in praise of the house martin

Martinstide

The may’s in blossom and at last the summer’s starting;
we watch for the first swallow to confirm to us it’s made,
but fail entirely to remark the sober, modest martin.

The screaming swifts put all their soul and heart in
to devil-take-the-hindmost zooming high-speed escapades
that graze the blossoms of the the summer’s starting;

while fluttering swallows twitter over linhays, byres and bartons,
their long forked tails that trail behind so gracefully displayed;
a panache absent from our dumpy chum the martin,

whose burbling call sounds vaguely like some woodland creature farting,
or a creaky hinge that cries for WD40 to be sprayed
while swinging wildly open to let in the summer’s starting.

They gather on the river bank, collecting mud and carting
it up to the eaves of houses where their nests are all arrayed,
like little muddy beehives, bustling colonies of martins

And it’s cheerful as all heck until the time comes for departing,
and the eaves return to silence where the absent broods were laid.
Frost blossoms on the windows and we yearn for summer’s starting,
returning us the swallow; and, of course, the humble martin.

A friend was asking after poems about swallows, swifts and martins, and remarked that there weren't that many about martins. 

So I said I'd write one.

By the way, the picture of Crofton that illustrates this is now available in my Etsy shop, as is this one about canal cuisine...

when you wish upon a bug

my new picture; a red kite over Crofton pumping station

I was worried that I'd been oversensitive about the Mansplainer yesterday; maybe I'd imagined it?

He and his partner had popped round for a bike. They're stuck on the canal because of the lockdown and I'm lending them one, that I rescued from the bins. It's basically sound but with a couple of things need sorting. And I'd been told he's practical.

I'm showing them the bits of the bike that need a bit of fettling and he starts explaining it to me. I'd had one of Those Days and thought O just SHUT UP.

Maybe I'd imagined it...

Fortunately he came back to set my mind at rest.

Fair play, he's happy to have a go at the mechanical side of things; they'd got hold of a second bike and set off for Bath; but a perished tyre burst, so they returned, holding the hole in the tyre together with gaffer tape.

So I dug out a tyre.

He said in passing; "I moved the brake lever on the folding bike over to the back brake, cos it's safer" (one of the brake levers was broken, you see)

"Oh!" said I; "I was always told with motorbikes that you should use 70% front brake and 30% rear, unless it's wet in which case 50/50"

He paused. "...yeah, ...it's different on motorbikes. They've ...got suspension ...on the front?"

I may have raised an eyebrow just a little.

Never mind, it was worth it for the entertainment value.

Up on the Wharf, I finished installing the bilge pump in someone's cruiser stern engine bay. It needed a fuse in the circuit, and I'd not plumbed in the overboard discharge because I wanted to get the water out safely; to do that you pump it into a 25L drum, let it settle, then syphon off the water *if* there's any oil on the top. I'd got about 125L of water out, and thought that would do for the moment; the council dump is closed, and there's nowhere to dispose of dirty oil at the moment.

But you need an operational bilge pump, especially on a cruiser stern, in case there's a flooding in the engine bay.

Anyway, I finished the job, and he was v cheerful about it in a slightly-three-sheets-to-the-wind sort of way. I cautioned against using the pump other than in an emergency.

As I left he was clicking it on and off, happy as Larry and for all the word like Eeyore with his toy balloon.

The gnats are getting very bad. At bedtime I found them swarming into the cabin out of the engine room through the gap in the door, like bats out of a cave in an Indiana Jones movie. There are bats coming out of caves in an Indiana Jones movie, aren't there? If not, I'm sure there ought to be. Anyway, I defended myself stoutly with the electric tennis racquet, and in consequence must have looked like Gandalf or possibly Hermione, waving their wand furiously with sparks erupting like fireworks all over the place as each gnat exploded, little shooting stars with an aftersmell of roast bug. As Neil Young said, it's better to burn out than to fade away, especially if you're fading away on the fly paper in the galley.

playing with nightingales

Listening to Sam Lee duetting with a nightingale on Radio 3 yesterday, I was inspired to join in the fun. So here is my own delightfully tasteful hommage to Beatrice Harrison, whose cello playing in the Sussex woods for the BBC in the 1920s started this whole thing off. It became something of a tradition, and when a recording was begun one night in 1942, a formation of RAF bombers on their way out to Germany flew over to add to the mix, a poignant sound you can hear here.

Maybe I'll duet with the nightingale again this evening, playing my bugle; or at least, blowing it. I can't really play it. Tan-ta-rah!

There’s something about the nightingale’s song
that makes folk determined to play along;
like, say, Beatrice Harrison’s cello on the BBC
and then those RAF bombers on their way to Germany;
or that piano orchestration from Olivier Messiaen
Which was musically interesting but a rotten impressiaen.
Still, good, bad or indifferent, they all fail
to make an impression on the nightingale,
who sings for ears that are not human at all;
if there’s no-one in the forest where its song falls
does it make a sound? Oh, bless;
the answer's an enormous yes.

(from Drawn Chorus, my alphabet of birds)