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March 20 – isolation for beginners

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A cold night – sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed, several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines through the top of the window,
And the entire neighbourhood is still
except for the cry of insects.
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

— the hermit Ryōkan (1758-1831)


I was self-isolating before it was cool.  In fact, many of us in the chronic illness community are no strangers to not going out for extended periods of time and, while it is true we will not be immune to the effects of the CoV-2019 pandemic (especially when care workers begin to be affected), we may be able to offer some advice on how to deal with being stuck inside for more than a few days at a time.

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March 18 – time of the dying III

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“We die with the dying:
See they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now, and England”

— T S Eliot, from Little Gidding, V


Human beings seem to have largely got used to being in control and apart from nature.  Ever since we stopped being primarily hunter-gatherers and moving to agriculture and raising livestock, we have had a different relationship with the land and the wild that lies beyond carefully tended fields. 

No longer part of the ecological cycle, at least in our minds, we prayed to gods to keep the chaos of disease and bad harvest at bay. As times have advanced, we have relied more on the twin gods of science and technology.  Neither is infallible.

Anthracnose stalk rot in corn


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March 16 – going viral

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I had planned to write about something else this week but I imagine no one will be surprised that I opted instead to talk about issues around the corona virus outbreak, now known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In fact, avoiding writing about it would frankly have been more than a little odd…


“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

– Aristotle, Greek philosopher (384-322 BCE)


In 1665, the bubonic plague was spreading through the UK during the second plague pandemic, which lasted over four centuries from the 1331 Black Death until 1750. When it arrived in Eyam, Derbyshire, carried by rat fleas on cloth bought from London, they decided to self-quarantine the whole village. This resulted in the death of 273 people out of the total population of 350.

Eyam
Eyam


Sadly, their selfless actions did little to prevent the transmission of what we now call The Great Plague, with 100 000 people dying in London alone, but their call to isolate themselves holds up with the current advice given out by public health officials.

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March 9 – meadowland

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Stretching between the small market town of Bakewell and Buxton Spa, the A5 is one of Britain’s more attractive roads. It follows the course of the River Wye, sandwiched between the downs and meadows of the Derbyshire Dales. Halfway between the two towns is a steep limestone hillside which rises sharply from the road, tumbling down to the Monsal Trail and Miller’s Dale to the north.  Its fields are interwoven with the dry-stone walls typical of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, marking out enclosures and lending the whole area a picturesque feel that so endears it to tourists from outlying cities.

From 1992 and 1994, I spent three summers as a biology PhD student in the Peak District National Park.  This meadow hillside of Priestcliffe Lees National Nature Reserve was my research site, and some quarter of a century on my bond with the area remains undiminished.

A close up of a hillside Description automatically generated
Miller’s Dale viewed from Priestcliffe Lees


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March 2 – the trick is to keep breathing

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“Now how is mindfulness of in-&-out breathing developed & pursued so as to be of great fruit, of great benefit?
“There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore. Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.

— Anapanasati Sutta (Mindfulness of Breathing Sutra)


It is often said that our life on earth begins with our first inhalation, and ends with a final outbreath.  Between those two points are all of the joys and sadnesses that encompass a human life. 

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February 24 – take your medicine!

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Yunmen, teaching his community, said, “Medicine and disease cure each other. The whole earth is medicine. Where do you find yourself?”

— The Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku), case 87

“’He’s taken my medicine, he’s taken my medicine, he’s taken my medicine!’ sang Roo happily, thinking it was a tremendous joke.”

— A A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner


When we get sick, at the most basic level we want to go to someone and be given something that will make us well.  This, essentially, is medicine. 

With many chronic illnesses we quickly learn that this kind of medicine does not exist and returning to health is not a simple matter of taking a tablet or popping a pill.  Rather it is more like a complete reappraisal of your life, finding the things that make you feel better, and pruning those which lead to a worsening of symptoms. 

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February 20 – happy when it rains

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“You were my sunny day rain
You were the clouds in the sky”

— The Jesus and Mary Chain, Happy When it Rains (Darklands, 1986)


February 2020 in the south of England has largely been a story of wind and rain with storms Ciara and Dennis visiting these shores.  This is not entirely unusual, and I actually enjoy the wildness of the weather, blowing wet over the fields and through the trees. 


Rain is one of those kinds of weather that inspire haiku and I have written a few myself on this subject:

finger painting
I fall into the sound
of rain

(Stardust Haiku, September 2018) Continue reading →

February 18 – the Zen of Pooh

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Look, Pooh!” said Piglet suddenly. “There’s something in one of the Pine Trees.”
“So there is!” said Pooh, looking up wonderingly. “There’s an Animal.”
Piglet took Pooh’s arm, in case Pooh was frightened.
“Is it One of the Fiercer Animals?” he said, looking the other way.
Pooh nodded.
“It’s a Jagular,” he said.
“What do Jagulars do?” asked Piglet, hoping that they wouldnt.
“They hide in the branches of trees, and drop on you as you go underneath,” said Pooh.
“Christopher Robin told me.”
“Perhaps we better hadn’t go underneath, Pooh. In case he dropped and hurt himself.”
“They don’t hurt themselves,” said Pooh. “They’re such good droppers.”
Piglet still felt that to be underneath a Very Good Dropper would be a Mistake, and he was just going to hurry back for something which he had forgotten when the Jagular called out for them.
“Help! Help!, it called.
“That’s what Jagulars always do,” said Pooh, much interested. “They call ‘Help! Help!’
and then when you look up, they drop on you.
“I’m looking down,” cried Piglet loudly, so as the Jagular shouldn’t do the wrong thing by accident.

— A A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner


It may be a little-known fact that the Hundred Acre Wood from A A Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories is a real place.  Well sort of real. 

Ashdown Forest not looking very foresty


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February 17 – mind mountains

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“The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.”

— Li Bai (701–762)

“Going to the mountains
Is like going home“

— John Muir (1838-1914)


Once I lived near mountains.  Coming-in to land at Zurich Airport, you could often see the tips of the Alps breaking through the clouds, in what feels like some kind of dream landscape.

At the end of Lake Zurich, the Alps are also there and walking to work in the morning, I crossed a bridge which gave me a view over the water onto the mountains behind.  Regardless of how many times I saw this, it was still stunning.

A couple of months before I became ill we had a work trip to climb mountains in the Bernese Oberland near Chur and I remember breathlessly trying to catch up with my 40 year old Swiss boss (I was 25 and pretty fit) as he strode ahead of me up a gully of snow.  By February of the next year (1996) I would struggle to walk to the bathroom and, in a well-worn metaphor, the stairs in my parent’s house would feel as hard to climb as those alpine slopes.

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February 13 – of wolf and man

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“I am a wolf man
Under skies heavy with snow
My eyes are convex lenses of ebony
Embedded in amber
I am a man-wolf
The fat bourgeois and his doppelganger
Are buried in their solid glare
Twin specimens of insect, set for display”

— Hawkwind, Steppenwolf (Astounding Sounds, Amazing Stories, 1976)


I don’t like Valentine’s Day.  This will probably not surprise anyone who knows me.  And it is not because I have been single for the past seven years and am jealous of those in relationships.  Rather, I am not a fan of being told what to do and when to do it, and state-sanctioned romance with hearts and flowers is really not my bag. 

Fortunately, the Romans have supplied a dark alternative to the festival of Hallmark cards in the form of Lupercalia (also giving its name to a splendid poem by Ted Hughes*).  Although Valentine’s Day may share its name with a Christian saint**, many people think its origins lie in this pre-Christian Roman holiday (although truth be told that your date may not be terribly impressed if you turn up with a dead goat rather than a bunch of roses tomorrow night). 

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