile of welcome and acceptance to all he met, together with a collection of his poems.

Poem 137

[READING]

Poem 42

[READING]

Yes, Ryokan, let us dance on all through this night, though our days are numbered.

SIGNING OFF

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful, peaceful and quiet night. And may it be full of your dance. Good night.

WEATHER LOG