Hogmanay -The last Wastart sunset of the year

Grey Granite felt drawn reflectively to the Wastart on this  last afternoon of the year and was fortunate just to catch the sun as it went down behind the ruins of Pitheughie. Today has been grey and mostly overcast  a strong wind has risen (gusting to 36mph) but fortuitously the clouds broke just in time for the sun to blaze through. A good ending to the year, a positive omen for the year ahead.

Only Connect:The Butterfly Isles

Peacock on lady's mantle

Scotch Argus

Grey Granite is currently rejoicing in reading The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals by Patrick Barkham, Granta Books 2010. Grey Granite finds it difficult to put this enthralling, lyrical book down and is irked by interruptions to her reading.
This  is new nature writing at its best, describing the author's quest to reconnect with his boyhood passion for butterflies by aiming to see each of Britain's 59 indigenous butterfly species within a single season.

The following passage resonates particularly with Grey Granite's sense of the need to be outside connecting with the natural world in order to maintain mental and spiritual well being: 

'We have to reforge our relationship with natural beauty...To us nature is something we do through the BBC Natural History Unit and a television screen. Our whole relationship is remote and not experiential. We underestimate the importance of beauty and wonder in our lives at our peril....what fascinates me in life is the relationship we have with species. Man and dog. Woman and horse. Man and butterfly.One to one. There is something there. It's ineffable but we know it is there'.

The Third Day of Christmas

Grey Granite and Rufus walked down to the beach, passing through a snowy James Ramsey Park on the way. There is a thaw, roads mainly have  a single clear track but the pavements are impassible on account of the feet of snow cleared from the roads heaped up on them. Already in the park there are catkins forming on the alders and on the willows silky, white catkins are emerging from their sheaths on the young reddish twigs, very encouraging.

We walked down to the bents and reached the beach via Tiger Hill where a family was enjoying sledging. There is still snow down to the high tide mark, by contrast the sand looks very dark. We have been amazed at how little sign there has been of people actually going out and enjoying the snow, even in the early 'deep and crisp and even stage'. In the park and on the South Links there are still huge areas of completely undisturbed snow.

Fiere by Jackie Kay

After a no  newspaper Saturday yesterday, Grey Granite rejoiced in having The Observer to browse over her coffee this morning. (Well worth the perilous icy walk to collect it.) She particulary liked this article and has already taken advantage of Amazon 'one click' to order  a copy of Fiere, Red Rust Road having being one of the most enjoyable and stimulating reads of the year.

 How a Mancunian taxi driver taught me the true meaning of friendship
Poet Jackie Kay reflects on the things that really count as the old year fades away

Last year at Christmas, my 84-year-old dad went to tell his next-door neighbour he would be away for 10 days. He slipped on the ice on his neighbour's path, bruised his hip very badly and never made it down to my house in Manchester. (The moral of that story is don't tell anyone you're going away!) My mum was gutted.

But on Christmas Eve when I phoned, they sounded unexpectedly exhilarated. Sean, next door, had shovelled the snow from their garden path, twice. Barbara, across the road, had brought them a homemade stew. Isabel, down the road, had brought them a bottle of whisky. They were just having a wee nip: "Nothing like it; warms the old heart."


But what had really cheered them was the winter camaraderie, the way the extremes of cold somehow allow people to behave spontaneously, warmly. "You wouldn't believe the amount of people who have rung to find out if we're OK!" my mum announced proudly on the phone, as if the bad weather had suddenly given her a glow of celebrity.


Two years ago on New Year's Day, my friend Ali Smith phoned and sang the whole of "Auld Lang Syne" down the phone. She has a lovely, tuneful voice, quite high. "So gies a haund my trusty fiere/ and here's a haund o' thine;/ And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught/ For auld lang syne." "What a great word fiere is," she said. "You know that it means friend, it's an old Scots word for friend, like jo." I'd known that auld lang syne meant something like "old time's sake" and that a right guid-willie waught was probably a decent measure of whisky, but I'd never stopped at fiere. I looked the word up in my Chambers; there it was, fiere, companion, mate, equal. And, if used as an adjective, it means able, sound. We've called each other fiere every since.


At the close of one year and the beginning of the next, the turning of the tables, I always find myself feeling especially contemplative. This year, I've been thinking about friendship; good friends are lifesavers. They make everything seem possible and difficult times bearable. Once, I remember being glad to see the back of a particular year and desperate to get on to the good, clear path of a new one. That year, it was my friends who were my saving grace: companions on the dusty road, the "sound" friends are in it for the duration. There's something glorious and nourishing about a lifelong friend.


The other day, I was in a taxi coming back from Manchester Piccadilly. The taxi driver said: "Is that a Glasgow accent I hear?" "It is," I said. "You've got a good ear." "I used to go to Glasgow a lot. I met a friend of mine there. We were both 16 and in the junior boxing championship. We fought each other in the final and after that – friends for life. We're 63 now. He's just had a stroke. Where are your family from?" he asked me. "My father was from Nigeria..." "I was going to say Nigeria," he said, looking at me keenly in the rear-view mirror. "I looked at your face and I thought: Nigeria.


"Let me tell you a story. When I was about 19, in the 60s, my brother and I were on our way home when we came across this black guy, black as that taxi in front of us, who'd been badly beaten up. It was a freezing winter. He'd have died of hypothermia if we hadn't come across him. We dragged him home and he stayed with us for years. My mam just swept him under her arm, gave him a clip in the ear, and he became part of our family. Connie was a student doctor from Nigeria. Well, I'm from a big Irish family; to my mother, a doctor in the house was like having a priest.


"My family knew what prejudice was. Someone once said to me, 'Do you Irish keep pigs in your house?' When I told my dad, who never read a book in his life, he said, 'People will say many things, but we know who we are.' I said to him, 'Where did you get that from?' 'I made it up myself,' the old man said. He was a bit of the homespun philosopher was my father. Connie became a lifelong friend too. We went out to visit his family in Nigeria just after Biafra. Oh the things I saw then. I wouldn't want to repeat.


"Have you been to Nigeria?" he asked me. I told him I'd been twice, that I'd not grown up with my birth father, and that when I'd found him, he'd spent the best part of two hours dancing around me, that he saw me as his past sin who needed to be cleansed. I told him that I grew up with my mum and dad in Scotland.


"Ah," the taxi driver said, "any man can be a father, but not every man can be a dad. That one you grew up with, he's the real dad."


And then we arrived at my terraced house and I shook hands with Charlie, as he turned out to be called, and got out of the black taxi into the freezing cold air, warmed and cheered by the whole encounter.


Last year around this time, I'd been worrying about what my mum and dad would make of Red Dust Road, the memoir I'd just finished writing about tracing my birth parents. In the new year, I went to visit them and by this time they'd read the proof. My dad pointed at a bit that said he was threatened by me finding my Nigerian father and said: "Why would I be threatened? I wasn't when you found your birth mother and she's in this country and he's all the way in Nigeria." And my mum chipped in: "Because he's another father, John." And my dad said: "Well, can you put in, 'My dad disputes this'."


Now, the snow is thick outside my house again and the year has come round quicker than it seemed it was going to in June. Only when you get the winter boots out, the scarves, gloves and hats, does it suddenly seem no time at all since last year when my dad fell and they didn't have their Christmas here. This year I'm keeping everything crossed that by the time you read this they'll be here. Every Christmas with 80-plus parents feels like a blessing; I'm grateful to have them still here. They are great lovers of coincidence. When they get here, I'll tell them about the taxi driver. And my mum will say something like: "Isn't that odd! Do you see what paths our lives cross?" And I'll nod.




Red Dust Road is published by Picador; Fiere, a new collection of poems by Jackie Kay, will be published on 7 January

When icicles hang by the wall

Winter

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl

Tu-whoo!

Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—

Then nightly sings the staring owl

Tu-whoo!

Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

W Shakespeare

The temperature in Fraserburgh last night fell to -13c and rose just enough for there to be a slight, drippy thaw in the sunshine. It occurs to Grey Granite that there must be a whole generation of children who have never really seen icicles. During the last few days spectacular examples have started to appear hanging from eaves and walls.This one is poised just above our front door and is about 18 inches long.

Winter solstice

The shortest day of the year and Grey Granite can't help feeling, that, despite the 14" of snow in the garden, the year has turned and things will gradually improve. This optimism is probably because light levels are so important to her.

'Saftly, saftly lichts

 the mornin star.The black

abys will nae oot it'

George Bruce

Still more snow

So far this month there has been a thick covering of snow on the ground on all but two days. During the two days of the brief thaw there were wreaths and mounds of snow waiting, as they say, for more. More snow has arrived with a vengeance causing travel chaos across the UK and mainland Europe.

Mormond Hill under a blanket in snow and swathed in mist

Even the Fraserburgh roof tops look magical

The snow has now reached a depth of about 12 inches

During the last few days an unprecedented amount of snow has fallen. Grey Granite is very grateful that she has nothing more pressing to do than to walk Rufus and to admire the relatively traffic free calm. However, we are very concerned about the plight of birds and other wildlife. Reports in the press today suggest that the robin may become an endangered species if the cold persists. This morning we saw a tiny mouse eating sunflower seeds from the kitchen window bird feeder, we don't grudge him his lunch.

Christmas Reads

Grey Granite thinks the possibilities for interesting walks will be limited this Christmas and following Dr Anne's example has planned her reading list.It is a great regret that The weekend Scotsman, The Guardian and The Observer will not be published for 2 weeks  -Bah humbug!

Grey Granite habitually reads an novel, often as an ebook, a nonfiction title and poetry concurrently. She also listens to an audio book during walks to the shops without Rufus. 
At present she is browsing Edward Thomas and re reading Jessie Kesson. She must finish Richard Dawkins: The Ancestors Tale then will move on to:

Patrick Barkham, The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals


Jenny Diski, What I Don't Know About Animals

Juliet Gardiner The Blitz: The British Under Attack

Carol Anne Duffy,  The Feminist Gospels

Donald Paterson, Homecomings

James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still (widely regarded by contributors to The Scotsman's round up of best books of the year)

Current Audio books are Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles to be followed by Dawn French, A Tiny Bit Marvellous 

Thaw - Edward Thomas

The thaw has set in and the landscape has again been transformed, this morning by half thawed snow and flooded fields. The monochromatic view from the Formartine Buchan Way to Mormond Hill over fields frozen with half frozen water still signaled Winter. However, the thawing landscape by Philorth Woods this morning brought to mind 'Thaw'  by Edward Thomas.  Perhaps, given that we are still over  a week away from the shortest day and more cold weather forecast for next week, this is optimism in the extreme.

Thaw

Over the land freckled with snow half thawed

The speculating rooks at their nests cawed

And saw from the elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass

What we could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas

Serendipitously this article by David Constantine appeared in  today's  Guardian and resonated with Grey Granite who, like the author, has known and loved the poems and essays of Edward Thomas for over 40 years.

My hero: Edward Thomas

'Thomas has been a kind and implacable friend to me'





I began reading Edward Thomas in a cold winter 40 years ago. I found the blue hardback Collected Poems secondhand on Durham market, and by the fire in our strange habitation under the castle mound, nobody else at home, I read him at once, entire, knowing ever more certainly, poem by poem, that I loved him, he would be with me for life, I would learn from him.


Like other Romantics, Thomas got his poems most characteristically by walking. He was a man who walked away solitary into the wind and the rain when anxiety and the black melancholy were upon him; or who might tramp by your side, mile after mile, companionable, and never say a word; or be with you, as he was with Robert Frost, talking, listening, pausing at a gate, a gap, a stile, and so in the rhythm of a long walk and in the attentive to and fro of a conversation you would come nearer and nearer, both of you, to some important understanding.


At the heart of writing, it is always a matter of truth or lies, and anyone in that vocation wants companions, living and dead, who, when you glance their way inquiringly, will warn you by a look if you are edging away from the truth into the many ways of telling lies. Thomas has been one such kind and implacable friend to me. Having his own true tone of voice, he acts like a tuning fork in the ceaseless effort to hit and hold your own.


The dead move and change as the living do. You may think you know them through and through but then, after a lapse of time (in which you have aged), they startle you again. Just the other day, out of context, on a card, not in a book, these lines filled me with a new rush of gratitude: "A house that shall love me as I love it, / Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash trees / That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches / Shall often visit and make love in and flit . . ."




David Constantine won the BBC National Short Story award this week.

In the great silence of snow

Last night the temperature fell to -7c but this morning the sun shone and the snow covered fields were exceptionally beautiful glistening and sparkling. Extraordinary how few people venture out to enjoy them. Rufus and Grey Granite walked down towards Merryhillock and were privileged to be able to watch a pair of roe deer in the middle of a completely unblemished snow field. First we saw the buck, reddish with a creamy white scud standing stock still, he was shortly joined by a doe, they stood together for a short while before running in a wide arc across the field, sending up  a fine dust of powdery snow as they went - eventually disappearing in a patch of gorse and scrub. What a life affirming sense of being engaged with the world comes from being able to watch wild animals and birds going about their lives oblivious to one's presence.

This sighting sent Grey Granite back to browse one of her favourite poets, Edward Thomas, for the sake of:

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,

In the great silence of snow

A child was sighing

and bitterly saying: 'Oh,

They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,

The down is fluttering from her breast!'

and still it fell through that dusky brightness

On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

and this

Out in the Dark

Out in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round

And, when the lamp goes, without sound

At a swifter bound

Than the swiftest hound,

Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And star and I and wild and deer,

Are in the dark together, - near,

Yet far, - and fear

Drums on my ear

In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.

Snowy walk

Grey Granite and Rufus have become completely scunnert with restricted urban walks and decided to venture further afield. Despite the depth of snow, 9 -10 inches in places, it was relatively easy going. Rufus, however, got very excited and at times behaved badly wanting to chase any thing that moved, including Grey Granite's feet and passing traffic.

 Mormond Hill from the top of Boothby Road.

The footpath down towards Tesco had been cleared, the snow is soft and grainy,  like Kendal Mint cake, the sparse traffic was moving very slowly and we had  a pleasant walk down to the Bents



The bents were almost deserted apart from forlornly crying curlews



Tiger Hill
Given that all the Fraserburgh schools are closed to most pupils we had anticipated hoards of children sledging. Strichen Road park was as deserted as the beach and in 4 hours of walking we saw only one snowman.

We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves. There were wagtails, a few oyster catchers, scavenging crows and a few seagulls flying overhead. Rufus enjoyed chasing foam and other fairlies, Grey Granite rejoiced in being outside in such beautiful surroundings and peaceful solitude.

The intrepid Rufus, who always gets excited as we approach the beach, led the way impatiently.

Still it snows

According to today's Press and Journal this is the worst Winter for 40 years, the Forth Bridge was closed for the first time ever yesterday, more than half Scotland's school were also closed. Grey Granite is very relieved no longer  to have to make the dreaded, dammed if you do, damned if you don't, school closure decision



We have had daily snow falls for over a week now, the accumulated snow in the garden is almost  a foot deep



Rufus is bemused by the snow, his toys disappear, it is deeper than his legs and sticks to his beard. Undaunted, he bounds through the snow and occasionally dashing about in ever decreasing circles snapping at falling flakes as if they were flies.