A nature reserve on the Somerset Levels

The Somerset Levels lie across the neck of land that separates Devon and Cornwall from the rest of England. Originally marshland, they were drained by monks in the Middle Ages and are now used mainly for grazing cattle. They do still flood, most notably recently in the winter of 2013-14 when the village of Muchelney was an island for several weeks and the inhabitants had to go shopping by boat.

Thanks to the BBC for this map

They aren’t startlingly pretty or dramatic like other places in this country but I love them. I think this is because they give the impression of being closer to their natural state than most British countryside. There aren’t many houses, for obvious reasons, and keeping the water out is a constant battle – involving sluices, pumps, sea defences, ditches and dredging. It wouldn’t take long, one feels, for the area to revert.

    Because the Levels are so different from hilly and increasingly busy Devon, Frog and I often visit on our ‘days off’, having lunch in Glastonbury with its delightful eccentric inhabitants and then walking. One place we’ve never been able to walk however is a nature reserve that we pass on the road as dogs aren’t allowed – until last week when Frog’s recent retirement meant that we could go out on the dog’s day-care day. Now at last, I thought, I could experience the real wild Levels.

    Somehow though I was disappointed.

    Perhaps it was the fence around the edge keeping out predators like foxes. Perhaps it was the quantities of serious birdwatchers with their telephoto lenses. Perhaps it was the neat walkways and the signs everywhere telling you what to look for.

    I felt like a zoo animal, confined to an artificial re-creation of my natural habitat.

    Of course at the moment reserves are vital for preserving species, but I can’t wait for the day (which has to come) when the countryside is reversed, when wildness is the norm and reserves are where we grow our food. (For more on this see https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/ .)

Here, anyway, is what we saw.

We started off at the reed bed. The swishing noise of the wind through the reeds was lovely.

The reed walk

Then we walked past some ditches and pools.

A secret willow-fringed pool

Purple loosestrife, a damp-loving plant

I had to look up this butterfly when I got home as I don't know much about butterflies - and I think it's a painted lady. I knew the plant however. It's hemp agrimony -  another damp-lover.

Then we sat on a floating platform on the edge of a small lake which reminded me of the Norfolk Broads. (I had difficulty taking photographs because the sun was so high and strong that all I could see on the screen was myself. The picture below may be slightly wonky.)

The small lake

At one point we had to cross a track or ‘drove road’ as they’re called on the Levels. Drove roads look inviting but they aren’t public footpaths and are often blocked with gates, barbed wire and ‘private’ notices. True to form there was a big notice here warning visitors to cross quickly and not stray up the track - for their own safety and that of the cattle driven along it. Hmph.

The out-of-bounds drove road

We ended up at the bird hide and information hut. As I read the board, I noticed movement above. Oh how clever, I thought: there’s a moving exhibit. When I looked up I realised that it wasn’t just moving. It was alive. And, judging by the amount of droppings on the floor, had made the hut its own.
    But it wasn't an endangered species, and it certainly wasn't on the board's list of creatures to look out for.
    That's real nature for you, I thought - it doesn't follow the rules.

    It was the best bit of the walk.

The anomalous pigeon

Rolf Lidberg and his trolls

Two years ago Frog (with a little help from me) knocked down the wall between our bathroom and the smallest bedroom in our house. A year later the builders began work on our new, expanded bathroom. Now, two years later, the new bathroom is finished and I have begun sorting the debris that resulted from the building work and from emptying a bedroom.

Two years ago the bathroom and adjoining bedroom became one . . .

Because the bedroom was so small, it was used mostly by visiting children, with the pictures on the wall reflecting this. Among the debris I rediscovered these enchanting troll paintings, which last saw the light of day a year ago as illustrations for my series of blog posts on the visit Frog and I paid to Norway, the land of my mother’s mother. 

I have researched (and blogged here about) a Scandinavian print of my mother’s of which I have only a copy as all five of us children wanted to give it a home after my mother's death. I hoped to find an original print of my own but unfortunately I haven’t yet done so. 

'Happy families', a Scandinavian print of my mother's

The troll pictures are small posters which Frog and I found in an Exeter shop about thirty years ago. Now, after our visit to Norway and with my new-found enthusiasm for that part of the world – so beautiful, wild and uncommercialised - I wondered if we could do some research on these pictures too.
 

‘D’you think we could find original prints of these?’ I asked Frog last week, and the next day through the magic of the internet he came up with the name of the artist, Rolf Lidberg.

I then did some research of my own and discovered from Wikipedia that he was Swedish and lived from 1930 to 2005. He illustrated five children’s books, whose English titles are: Trolls (1984), A Troll Wedding (1992), The elf book (1995), The Troll Valley (2001) and The trolls go fishing (2001). We think our pictures probably come from the last one. Cards of the illustrations and secondhand copies of the books are available but again, as yet, we haven’t found any prints.

My mother did read Norwegian books to us when we were children, translating them as she went, including a mysterious one about a Mrs Green, a Mrs Brown and a Mrs White, but the Rolf Lidberg books are too recent seeing as I was born in the 1950s so I never came across them. I also have vague memories of carved wooden trolls appearing on the table at Christmas, as well as small gnomes which my mother called 'nisse’ (pronounced 'nisser'). (It’s only recently that I've discovered that 'nisse' is a Norwegian word and that ‘Nissen Huts’ are prefabricated barrack-type buildings designed by a Colonel Nissen, not log cabins at the bottom of the garden suitable for little people as I had always imagined.)

According to Scandinavian folklore, trolls are scary human-sized creatures who live in the woods, but what could be more adorable than Lidberg’s trolls, with their patched clothes and sweet smiles? Lidberg himself, according to Wikipedia, was hunchbacked and sported a bushy beard. Was he modelling the trolls on himself and if so isn’t that a wonderful example of celebrating ourselves as we are and not worrying about conforming to conventional ideas of beauty?

It’s a shame that the word ‘troll’ has now come to mean something quite different.

. . . and here as it looks today is the same part of the bathroom as that in the picture above

Highly Sensitive People

Every couple of weeks since April I’ve been seeing a spiritual healer (Therese) - who works at a local health centre thanks to an enlightened doctor. Even though my physical complaints haven’t gone away, I feel much happier. This may be because of the healing and it may also be because of the conversations that Therese and I have. I can talk to her about all the things that really interest me and which you don’t mention in normal company for fear of being thought mad (such as seeing things, hearing things, writing, spirituality).

Therese has introduced me to the concept of the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) which is a newish definition and describes about one in five of the population. Even with this large proportion, sensitivity is not usually valued in our society and many HSPs struggle to fit in and become ill as a consequence - often chronically.

In order to address this, a friend and one-time pupil of Therese, Mel Collins, has written The Handbook for Highly Sensitive People, cover below.

There is a questionnaire at the beginning of the book, designed to help the reader discover whether or not they fall into the category, and I thought you might be interested in seeing it. (Excuse my erratic scanning and I hope Mel won't mind me reproducing part of her book.)

I don’t know about you, but I ticked every statement but one. That was number 19, and when I mentioned it to Frog he said I should have ticked that one too because he’s been insensitive in the past. (I couldn’t possibly comment.)

The concept and the book have been something of a revelation to me. They’ve shown me that I’m not deranged, or damaged – as I’ve always thought I was. The way I am is innate. I can’t change it. I can even be proud of it since HSPs have much to offer. Many of them are artists or teachers, in health care, fighting for social justice or against the mistreatment of the environment, animals and children. As the book says, sensitivity is a gift, not a flaw.

Do have a look if you’re interested in finding out more.

Incidentally, the Foreword is written by the broadcaster Jeremy Vine, an HSP himself.