Recent extreme heat has caused me to spend rather more time hiding in the shade than usual and some of that time has seen me reviewing a selection of old posts in this newsletter. My first post on Substack, three years ago, was a local political comment, intended for neighbours in the small town where I live, to complain about inappropriate municipal mowing of a meadow during peak flowering and insect attendance - which continues annually, and which I still do not understand. Once started down this rabbit hole, I kept going. My second post was about gardening … it still has something to offer. In particular I quoted this from the science fiction author Ray Bradbury, (Fahrenheit 451) from 1954.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted … It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
Anyway …
I already had some topics partially prepared for the next couple of weeks posts, but I may be running out of original ideas and the very last thing I want to do is to commit the sin of boring any of my hundreds of readers. Some pondering whilst out walking is called for to refresh my ideas. Consequently, this is the last regular post for a little while as I try developing fresh ideas before returning to the fray. There will almost certainly though be occasional postcards in the interim, to maintain your interest.
I will be back before winter, refreshed and with new content and new ideas.
Richard
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Postscript …
This was going to appear in next Sunday’s regular post. It would be a shame to waste it:
I came across a quotation from John Clare, that I like - “The fields was our church” and I thought to ferret out the origin. I had quite a bit of difficulty tracking it down but, with a little help from a fellow Substacker, I found that it is from a prose text, not from one of his poems, ‘…we heard the bells chime but the fields was our church and we seemed to feel a religious feeling in our haunts on the sabbath…’ being the full quotation. It’s an evocative quote though, and entirely in keeping with my limited knowledge of Clare and his work.
In the process of my delving, I also turned up another Clare line: “I found the poems in the fields / And only wrote them down” It effectively shares the same sentiment.
Clare was good - worth seeking out some of his writings if you are not familiar with them.
It might seem strange to solicit subscriptions (which are free, by the way) just as the frequency of publication is being scaled back for a while, were it not that when I return later in the year, popping back occasionally in the interim with “picture postcards”, there will be such tales to tell, and I’d hate you to miss them. This button will ensure we keep in touch if you are not already a subscriber.
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