punctuating time

‘… long, long time ago, I can still remember …’ go the lyrics to American Pie (“The Day the Music Died”) by Don Mclean. I remember watching the news of the plane crash in 1959, when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper died. I used to sing along to Buddy Holly songs – well when I say sing that’s probably stretching it a bit. The Headmaster said I was tone deaf and banned me from the choir. You’ll just have to imagine my rendering of ‘Peggy Sue’!

But I digress, I remember because it also marked a huge change in my life as we had recently moved from the country to the suburbs of Bath. I hated change and couldn’t handle the move at all for years after … Even now, especially in spring, just like mole I get a hankering to revisit my old home. Long gone now, replaced by an ‘architect designed des res’ but still it pulls me.

waking up
the sounds of the day
waking up

I was at home playing in the woods and fields. Sometimes I’d be out all day; waking with the birds – sparrows, always sparrows chattering from under the eaves, and tree sparrows twittering from a nearby ash (and if I was lucky, a green woodpecker or cuckoo calling). And only coming in, reluctantly, as the owls began hooting, and the blackbird had sung his last song.

punctuating time
a blackbird’s song

Going to bed had its own challenges. While the outdoors held no horrors even in the dark, my bedroom lit only by a single oil lamp, had lots of spooky corners. And a wardrobe. Scary! Even the patterns on the wallpaper seemed to move.

shadows on the wall chasing sleep

Was I lonely – I don’t think so. Or did I ‘learn to be lonely’ as in the Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song from Phantom of the Opera (covered here beautifully by my daughter Bea … Excuse the plug!)

‘Child of the wilderness’ … The lyrics say it all!

I was, I suppose, a precocious child. I could read and spell, even quite difficult words like ‘intelligence’, before starting school, but struggled with writing and arithmetic.

I hated school! I didn’t fit. Had few friends. And thought and behaved differently. I spent an awful lot of time reading or staring out the window …

Hidden

I turned the page.
[…] “‘I have amazing news for you – and indeed for every bird-lover in the country,’”he whispered. […]

It was my first day at Junior (Primary) school and I had picked a book to read, from the library shelves.

“Bennett! What are you doing ?”

“Reading, Miss” (I hadn’t heard the Headmistress come into class). “We were told to”, Miss.

“What have I been talking about?”

“Dunno, Miss.”

“Come here!” (six raps on the knuckles for not paying attention and six more for answering back). “Write out, in your best handwriting, ‘I must not read in class’. Twelve times!”

Did she know that my writing was awful. I could read, and spell almost anything, but write – I couldn’t write for toffee.

I returned to my desk and stared out the window; a Green Woodpecker flew up into the trees bordering the grounds of the old Rectory. Overgrown and unkempt – a place of mystery and adventure. …

I sneaked a look at the next page.
[…] “‘As I suspected, the birds you saw and which I have been watching for fifteen minutes are Bee-eater.’”[…]

The bell rang …

morning assembly
sparrows chattering
in the playground

As told to my son many many years later. He ‘got it’ straight away! Made me think.

But it was this book ‘The Fourth Key’ by Malcolm Saville that inspired and fed my passion for watching birds … that was to last a lifetime.

across the meadow – part 3