Willie Nelson, Miriam Margolyes, Dawn French and me

One of my pleasures is listening to music (CDs) while driving. My choice at the moment is ‘Across The Borderline’, an album by the great Willie Nelson, on which is a gorgeous version of ‘Graceland’ by Paul Simon. Three of the lines always make me cry: 

            Losing love is like a window in your heart.

            Everybody sees you’re blown apart.

            Everybody sees the window.

They move me because when I first lost Frog everyone was so kind to me, even complete strangers like supermarket checkout people. It was as if they sensed what was going on, and Paul Simon has obviously had the same experience.

At least, that’s what I thought the words were. But when I came to check them for this post I discovered that I’d misheard the last one. It's not ‘sees the window’ but ‘feels the wind blow’, and that doesn’t work for me at all. Never mind. It’s still a beautiful version of the song and I can sing my own words loudly over the top of the official ones.

 

In Miriam Margolyes’s scurrilous autobiography ‘This Much is True’, which I’m currently laughing my way through, she mentions a Dutch word ‘drempelvrees’ which means ‘threshold fear’. She says that the Indonesians (who were once colonised by the Dutch, as you probably know) use the word more specifically to mean the moment we gather ourselves up to appear in public. They do consciously, she says, what most of us do unconsciously before going out - putting on a persona, an exaggerated version of ourselves, ourselves as we’d like to be.

I’m doing a lot of that at the moment. Or maybe what I’m doing is pretending to be what I hope I’m becoming. Dawn French, in her memoir ‘Dear Fatty’, first alerted me to this phenomenon. Before becoming a new person, she writes, we have to imagine that new person and play the part for a while. I found that very helpful. It’s such a good way of getting out of a rut and taking the step forward that we need to take.

 
However, both techniques have their drawbacks. They can mean that we’re not being true to our whole self, perhaps hiding or protecting something, and in my case it means that I’m glossing over the vulnerable grief-stricken part of myself, which is still there and may always be there.
 
When Frog first died, I didn’t have a persona. I couldn’t present an idealised version of myself. I couldn’t protect myself. I didn’t have the energy. It was as much as I could do to get up in the morning. And I think that honesty was one of the things people responded to. That was why they were kind to me.
 
Unfortunately that unexpected kindness doesn't happen any more in quite the same way, even though I’m probably just as fragile inside. Yesterday was a case in point, when I tried to engage the woman at the Sainsbury’s till in conversation and she looked at me as if I was mad. It threw me for the whole day.
 
I’ve a lot to learn still about this ‘being myself’ business, about how to face the world as me - new or otherwise, how to combine strength and vulnerability. Frog was much better than me at it. He never pretended. All his failings and weaknesses were on show. He knew he was an idiot (as we all are really). And I loved him for that.

 

All will be well

I’ve mentioned before my guru Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

 

I’ve also mentioned my disinclination at the moment to get out of bed in the morning and face the world, and the bad back and leg that have crippled me since November.

Last night when I couldn’t sleep yet again because of the pain in my right calf, which paracetamol hadn’t touched, I decided to explore with the help of my beloved Notebook what was going on.

According to Louise, pain in the lower leg is caused by fear of the future and not wanting to move on. The affirmation (to counteract that) is:

I move forward with confidence and joy, knowing that all will be well in my future.

I said this to myself over and over and found myself sobbing so I knew she was right.

I’ve been through this process again and again recently and I keep forgetting, and falling into old ways, and believing what everyone else says instead of what I say deep inside me. For instance, out of fear I’ve been to see a physiotherapist, which is what my doctor recommended for my back and leg, even though I don't normally do conventional medicine, and all it’s done is make me feel worse. 

One day, I might manage to hold on to me.

And, of course, as I might also have said before, that is what this time since Frog’s death is all about. I have the idea that moving on will take me away from him, but actually it will take me towards him. 

Even though Frog and I had the deepest of connections, I couldn’t be myself when he was here because I was too preoccupied with being a good wife, with being what I thought he wanted. He removed himself in order to help me and now, in order to rejoin him, I have to face the world without him and learn to be me. It’s bloody terrifying.

Wish me luck.

And in case none of that makes sense, which is more than likely, here are some pictures from the last week or two. Isn’t the world beautiful? Why on earth should I fear it?

Floods

Shining Cranesbill, a tiny flower named for its shiny leaves (the small roundish ones)

The nearby Weeping Willow, waving its hair-like tresses

My Secret Wood, a fluff of greeny-brown about to burst into life

The buds of Holly flowers, another secret

Dandelions like suns and Dandelions with Speedwell, the colour of the sky. (Spot the dog.)

Geoffrey Grigson, Samuel Palmer, John Clare and me*

A long time ago in the days when I earned money as a writer and editor and did my research not on the internet but in libraries (among other places), I came across a fascinating book. It was called The Englishman’s Flora (rather unfortunately, but those were sexist days – even more so than now) and it listed all the country names for wildflowers as well as some of the folklore associated with them. It was a big beautiful hardback, available for reference only.

This summer, when I was inspired to write about my passion for wildflowers – because it was a beautiful summer, because walking in the countryside was mostly what I did and because Kate of the blog I live, I love, I craft, I am me took an interest in my blog and gave me confidence, I looked out for the book again and discovered that it now lived in the library’s ‘stack’ – that mysterious dusty cellar where old books went to die – and that it could actually be ordered and borrowed. So I borrowed it.

Original version

It was, I found, first published in 1955 and is not even listed on Amazon. A second-hand 1987 reprint on the other hand is listed as ‘from £430’. And I had the original in my hands. What’s more, because of the on/off Lockdown, I could keep it for as long as I liked (unless someone else wanted it which didn’t seem very likely). Libraries are wonderful places.

1987 version

I looked into the author too, which was the poet Geoffrey Grigson, husband of the cookery writer Jane Grigson and father of Sophie Grigson, cookery writer and occasional television cook. He’d also written a book called Samuel Palmer: the Visionary Years. I borrowed that too because I knew that Samuel Palmer, a painter, had lived for a time in the village where I was brought up – Shoreham in Kent. It turned out that those visionary years were his time in my village. I wasn’t surprised, but at the same time none of his pictures conveyed the place to me. The colours were wrong for a start.

A painting of Shoreham by Samuel Palmer

Then, a week ago, I borrowed a book of Geoffrey Grigson’s called Poems of John Clare’s Madness, both because I’m fascinated (and terrified) by madness and because of my interest in John Clare. As I said in my recent post ‘May every cage be open’, John Clare is known for his nature poetry and for the madness caused by separation from the countryside of his childhood. I could relate to that, seeing as mine is now the M25, but I didn’t know how I knew that about him and felt that I ought to find out for myself. (And both GG and I are using the word ‘madness’ in its English sense of ‘insanity’, not the American one of ‘anger’. Incidentally, this applies to the title of my blog as well.)

John Clare aged 27 

John Clare in a mental asylum, aged 51

Then, although I don’t normally read poetry, I thought I might read some of John Clare’s, and I started with the one whose title leapt out at me. I loved it and reproduce it here for you. (As far as I know, it’s not in copyright but if you disagree do please let me know.) Amazingly, it was written while he was in the mental asylum where he spent 28 years.

Clare hated punctuation apparently and fought with his editors. I hated the punctuation in the printed poem and so have taken the ENORMOUS liberty of removing or changing nearly all of it. I've also taken out some of the capital letters, especially those at the beginning of lines, because to me they were unnecessary and misleading. (One day I ought to try and look at Clare's original manuscripts, if they exist.)  

I Am

I am, yet what I am none cares or knows

My friends forsake me like a memory lost
I am the self-consumer of my woes.
They rise and vanish in oblivious host
like shadows in love’s frenzied, stifled throes
and yet I am, and live like vapours tost.
 
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise
into the living sea of waking dreams
where there is neither sense of life or joys
but the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems,
even the dearest that I love the best
are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.
 
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
a place where woman never smiled or wept
there to abide with my creator, God
and sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept
untroubling and untroubled where I lie - 
the grass below, above the vaulted sky.

                        John Clare (1793-1864)

*The ‘and me’ bit in this title is partly an ironic nod to the current fashion for adding it to the title of every television programme. I'd hate you to think I was conceited.

On Writing

I’m trying not to blog at the moment, or at least not so often, so as to leave space for other writing projects.

In the meantime, here are the concluding paragraphs from On Writing by Stephen King, which I’ve been reading recently. 

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up. Getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. Some of this book – perhaps too much – has been about how I learned to do it. Much of it has been about how you can do it better. The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it – is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink.
    Drink and be filled up.

Thanks to the delightful Jon from EE for recommending the book.

(We* rang EE to transfer our broadband to them. At the end of a long conversation about houses, dogs, interests, family and occasionally broadband, Jon said that we'd made his day. He certainly made ours.)

*Frog and I make admin phone calls together as I'm the admin person of the family but he hears better than me.

Turning something old into something new: a to-do list for October

I am a workaholic. I was brought up to think that the day must be filled with ‘useful’ activities. This of course is anathema to creativity as the best ideas come (to me) when I’m doing something ‘useless’, like lying on the bed resting, walking aimlessly, sitting in the car, watching television.

Recently however I’ve run out of ‘useful’ things to do. I think I might have created this situation deliberately, in an attempt to leave space for new things. That doesn’t however make it any less painful and, as I said to Frog yesterday morning, I feel like I’m stumbling round a dark house.

‘Life’s catching up with you,’ he said.

I liked that. It made sense.

In the meantime, before I regain my sense of direction, I have to fill my days somehow. (Don’t I?) So when I read Kate’s ‘To-do list for October’ (see her blog 'I live, I love, I craft, I am me' ) I thought I’d compile one of my own. I didn’t intend to publish it, but Kate – who’s done so much to keep us all going, through the lockdown - suggested I did ‘so that we can all support each other as we go along’.

So here it is.

Garden/pool

I started off by listing all the jobs that needed doing (eg clear and clean the greenhouse, fetch manure, put winter cover on pool, put garden furniture away) and then I decided that was against the whole spirit of the exercise and nothing like Kate’s inspiring list. So I decided instead to say:

Bed garden and pool down for the winter – lovingly.

Sewing

By now I was better at the exercise so, instead of listing jobs, I decided that for me the purpose of sewing was to have fun. 

Even though I do occasionally follow patterns, like this new one that I’m turning into a purple shirt for Frog . . .

. . . they’re only starting points. I need to remember my first love – making do and mending – turning something old into something new.

I’m also at the moment craving a sewing room – something light and spacious, instead of a darkish corner of my study. Even though I can’t imagine where we’d put one or when we’ll ever be able to afford to build one, there’s no harm in starting to plan what I’d like.

 

Writing

Here, I listed my aims, which are:

-To change the direction of this blog. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, I want to dig deeper.

-To continue with my Secret Blog. This is something I’m writing just for me. At the moment it’s what you could call a ‘stream of negative consciousness’ but I’m letting it go where it will in the hope that it turns into something.

-To keep alert to stories, so that I can start a New Novel.

In my experience stories come to you; you can’t go looking for them. As Stephen King says in his hilarious On Writing which I’m reading at the moment (more about that another time, perhaps):

‘There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun.’

-To build my confidence. Confidence creates ideas. Lack of confidence kills them.

For the last two years I’ve been working hard with affirmations, under the guidance of the wonderful Louise Hay and her book You Can Heal Your Life.

But, as Frog pointed out recently, affirmations are just a starting point. You have to then put them into practice as this makes them real and proves them and gives you confidence in them, and creates a benign circle so that you carry on healing. So between us we decided that I could do something every day that’s new or scares me. Hence this post, I suppose!

 

Dog-walking

Because I do the main dog-walk mid-morning, I’m usually hungry and longing to get back for my lunch. Consequently I don’t always walk as far as both Ellie and I might like. I could change this routine.

Even though Frog and I have been adventurous recently, trying new walks when we go out, at home (when it’s just me and Ellie) I’m limited, but perhaps I could make small changes, such as doing walks backwards.

In other words, I can turn dogwalking from a chore to something new and confidence-boosting.

 

Cooking

I used to enjoy cooking supper because I combined it with my daily glass of wine. Since early August however I’ve cut alcohol out of my life, partly because it just wasn’t agreeing with me (however little I had) and I was feeling slightly jaded all the time (not to mention getting far too many migraines) and partly because I decided that blurring the edges of my life wasn’t helpful at the moment. I was following the ethos of my parents – work hard, drink hard and don’t think too much – but it wasn’t mine.

Now, I have to enjoy cooking for itself which I don’t particularly but I do enjoy eating and creating healthy food for Frog and me, so I decided to see cooking as time filled with something productive (I’m trying not to say ‘useful’) instead of time wasted. Another chore that I can turn into a pleasure.

 

Sorry about all this woffle. This post is something new for me, and I’ve let my thoughts and feelings run instead of marshalling them with my usual rigour. Thank you for reading it, and I hope that in some tiny way it might have helped you, or at least echoed something you feel yourself.

I realise too that I haven’t mentioned anything about autumn or the Lockdown (which featured in Kate’s list). But they do come into it. Another time perhaps.

Sanctuaries

I’m fascinated by the minutiae of people’s lives and particularly so at the moment when we’re all thrown back on our own resources. I’m shy however of revealing my own (who on earth would want to know about them?).

    Yesterday morning however I read lovely post on my new discovery ‘I live, I love, I craft, I am me’ (actually, the blogger discovered me, which is a fillip), in which she gave us a tour of her greenhouse. It was so vivid I could almost hear the birds chirruping.

    This greenhouse is her sanctuary at the moment, and at the end of the post she asked her readers to share their sanctuaries. ‘How do you cope?’ she asked. ‘What is your strategy to survive? Do share, it might help others who are struggling.’

    So I thought I might do just that, or at least show how the lockdown affects everything and how I'm adapting, by describing in detail one of my days.

Thursday 16 April

Breakfast is always a moveable feast. Frog and I take it back to bed with us and spend a long time having what we call our ‘morning meeting’ – long discussions about life, the universe and everything, and also what our plans are for the day. It's an important part of our routine, especially so now you would have thought when so many routines have gone, but I'm restless. I leave Frog dozing and take the dog out.
    I stop off first at the gate of a neighbour, C. We're swapping books because I didn’t have time to get to the library before lockdown and because C and her husband are self-isolating. I’ve introduced her to one of my favourite series . . .

The first of  Elly Griffiths' books about Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist in Norfolk, one of my favourite series

. . . and she’s introduced me to one of hers.

Books 4 and 3 of Jacqueline Winspear's series of books about Maisie Dobbs, a 1930s' sleuth. I'm finding them comforting and absorbing in an old-fashioned way and just what I need at the moment

C and I stand talking at a safe distance either side of the gate, while C's husband stays in his wheelchair the other side of their courtyard explaining that he’s taking the infection threat more seriously now than he did. It must be very hard for him. He never complains however, and neither does C. Last time I dropped by - a few days ago - he came up close and joined in the conversation and we all saw a swallow – the first of the year. I haven’t seen one since.

I set off on the track that leads uphill from C's house but soon turn off because I don’t want to meet anybody. A lot of people use the track, especially so now, and it makes me sad that we have to avoid each other and that I have to put Ellie on a lead in case people are worried about picking up infection from her.

    Bullocks as well as cows with calves have appeared in the grass fields, and the wheat fields are being sprayed this morning according to C, so I cross where I can and duck into my favourite place, a Y-shaped wood along steep valleys formed by converging streams.

Only C, her sister and I venture into the wood and it’s a jungle – unmanaged and almost unfootpathed.

It occurs to me that I could explore the wood more easily by walking up the stream beds. Another time. I have a slight headache and flop down in a patch of dappled shade under an oak tree while Ellie hurtles up and down the precipitous valley-sides and into the streams where she noisily slurps water. She loves it here too.

    My head is busy so I don’t do anything very profound with it. Instead I rest and gaze at the first bluebells. 

I treasure the way this place is wild, that nature is more important here than humans are. Strangely, I have the sense that something similar is happening to the countryside as a whole as a result of the lockdown.

    A couple of days ago I surprised a red deer in a paddock close to home. I see deer on the hill but I’ve never seen any down near the houses before, and never red ones anywhere in the area as they usually live on the moors and wilder places. It looked at me as if to say ‘What are you doing here?’
    A friend from the village emailed me earlier with pictures she’s taken near where I live of a fox with its prey. She's amazed, she says, that it stopped long enough for her to do so. I too have seen a fox recently – the first for years – and I wonder if it's the same animal.

Fox photos taken by Trish Currie. See her blog 'What's Cooking'. 

Is it simply the lack of traffic bringing the animals out or are they identifying some change in us humans? If the latter, that's an exciting thought. 

I have lunch and try to plan my afternoon. I've been working on and off for ten years on my novel The Banker’s Niece but now I'm thinking of putting it aside. It's writing that makes me feel calmest, safest, most like me, and now just when I need it most I'm abandoning a large chunk. Ironically, it's the lockdown, the loss of so much that's familiar as well as the sense that we're all on Pause, that's given me the time and space to see that I might need to give up the novel. I wrote it to heal my life, and it may be that constantly reworking it is not helping. It's blocking the flow.
    What am I now, I wonder. Where am I going?
    To be continued

Winter into spring

About this time of year I start getting excited about spring and wax lyrical about things I’ve seen and heard.

    Frog however always says lugubriously, ‘False dawn. There’s plenty more winter to come.’

    ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘You’re probably right, but that’s what spring is. Two steps forward and one step back. You have to enjoy what you can while you can.’

    A bit like life really.

    So here’s my week (and a half), good and bad.

Friday

Two days after I wrote the previous post and when I was still feeling good we went for another of our magical walks along the coast.

The sea had the translucency of recycled glass.

Ellie didn't care about that. She was more interested in tracking the movements of small mammals in the undergrowth.

Catkins jiggled in the silent woods . . .

. . . their buttery yellow echoed by toadstools hiding on an ivy-covered tree-stump.

Out in the open again, gorse flamed against the dead landscape.

Tree skeletons clung to the cliffs.

Thursday

Six days later however, winter was getting to me.
    I felt numb, inhuman. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t write – and without writing I find it hard to believe in anything.
    I sat in a field with the dog and tried to do my affirmations. I tried to list the things I had to look forward to. I shed a few tears. I prayed for help.

    On my way back I saw my first celandine of the year, nestling in a tiny patch of wood. I hadn’t been to that wood for a while as it involves a scramble down a steep bank which hurts my bad knee. I felt as if I’d been led to it, as if it was the answer to my prayer.

Saturday

On Saturday I slumped again.

    I went with Ellie to our local National Trust park and walked off piste, making my way through gates marked ‘Private’. (I'm with William and his gang of outlaws in the books by Richmal Crompton: part of the fun of walks is flouting rules.)

    I followed Ellie across a gravel ridge in the swollen river and sat on ‘my’ island, buffeted by wind, my mind as churned up as the water.

The view from 'my' island - a tiny patch of land in the middle of the river which I visit when water-levels permit

On the way back to the mainland one of my feet slipped off the gravel into deep water, soaking the inside of my boot. I squelched back to the car, avoiding a quagmire by cutting my way through thickets of brambles. (I always carry secateurs with me for just such occasions.)

    

I wondered if it was Brexit as well as winter that was bringing me down, so that evening Frog put our European flag up at half-mast. We’ve only flown it once before as we didn’t want to be divisive, but we decided that to express sorrow now was OK.

Sunday

That night I slept heavily until 5.30am when I woke with a start after an intense dream where I’d cried and told the story of my life at an inappropriate time and place (as I saw it).
    I felt like me again and after breakfast, after I’d been out to photograph the flag, I had the idea for this post.

The Banker's Niece: List of music and books

Music

Chapter 5

‘I was made to love you’ from Dreamweaver (1976) by Gary Wright

Chapter 26

‘Love minus zero’ from Bringing it all Back Home (1965) by Bob Dylan

‘Ne me quitte pas’ performed by Nina Simone, written by Jacques Brel

Chapter 39

The Albion Band (1^st album under that name, Rise up like the Sun, March 1978)

Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) (eg Out of the Blue, 1977)

Chapter 41

‘Today’ from Surrealistic Pillow (1967) by Jefferson Airplane

Chapter 43

‘Sweet Jane’ from Loaded (1970) by The Velvet Underground

‘Love minus zero’ (written by Bob Dylan, performed by the Walker Brothers) from Take It Easy with The Walker Brothers (1965)

‘Life’s been good’ from But Seriously Folks (1978) by Joe Walsh

‘Jealous guy’ from Imagine (1971) by John Lennon

‘Her father didn’t like me anyway’ from The Humblebums (1969) by the Humblebums

‘Love chronicles’ from Love Chronicles (1969) by Al Stewart

‘To see you’ from The Machine that Cried (1973) by String Driven Thing

Chapter 44

‘Never going back again’ from Rumours (1977) by Fleetwood Mac

Books (and tarot cards)

Chapter 1

Sharon uses a pack called Cosmic Tarot (1988) by the German artist Norbert Lősche
Chapter 2
(Mole and Badger are characters in) The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame

Chapter 14

The Magician’s Nephew (1955) in the Narnia series (1950-6) by C S Lewis

Chapter 16 

The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame

Chapter 22

(Gabriel Oak and Bathsheba are characters in) the film (1967) and book Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) by Thomas Hardy

Chapter 28

(Puddleglum is a character in) The Silver Chair (1953) in the Narnia series (1950-6) by C S Lewis

Chapter 30

(Mole/Moly is a character in) The Wind in the Willows (1908) by Kenneth Grahame

Chapter 31     

(Mr Darcy is a character in) Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen

Chapter 33

(Hagrid is a character in) the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) by J K Rowling

Chapter 34

(Gabriel Oak is a character in) the film (1967) and book Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) by Thomas Hardy

Chapter 37

(The Heffalump Trap features in) Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by A A Milne

(Strider is a character in) The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) in The Lord of the Rings series (1954-5) by J R R Tolkien

Look no fences: A visit to Knepp wildland

At the weekend Frog and I (sans Dog) visit my brother D and his family in West Sussex only a couple of miles from Knepp, the site of the first (I think) large-scale rewilding project in the UK and the subject of that fabulous book Wilding which I’ve mentioned several times before in this blog.

On Saturday we head to the estate for a walk. Because visitors are exhorted – extremely nicely – to stick to designated routes so as not to disturb wildlife, my well-organised brother has acquired a leaflet and chosen ours: Castle Walk. It's the longest – 8.8km.

As soon as we drive up the track to the carpark I start crying. I think it’s as much that somebody is doing something so extraordinarily brave and positive for the environment as it is the sight of the scrub and scruffy woods on either side (which as you will know if you are a diligent reader of this blog are exactly my sort of thing and increasingly hard to find).

We take a quick look at the safari office . . .

In the safari office - a blackboard for listing species spotted

. . . before entering the estate through this arch of deer antlers. It’s like entering Jurassic Park.

The entrance to Knepp's wildland

We twirl round the glamping/camping site and the yurts where yoga and other courses are held (for some of which my dear niece M does the cooking). The yoga yurt is surprisingly warm and spacious, and flooded with light from the transparent centre to its dome.

The yoga yurt (left)

We study the adjacent wild-swimming pool. It’s a bit murky and I can see slimy leg-grabbing things growing up from the bottom, but I’m almost tempted.

The wild-swimming pool

Then we head out to the bush.

It’s not long before we emerge into this. 

Our first sight of Knepp wildland. (My picture does not do it justice.)

I start crying again. I’ve never seen anything like it in this country before. There are no fences, and all I can see is scrub and trees. I feel as if I’m in a dream or a long-lost memory.

As explained in Wilding, scrub – long considered worthless - is in fact the richest wildlife habitat. Ecologists are beginning to think that our land’s natural state is not woodland but a mixture of woods, scrub, wetland and grassland. Knepp is testing this idea by leaving the land and its inhabitants to do their own thing.

Then a flock of storks appear. I'm not expecting them. I didn’t know there were storks at Knepp. They wheel over us for many minutes and I imagine that they’re performing just for us. I cry some more.

Storks. (Again, apologies for the picture. Not only did the birds keep moving but it was one of those sunny days when all I could see on the camera-screen  was myself.) 

Now we understand better some tall posts near the entrance.

Tall posts topped with untidy piles of twigs. We think they must be stork nests (or attempts to encourage the storks to nest).

Later D points me towards an article Isabella Tree (the author of Wilding) has written recently for the Guardian. It relates how storks last nested successfully in England in 1416 and are now in decline everywhere because of loss of wetlands and meadows and fatalities from power-lines and roads. The Knepp birds come from Poland and were released at Knepp only this year.

For several hours we wander the paths, looking at birds and wildflowers and fungi and a slow-worm, and eating blackberries that taste better than any I’ve eaten this year.

As well as cooking, M does postgraduate studies into the interaction between humans and their environment. We talk about our nomadic ancestors and how as humans we're meant to walk most of the time.

We take a wrong turning and stumble across a lake. Wilding tells how they ‘untamed’ the river which runs through the estate, and I've read somewhere that they aim when they can to reintroduce beavers – the best agents of waterway wilding. But this lake according to D is the result of ironworkings. We think we see a great crested grebe on it.

Back on the path, one of us points out some deer in a distant clearing, but I can’t see them. Then however on an expanse of grass next a wood we encounter an unmissable herd of cattle . . .

Wild cattle (aurochs) are extinct but these - English longhorns - are a near equivalent

. . . which look fearsome and have young with them, but ignore us.

A safari group - the first people we have encountered - is also looking at the cattle. Frog is more interested in their strange vehicle than in the animals.

We see a platform in a tree . . .

Tree platform

. . . and climb up to it. To one side is another lake (or an untamed river) . . .

View from the tree platform

 . . . and to the other, tree canopy which makes me feel like a child again and climbing trees.

The view the other way

Further on, deep in the woods, we nearly collide with a pig the exact colour of the dead bracken . . .

A Tamworth pig, a substitute for the wild boar for which Knepp does not have a licence

The walks leaflet exhorts us not to get close to the animals but we have no choice. It takes no notice of us however.

Another pig lumbers in our direction snorting. We think she’s going to attack us but at the last minute she puts her nose down and starts rooting for food. Perhaps she was simply saying hello, we think, or excited at the thought of eating.

The pig which lumbered towards us

Some piglets squeal in the undergrowth but I only catch glimpses of them and it’s too dark to take a photograph. I worry that they’re frightened. ‘No,’ say the others. ‘They’re annoyed because their mother’s gone.’ I move off anyway.

We cross a road and enter another wood and, even though it doesn’t look that different from the one we’ve just been in, we all speed up.

    ‘This isn’t part of the estate,’ says my brother D. ‘It’s not rewilded.’

    ‘It’s as if we sensed that before we knew it,’ I say to Frog.

    ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘There’s no “dawdle factor” here.’

We arrive at the deer park in front of Knepp Castle where Isabella Tree and her husband live. On the edge of a wood in dappled shade we see red deer.

Red deer

For the first time in my life I hear a red-deer stag make his autumn, rutting-season cry – a loud throaty moo designed I presume to scare off rivals. It’s impressive. He then scampers off after a couple of hinds who have run away. I feel sorry for them.

Red deer stag, pausing his mating behaviour briefly so as to stare at us (and pose for his picture)

In the distance, way out on the grassland, we spot wild (Exmoor) ponies.

We’ve now seen each of the four species of animal Knepp has introduced in order to ‘imitate the mix of herbivores that would have grazed this land thousands of years ago’ (as the wildland leaflet says). Each I realise favours a slightly different habitat, none of them anything like the uniform fields in which we plonk their domesticated versions. They all look healthy and none has fled from or attacked us as farm animals do. It’s as if they see us as equals. We’ve been happy wandering – as our nomadic ancestors did - and the animals seem happy about us being there.

We find a bird hide over a third lake and sit down to rest and chat about water-birds.

Four hours have gone and we’ve missed lunch but there’s one more thing to see – the remains of the original Knepp Castle which was destroyed by the Roundheads in 1648.

    They haven’t left much.

The remains of the first Knepp Castle

Around the ruin, fences have gone, the grass is rough and yellow not bright green and cultivated, and the river is crammed with reeds. I hope this is because the area is a new addition to the rewilding project.

We’ve been exploring the southern section of the estate, now 15 or so years into rewilding, but the northern section is not part of the project. I hope too that this will be one day be included.

For me there can never be enough wilderness. In a previous post I wrote about my vision of a future in which the current situation is reversed: in which wild countryside is the norm and reserves are where we grow our food. Now I wonder whether that goes far enough.

There are many good scientific reasons for rewilding (and Isabella Tree explains them with her usual aplomb in Wilding) but for me it’s a spiritual thing. It’s about releasing control. It’s about remembering that we are small and nature is big. It’s about relearning how to be simple.

I know that the visit to Knepp is one of the key events of my life.


If you want to know more about rewilding in general as well as other rewilding projects, have a look at the website of the four-year-old charity Rewilding Britain.