Tag: Melissa Harrison

Six Degrees of Separation in October

Our starting point for this month’s Six Degrees of Separation Challenge is The Turn of the Screw by  Henry James. Our job as participants is to show how one book leads to another, each link taking us further and further from the original (maybe).

I’m linking Turn of the Screw with a detective story set in present-day Venice.  Bear with me.  I’m a big fan of Commissario Brunetti  who lives there with his family.  Enjoying the moments that Brunetti spends at home or ranging round the city he loves for all its faults are a real reason for reading Donna Leon’s books.  Brunetti’s wife Paola teaches at the university, and she’s a big fan of Henry James’ writing.  I’ll put Trace Elements into the mix, as it’s the last Donna Leon I read.

Brunetti’s Venice: often seen from a Police launch while speeding to the scene of crime (Gabriele Diwald, Unsplash)

I like Leon’s writing because she summons up Venice and day-to-day life there so vividly.  Graham Hurley has a similar talent.  His detective, Joe Faraday, lives in Portsmouth, as I once did. Faraday’s life is one of juggling crime, endless paperwork, a bitty personal life, and birdwatching.  It feels very real. Turnstone is the first, but by no means the only one of his books that I’ve read.

Gulls seen from a cross-channel ferry – probably Faraday spotted them too.

Birdwatching had me remembering A Shadow Above. The author, Joe Shute loves ravens. Part natural history; part history; part an exploration of the many legends that this bird has fostered; part investigative journalism; part personal history, this is an engaging, immersive read that goes a long way towards explaining why ravens have a special place in our history.

One of the tame ravens often to be seen near Knaresborough Castle, North Yorkshire.

And so to another author who’s immersed in the natural world – Melissa Harrison. The first book of hers that I read was a novel: At Hawthorn Time.  Even more than the involving story following the lives of a couple with a dissolving marriage newly arrived at the village; a near-vagrant and a disaffected young man, I relished her descriptions of the countryside, whether observations of plant and bird life or a litter strewn roadside edge. Her characters rang true, as well as her clear-eyed descriptions of village life.

What else but hawthorn blossom?

This reminded me of a non-fiction book, a real good read: A Buzz in the Meadow: the Natural History of a French Farm, by Dave Goulson. This is a delight.  The catalyst for writing it is his home in the Charente, bought so he could provide home, in the form of an extensive meadow, to a huge variety of wildlife, specifically insects.  This is no Aga-saga of a Brit in France, but a mixture of reminiscence, hard scientific fact, vivid stories of his own experiments and research, and the work of others.  It’s a page turner and a tale well told with humour, and an eye for the telling detail.  I’m no scientist, but I was absorbed from start to finish.

This praying mantis was spotted not in France, but in Spain, during a family holiday in Catalonia.

Goulson knows his home patch intimately.  Lara Maiklem knows the London Thames intimately.  She’s a mudlarker, who scours the banks of the river looking for its hidden history whenever she can.  World War weaponry, Victorian toys, Georgian clay pipes, Tudor buttons, Roman pottery, even Neolithic flints are all there, waiting to be found.  In Mudlarking, Maiklem writes  an entertaining account of her finds and adventures, stitching them into a readable history of London itself: the growth of the city and its changing fortunes. 

Mudlarking territory along the Thames shoreline.

So there we have it.  Six books following no kind of theme.  But they’re the kinds of book I’ve liked and have enjoyed over the last year or so.

 

Six Degrees of Separation

October Squares: #Kinda Square

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‘There’s no such thing as bad weather only unsuitable clothing’*

I’ve always been a fair weather walker.  I never see the point of trudging through mud as dripping waist-high grasses lash at my already sodden trousers.  In heavy rain, my waterproof anorak proves powerless to stop rivulets of rainwater trickling down my neck.  And since windscreen wipers for glasses have not yet been invented, I have no view of the path ahead, much less the landscape.  Really, why bother?

Then last week, watching ‘Springwatch’, I saw the wonderfully evocative nature writer Melissa Harrison, encased head-to-toe in  a black, heavy-duty oilskin.  She was tramping across a rain-drenched landscape as she explained the peculiar pleasures of a wet walk, on camera.

So when Saturday arrived with murky skies, I stuffed my best all weather gear into my rucksack, and set forth with my friends on our planned walk.  And the rains came.  We strode through woodland, protected by all those newly-leafed trees canopied overhead.  We relished the fresh sweet earthy smell of the rain as it reached our leaf-mould path.  We remarked on the leaves, glistening with raindrops.  Even the birds seemed happy and continued to trill and chatter above us.

We hit meadowland.  How subtle the tones of green and grey in the misty landscape!  How muted the colours!  Let’s watch the rain as it soothingly patterns the surface of that pond, a thousand concentric circles at a time!  Yes, walking in the rain, we agreed, brought pleasures well worth seeking out.

The rain continued.  Our weather proof gear kept the rain out, but perspiration in. Our legs got soggy from walking down narrow paths marshalled by soaking nettles and grasses.  Someone’s boots began to leak.  Someone else commented we  still had six or seven miles to go. Yet another of us was hungry, but didn’t fancy a squishy sandwich.  The plastic-encased map revealed that in a mile or two, we could make our escape to the nearest bus route. Let’s do it!  Heads down, we traipsed on, only wanting to get it over with now.  Every now and then, one of us would get in touch with our inner four year old – ‘Are we nearly there yet?’

Finally, we were.  We dripped onto the bus, at which point it (briefly) stopped raining.

The cows thought we were barmy. By then, so did we.

 

*Alfred Wainwright MBE was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator and something of a National Treasure to keen walkers.