Strid woods

Its half an hour until the third world-cup game of the day and I’m flat-out on the sofa, letting myself off the hook whilst I recover from the laser eye surgery I had the other day. I’m full of lentil dahl and a lethargy that only comes from hours and hours of watching sport, all that movement and chaos on the pitch sliding past your eyes whilst you lay stone-still with just a farting, twitching lurcher for company.

I decide to break the dordling flow of the day and get up to Barden Bridge for a walk round Strid woods with Rab. Sod the final game, let’s face the head rush and stand up. As we drive through Silsden the debris of an early England kick-off is everywhere, a girl is swaying about outside the Jet garage in an 1966 shirt and denim shorts, the pub doorways are a ajar with men and their pints, and there’s a que outside Curry Corner where two people are bend-double laughing. Nothing is at rest tonight, and Monday doesn’t exist for a few golden hours.

I reach the little car park just as Bolton Abbey packs its bags, a thousand families are heading home with fishing nets and sunburn, doors slam shut on tired children and then their faces peer out, fighting sleep until the very last. A young girl approaches me from the ice cream van she’d been hovering around when I pulled up.

“Do you have a phone? It’s just my boss was meant to pick me up ages ago and hasn’t turned up. My mum will be worried”

“I do, but not signal, never get it here” I’ve got my phone out to prove it

“Oh its fine” she seems suddenly very happy to leave it there, but I’m concerned now

“I can give you a lift if you like, to wherever you need to go”

“No, I’ll wait”

I don’t realise what’s going in until a few minutes later, how scared she is. There are a few things about me that I had forgotten when I left the house. For a start, the whites of my eyes are bright red with blood since the surgery and I look like I’m dressed up for Halloween, add to that the fact I haven’t washed today and the large helping of dahl that I have down my front and you’ll see how quickly she must have regretted talking to me.

But I wasn’t done, in a bid to reassure her, to let he know I wasn’t deserting her, that I am a good Samaritan, I say if he hasn’t turned up by the time I’ve finished my walk I’ll give her a lift. Poor girl. Never mind worrying about mum, now she’s got precisely as long as this weirdo’s walk takes to get picked up, or he’s giving her a lift even though his eyes are bleeding and he’s covered in what might be sick.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve been down here and the sweet smells of wild garlic and bluebells have given way to a musty, dry smell as ferns start to tower by the path and grass is cut for silage in nearby fields. It hasn’t rained properly for ages, earth is cracked and the moss is brittle on the baking-hot dry stone walls. It’s been an unrelenting day of tall heat, no clouds, just a moon out early in the blue above fells, who are resting now in the low evening light. Curlews are frantic about everything, and every so often one gets caught from underneath by the warm glowing sun, orange now where it should be grey. Gulls too, they’re not at rest for some reason, not the blackbirds either who are scalding alarm calls back and forth all over. Surely a hawk is around?

I’ve been drawn down here a lot since Ali died, she came here to be free when undergoing treatment, to magic up characters and plots for her novella and to blast herself out from under a disease that hard as it might try couldn’t keep her from nature. She was no doubt pleased with the lack of phone signal too, a bit of time where none of us could be in touch, subconsciously seeking her reassurance, hoping she was having a good day. I think about her when I’m walking these same paths, and it makes me smile that she had this place, this time out of mind in the woods. Of everywhere I go this is where I find her easiest and it’s her defiance that inhabits me as we trudge around under the filtered light, me looking for hawks and Rabbit looking for squirrels.

When we get back to the car the girl has gone, and I’m probably more relieved than her, I mean how could I make it any better – I’d end up refusing her the lift to make a point or something. I drive back over Embsay Moor as the sun tilts off into one of those eternal midsummer sunsets. I catch the last ten minutes of the match on the radio and I’ve missed a good game but nothing compares to an hour or two in Ali’s woods.  

Not playing out

We haven’t been going up the lane much recently so it was a nice surprise when the top field was free of sheep. The wind hadn’t died down yet and the long grass was swaying about all over. I dispatched Rab off into it, gallivanting down the hill after her ball. It’s warm, so she curtails her joy-loops and settles down about fifty yards away, I smile over at her stupid head, poked up above the long grass, tongue flopped out in the wind all daft. I decide to sit down too, on the path where the grass is a bit shorter, and I watch the wildflowers tip this way then that in the breeze. Occasionally she feels ready for another chase and drops her ball, just out of reach so I have to get up. I tell her firmly she’s getting trained one of these days. After a few of these ups and downs I hear a guttural scream which sounds so odd I wonder if it’s some kind of machine, or maybe even a cow in distress, but then the shock subsides and the sound takes form:

“OOOIIIII, it’s not a bloody playground”

I’m stood looking at where it’s coming from - the big detached farm house across the next field - and then finally decipher a guy stood on his wall. Blimey what to do? I shout back as loud as I can:

“I can’t hear you” cupping my ears in case he’s not sure.

This is mainly to buy time, find a reaction that respects both my pride and my safety but also it’s quite funny, asking him to shout louder given how enormous his first attempt was. But he tries, and hell, he succeeds.

“I said it’s not a bloody playground, clear off”

This time I respond immediately “I never said it was”

He doesn’t seem to hear, or I’m not giving him chance, but I shout again “What is it, is it not a footpath?”

“YES! It is. Not a playground. Now CLEAR.OFF.” He’s motioning now back the way I’d come

I’m a bit done-in by this sudden confrontation, I was just starting to loosen-off from a day of malfunctioning spreadsheets and really didn’t need any of this. So it’s in this state, on a beautiful evening amongst the wildflowers that I shout back over the wall, almost pleading:

 “I’M NOT PLAYING”

Well fuck me. Look at us, bellowing back-and-forth across a field as the world spins on all around us, spring in full flow and a million birds singing their evening songs. Its two angry men filling the air tonight though, crying inside about territory and rules, masculinity raining down and clogging everything like frogspawn. But for it to finish on that broken holla of every little boy that ever got upset, that final act of defiance. “I’m not playing”. Well that’s unwritable.

Rab and I take our ball home and turn on Springwatch instead. I hope we’re not on there tomorrow, “Look at these two male pipits disputing territory, very common this time of year when headspace is in such short supply”.

Leighton Moss

The colours all gone out the world again. I know, I know. We’re watching marsh harriers dancing over the reeds and Christ, an otter just slithered past all casual but I’m full up. The memories are fresh and warm in each hide, in the swaying reeds, in the smell of the shiny books and t-towels you loved so much in the shop. Memories of fear, of hope, the miracle around the corner, a hand on a knee, a shared cup of tea, the finches and tits on the winter feeders. Your face alive with the power of everything that ever lived as a robin lands on your hand to feed. You came good here, each and every single time, you came good. 

On the skytower staring at some dust out west by the sea, willing it to come closer and settle over the reed bed in front. A starling murmuration we’d travelled fifty miles to see but which wouldn’t shift the half-mile up the reserve to meet us. Cruel nature. But there's not time to be missing things like this, so its down the tower and into the car, we’ll catch them near the Eric Morecambe hide. 

“Are you sure?” I say 

“Well they’re not here are they? lets go” 

“Pullover!”. A thousand, a million of them in the shape of a whale over the field. And now look, look at you. Head tipped back on the car, eyes packed full with life, lips motionless and slightly apart, begging the sky to beam you up. Throw you into that seething pack, sway this way then that back to the roost where its just you and your birds crouched under the winter sky till dawn. But your hands. Your hands are too cold, let me get you in the car and home for a bath. Maybe this was the last time we came to Leighton? I don’t know who to ask.

“What’s that, there?” Dan’s question so succinct that it must be urgent, I see a long bar flying up the lake and think black-backed gull because I’m not used to seeing ospreys. At some point we realise, there’s maybe some words exchanged but I don’t recall them because the colour’s all back in the world and this bird just tilted into a curve showing me its big brown back. Three failed attempts at catching a fish, each time banking round and flapping like a kestrel as it waits for its next moment, a call from the tower to land. We’re close enough to hear the splash and see it shaking the water from those thick feathered legs, maybe in frustration. We don’t drop our binoculars for what feels like ten minutes, swifts keep crossing in front but they’re midges now against his ungainly frame. A woman asks me if they eat mammals too and I wonder if she’s scared. I feel like we all should be, nobody move until he’s gone.

When he does leave I remember why we’re here, that the memories I’d been indulging all day were the bad ones, the in-between ones, the half-thoughts in a day otherwise perfect, they weren’t the story of this place. We came here to be lost, caught in the talons of an osprey and dragged off to a place where all that ever shines is the feathers of a bird, no strip lights or bleached floors, no glasses hanging from the neck of that no-hope consultant as he pauses over your blood results. No, not lost. We came here to be found, picked up from the debris of your illness and laid out in a winter sun, tenderly brought round from the dizziness of loss.

Dan and I wander on through some woodland that’s thick and sticky with spring growth. We don’t say much and it reminds me of the silences with you, respectful of that bird and the time we both needed to recover from it.

The evening is chirping-in at the car-park, blackbirds singing above the slamming doors as we throw our things in the boot. We’re not done, away to Foulshaw Moss to chase this osprey back to its nest. There’s a tower above the raised bog and some volunteers with a scope who show us what’s what before leaving. We set our scope up and watch the male perched in a tree, just a white smudge from all the way back here. Soon Dan sees him fly back over towards Leighton, sent back to do a proper job this time. We watch a marsh harrier for a while as the wind gets colder, we’re hungry but when the colours are back in the world there’s nothing to do but look and so that’s what we do, stood up there like a couple of kids with BMXs, watching the redpolls chase back and forth and letting dusk settle over us. When we finally pack up and wander back we see two greater spotted woodpeckers at their nest. After a full day peering and peeping through hides and scopes Dan is still brimming with of all the enthusiasm you’ll ever see in a person, staring at the mess of black, white and red on the tree, so much like you.