The Old Stomping Ground

  A true friend and an unique character, my tribute to Socs who shared our lives for 16 years...

    
Where are you now, my friend
Since our sixteen years together have come to an end?
Have you returned to the old neighbourhood?
And the gateway at which you once stood?

Do the people there catch sight
Of the cat from number three, silhouetted in the moonlight?
Chide their foolishness and turn inside
As you slink into the shadows and hide?

Do you now lie under the privet hedge?
Bask in the sun on the window ledge?
Along the pavements do you still walk?
Pounce on leaves that you joyfully stalk?

Do you sleep in the plant pot under the stars?
Stretch out on the bonnets of neighbours’ parked cars?
When your wild spirit broke free did it soar?
Back to the old place, there to be, forever more?

  We relocated our new home,
But the gardens and fields you never did roam.
The hearth and fire were all you sought
As you clung to life and bravely fought.

Tired and worn, you still followed me around,
But now you moved without a sound.
I watched as your wildness and life ebbed away,
As my wild tiger became a kitten again with each passing day.

They say animals are the truest friends,
And that a broken heart soon mends.
But Socs, my old pal, I miss you in spades,
And the memories and love never fades

I hope you have returned to our old home,
Strong and young again, able to roam.
I will forever hold open the door and see,
You walking through with a 'meow' just for me.
      

Socs was brought to my house by a friend who, knowing how upset I was at the loss of a previous cat, thoughtfully got him for me.   Two weeks earlier, I had attended a party with her and had encountered him there for the first time. Seeing how smitten I was with him and knowing he needed a home, she had hatched the plan of uniting us.  However, arriving on my door-step she didn’t receive the reception she had expected, as my initial reaction was a firm “thank you for the thought but I don’t want any more pets.”  I brought her in for a coffee and the kitten was let out of the carrier to bound around the room.  Of course, before the kettle had boiled he was firmly in my arms, all thoughts of the pain of loss gone, and our lives together had begun.

What a character!  For the first five or six years he was a very independent cat with something of a wild streak.  His mother had been rescued, and on being taken to the vet was found to be both pregnant and terminally ill.  The decision was made to allow her to have the kittens as the birth was imminent, and she received some treatment.  It was believed that she had lived wild for a time and the  father was probably feral.  This may account in part for Socs' personality and behaviour in those early years.  

We often hear it said of someone that he/she was 'here before.'  This was the case with the tiny kitten and so he was named Socrates because of the pensive way he sat and reflected for long stretches at a time.   Once out of kittenhood, he became very much his own cat.  Occasionally he sought cuddles but mostly he behaved in an aloof, majestic manner reminding us daily of his kinship with the king of the jungle.  His body language, his walk, his whole demeanour, his day-to-day behaviour was that of being removed from the crowd.  He ruled the road with a blood-stained claw and woe-be-tide any cat that peeped around the corner, let alone was brave enough or daft enough to place a paw onto his territory.  They say a neutered cat quietens down and if this is true, then I dread to think how many more skirmishes he would have fought had he not had the procedure carried out. 
 
In his sixth year, he mellowed and his behaviour changed. He sought out soft beds, cushions and warm laps.  He allowed himself to be stroked and cuddled and in time, this extended to everyone; neighbours and passers-by.  There were frequent reports of surprise visits to neighbour's sofas and beds for which I apologised with some embarrassment, but everyone seemed to enjoy these casual visits from the unexpected guest.  Over the years, his social life and invitations were greater than my own and neighbours enquired after him as naturally as they did about the rest of the family. People could not pass without giving him some attention.  It was as though having realised the joy to be had from being stroked and cuddled, he sought to catch up on the many he missed in the previous years of self-imposed aloofness.  But the outdoor life continued in the main, and on mild nights he slept under the hedge or in the plant pots, used the privet canopy to watch the world go by or the rain dance on the pavement. And still, he vigilantly patrolled his territory.

The years went by and awareness of the passage of time spurred us on to pursue the dream of relocating to a rural area.  We joked about Socs retiring to the country where he would wander over his estate and be lord of all he surveyed.   Fate however had other plans and four weeks before the move, he fell ill and never fully recovered.  He moved into his country home where he lived as an invalid, pottering about the house and stepping just outside to lie in the sun.  There were to be no great adventures, no long strolls or marking out his new domain.  All of that was now in the past.  He slept most of the day, his whispers and toes twitching in his sleep as he stalked his foe and walked old roads in his dreams.  His new found pleasure was the wood-burner in front of which he lay prostrate or sat upright peering into the flames, like an ancient Egyptian paying homage to the god, Ra.

Socs has gone but his spirit is around me, memories of him are etched in my mind and my love for him is buried deep in my heart.  One small animal brought and taught so much in his time with us.

In memory and thanks to Socs.

Where the Heart Is

The overhanging branches were so tightly entwined that they blocked out the sun and thus provided much-needed shade on that day of cloudless, azure skies in August 1989.  After half a mile, I emerged from under the leafy canopy back out into the glaring light and stifling heat.  The road now ran parallel with the sparkling waters of the lake and on the opposite shore, the shattered screes stood menacingly in the shadows.  Never before had I seen such stark contrast of light and dark, tranquillity and danger.  Ahead lay the Wasdale valley encircled by an arc of bare high mountains; to the left, Yewbarrow - shaped like an inverted boat, then the great steep bulk of Kirk Fell with the inn at its foot, and to the right; Lingmell and the Scafells.  In the centre stood the pyramid-shaped Great Gable, its height emphasised by a purple-red hue and the deep gulf separating it from the other fells.  It was love at first sight. 

It was the scenery, the chocolate-box images of Ullswater and Grasmere that initially drew me to Cumbria and those early visits represented escape and freedom.  I wanted to be in contact with the natural world and beautiful landscapes.  I was preoccupied with ‘bagging’ fells, panoramic views and covering as much ground as possible.  I studied maps and guide-books but soon realised that they could only tell me a limited amount.  My sense of Cumbria was changing and with it, the nature of my activities.  It  became more important to take things at a slower pace, dispense with goals and pre-set destinations and just ramble and explore. I decided the best way to gain a real knowledge of the place was to abandon day walks and instead trek and wild-camp high among the fells.

Only a walker knows the sheer joy of putting one foot in front of the other along a mountain path, feeling the earth beneath your feet and the sense of freedom that comes with big skies and open space. Walking is the best way to fully encounter a place as the close contact with the physical environment fosters intimacy with it.  During my many walks I followed in the footsteps of the Vikings and Romans, generations of local farmers, shepherds and miners, poets and artists.  I explored the ruins of farmhouses and castles, visited abandoned mines, handled the debris of megalithic axe factories and traced the carvings of stone circles with my fingers, wondering all the while about those past lives and feeling the mystery and magic of these places. I spent time observing birds and wildlife, peering into tarns and wild flower heads, observing the changes of the seasons and the cycle of birth, growth, death and re-birth.  I learnt to read and interpret the subtle changes in the atmosphere, to understand and recognise the moods of the high places.  I slept under star-filled skies with the base of the tent beneath me, aware of my body pressing on the earth and the smell of the grass reaching me as I slept.  I bathed in the rivers and drank from the fast-flowing streams and waterfalls.  I cooked food and shared it with the birds and wild animals, came to know the red squirrels, deer, pine-martins, the sheep and cattle.  I had been a stranger here without  familial or links of any kind, a visitor, but Cumbria ceased to be a mere holiday destination, a place that provided rest and relaxation and aesthetic beauty.  My growing experience and knowledge of the geography, geology, flora and fauna, history and stories, developed into a deep admiration and attachment to the area.  I was beginning to see the world with new eyes and appreciated the small, the ordinary even more than the majestic and the sublime.

 

In her book ‘The Living Mountian,’ Nan Shepherd says of her walks in high places: “I have walked out of the body and into the mountain.”  I think this is such a beautiful and heart-felt way of expressing the feeling that I too experience when walking across the fells.  Among the ageless mountains and streams, the vastness of the sky and rolling hills and fields, you lose yourself. But then around the next bend, or over the brow of the hill, you bump into yourself.  There are no words to aptly describe the phenomenon but it happens.  It is a fleeting glimpse, a momentary deep understanding of the bigger picture of life. Such close contact with the natural world has left me feeling more at-home with the universe and I feel part of something bigger, greater and mysterious.  The sights, sounds, colours and creatures I have encountered have given me a heightened sense of being alive. The years of walking and wild-camping experiences in Cumbria have taught me that this county is only a tiny part, a microcosm of the wider world and represents what I truly love; the natural world, the living planet.  

Back in the city, the fells and running water called to me endlessly. Images of particular fells, lakes, tarns, paths, ridges, sunsets were the scenes that blocked out the buildings, shops and pavements. In the end, I realised I could not live so far from what I loved.  My beloved called, and frequent visits did not fully satisfy the craving so finally, three years ago I relocated to Cumbria. I left the concrete and steeI, the traffic-jams and noise to settle amid the birdsong and flowing streams, with the fells as a backdrop to my daily life and the horizon stretched out in front of me.   

March

A poem to the month of March, the herald of Spring, 

by William Morris 
  born on March 24th 1834

 Slayer of the winter, art thou here again?
O welcome, thou that's bring'st the summer nigh!
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,
Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
Welcome, O March! whose kindly days and dry
Make April ready for the throstle's song,
Thou first redresser of the winter's wrong!

Yea, welcome March! and though I die ere June,
Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise,
Striving to swell the burden of the tune
That even now I hear thy brown birds raise,
Unmindful of the past or coming days;
Who sing: 'Oh joy! a new year is begun:
What happiness to look upon the sun!'

Ah, what begetteth all this storm of bliss
But death himself, who crying solemnly,
E'en from the heart of sweet Forgetfulness,
Bids us 'Rejoice, lest pleasureless ye die,
Within a little time must ye go by.
Stretch forth your open hands, and while ye live
Take all the gifts that Death and Life may give.'
 

(William Morris)

Beyond Ourselves

Meeting some ducks in Borrowdale, Cumbria

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 

(Albert Einstein)

Little Lambs

The cold bare hand of winter still grips the landscape but signs of new life are emerging as tiny buds begin to appear on the branches, and the daffodils and snowdrops sway in the sunlight.  Of all the indicators that spring is on the threshold, the sight of new-born lambs are surely the most endearing.

Yesterday, I stood and watched as five tiny lambs wobbled and teetered, trying to control and co-ordinate their long gangly legs and master the art of walking and running. They ran, skipped, jumped, bumped into each other, fell on the grass and their bleating sounded to me like childish laughter; young creatures enjoying being alive.  I could not help but smile and I walked home with spring in my heart.

Little Lamb, who made thee
Does thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing woolly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice.
Making all the vales rejoice:
Little Lamb who made thee
Does thou know who made thee

Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee;
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by His name,
Little Lamb God bless thee,
Little Lamb God bless thee.

(William Blake)