Uncertain Futures (Listeners' questions - 2)

JOURNAL ENTRY

21^st September, Thursday

“For a short while this evening
The crescent moon and the setting sun
Shared the same length of skyline.
A fiery bronze heart and the ghost of bone.

Then a robin sings as rain drops fall.
Here is tranquillity and peace.
The horned moon
And evensong among the patter
Of elder leaves.”  

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

A quartering moon has just slipped below the horizon leaving the sky heavy with cloud. Stoves have been lit and curtains drawn in many a boat. This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into a chilly September night scented with woodsmoke to you wherever you are.

Thank you so much for coming. It's so good to see you. I've put the kettle on hoping you could make it. It's far too chilly to stand around outside. Mind the steps and come into the warmth. Welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

Friday morning. The sun is two and a half fingers above the horizon and burning off a thick blanket of fog leaving only gauzy veils in pockets and hollows – like sheep wool caught on a bramble thicket.

In a bankside pool of sunshine, a moorhen suns herself. Motionless, apparently unheeding of my approach. She’s hunched, wings not quite outstretched, but approximating that sunbathing stance. I am too far away to see if her eyes are closed – as blackbirds when they fall into that state of ecstatic bliss. A spot of morning moorhen zen.

Earlier, the swans came by when the fog still lay thickly over the canal trench. There is something rather Arthurian about swans in the fog. There is a particularly mythic quality about them – gliding silent, serene, and white among the greys and muted greens.    

Just now, from the west, where the fog still holds the strongest, comes the plaintive cry of geese on the wing. They form a loose straggling chevron against a blue sky raked with mares’ tails of high cirrus clouds. There’s about fifteen in all, working east towards the rising sun, but two are outriders. Their fast-wing beats pat the morning air. One of the outriders transects the clear blue between it and the flock, easing into the formation. However, the other one remains distant, charting a much more southerly course. The lone goose. I often see them. The one that doesn’t quite join the flight. Clearly belonging to the flock, but somehow or for some reason, at this moment, not quite part of it. Who are these lone geese and why are they alone? I am not even sure if it is the same goose. But there seems to always be those geese who chart their own courses across the misty skies.

The main flight maintain their easterly sky-path, their constant contact calls bubbling across the flock, rising and falling. There is a sense of syntax here. These calls are more than mere robotic proximity beeps. There’s a subtle differentiation and complexity in each call. A sense of person. If I was a Hebrew writer, a sense of nephesh – living soul. The out-breathings of the divine into all living things.    

But this lone goose, a few yards distant also calls, but the call is very different. Longer, louder. There is a sense that it is more insistent. It appears to have a very different register to those in-flight calls. For a while I half expected the main flock to alter course and tag along with this outrider. But they didn’t. The distance between them grew ever wider until now the lone goose was just that. No longer an outrider just a solitary bird flying purposely off to some unknown destination. As they receded into the distance, I could still make out the two sets of calls – though the lone goose’s call became a little softer, perhaps decisions had been made, conclusions drawn.  

The sun continues to rise higher. Smoke begins to curl upward from one of the boats. One the last swallows of summer arrows down the canal, skimming low across the surface to drink. The early morning chill begins to dissipate.

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

QUESTIONS 2

12:00

Have we burnt our bridges?

17:33

What do we do about dentists and GPs?

32:24

How will the funding cuts affect us?

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