A monthly collection of scrats and skerrets.1
On writing
‘A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.’2
Thistles
The thistles are bursting into flower. As an Englishman abroad, I am full of enthusiasm and admiration for this summertime display. The Scots have seen this many times over the years, so much so that, like the flowering yellow gorse, they might not even notice it anymore, or be indifferent, or, worse still, resent the appearance of the bristly weeds and regard them as a nuisance. Or maybe this is still a moment of pure delight and wonder for locals, as it is to me.
It stopped raining long enough to get outside and explore the narrow strip of uncultivated land, where all the interesting stuff is, sandwiched between the monoculture and the track. The thistles were nestled in amongst some other discoveries which I wrote about in this month’s almanac.
I’ve seen them warming up the past few weeks. Hints of white, pink and purple were beginning to show but I hadn’t yet see the full crown of fulgent florets erupting from the top of the spiny ball. What a wonder it is: the colour, the extravagance, the hairstyle.
Thistles are described as pink and purple. We can’t make up our minds but they won’t be made to choose. They have claimed the best of both worlds. Imagine what it’s like to be pink and purple at the same time. Flowering thistles know this feeling. Be astonished.
I believe this one I photographed up close is the spear variety. With its classic appearance, it is emblematic of Scotland. I’ve found bull and plume varieties nearby too. The musk thistle also lays claim to be the true symbol of this land. It is charming, with its rounded, drooping sunflower-disc head but the spear has more spunk: it’s growing its hair long and laughing with its head thrown back.
They’re absolutely merciless if you start cramping their style. Get up close and personal, apply even the gentlest touch and the assortment of spines and spikes will go to work on your nerve endings.
The spherical spiny bract at the base of the flower looks like a naval mine and is reminiscent of the bristling Shrike3.
If the bract doesn’t get you then the leaves and stems will. Grey-green and spiny, the leaves project sharp needles that hurt, while the tall stems, although cottony, are also winged and spiny. Ease your hand in slowly at close quarters to experience just a little of the punishment this plant can dish out.
Mony ha’e tried, but a’ ha’e failed.
Their sacrifice has nocht availed.
Upon the thistle they’re impaled.4
According to one thistle-themed legend, a sleeping party of Scots warriors were saved from ambush by an invading Norse army when one of the enemies trod on the spiky plant. His anguished cry roused the slumbering warriors who duly vanquished the invader. From then on the thistle was adopted as the national symbol.
I’m curious about this truncated tale. It’s not as sharp as it could be. I heard it went something like this…
The Thistle
Ulf Gunnarson vaulted the distance between the waves and the shore, landing like a wolf on the soft wet sand. He moved off with terrible purpose towards the stone-built settlement, eyes fixed on the spoils ahead. One man after another leaped out of the boat behind him, falling into line behind the leader.
They were breathing hard as they gained on their target, labouring up the brae from the bay, bearing axes, spears and shields.
The slope was steep. Attempting to steady himself, young Eryk Akselsen grasped a handful of prickly weeds in his bare palm. He let out a startled cry of pain. Heads turned in alarm. He signalled silently and they moved on, but their stealth was compromised.
.
Marta awoke in her bed and lay on her side peering into the black. She held her breath, listening. Fragments of her dreams lay broken around her, the sudden awakening having shattered them. They had been ominous and upsetting. Closing her eyes tight, she tried to sense what was coming. She had heard something. But what? There was only darkness and the sound of her slumbering family. Sliding out from under the arm of her husband Dùghlas, she gathered a shawl around her bare body and left the sleeping chamber.
.
In the black night they looked like shadows from the underworld, harbingers of destruction, and they climbed over the defensive earthen bank around the settlement with easy strides, penetrating the sanctuary within. The Northmen came together in a menacing pack at the entrance to the taigh. Marta was three strides away from them now, on the other side of the door, her skin follicles rising and her breath shallow. An instinctive impulse surged within and she screamed an animal warning through the house. Dùghlas jolted awake and rolled to a crouch, startled. Outside, the raiders were halted momentarily by the feral cry. They recovered quickly. Ulf Gunnarson turned and smashed through the door with his shoulder, his stone-hard bulk driving him through. Marta was thrown back violently and she watched in horror as a torrent of death surged through the splintered wood.
In the half light of the room Ulf Gunnarson saw Marta’s sprawling body as she reeled from the impact. Her bare thighs opened to him as she scrabbled to get away. Lust boiled up. He threw back his head, raised his axe in salutation to his gods. A small boy came to the aid of his terrified mother and Ulf Gunnarson cleaved him diagonally from shoulder to hip. Little Ciar’s blood arced across the room. The smell of the first slaughter was like oil on the fire and the men roared.
Dùghlas, naked but for the buckler shield he had grabbed from the hook by the bed, came forward in three strides, shielding his woman from the wild men. With two furious swoops he brained the nearest men to him with brutal precision. The first strike drove the viking’s nose into his head, flattening his face and pulping his brain. With a fast backhand Dùghlas put the shield boss into the temple of the second man, shattering his skull. The invaders crumpled to the floor in unison and Dùghlas reached between them for his sword.
Marta’s third-born Connor appeared at the doorway to the sleeping chamber and was skewered like a boar by Bjarte the bold who growled as he lunged his weapon at the defenceless lad. He yanked the spear from the falling body and Connor’s intestines flowed through the wound, filling the room with the stink of offal. Bjarte’s deranged laughter was quickly silenced when Connor’s father loomed up from behind his son’s dying body and ran his sword directly through Bjarte’s throat with a powerful thrust of his outstretched arm. There was a desperate blood-wet howl. Bjarte the bold suffocated in his own gore as the melee continued around him.
Through the breached doorway came two more: Marta’s eldest sons Cathal and Calthalán. They were panting after hearing their mother’s cry and sprinting from the broch. Cathal carried a poleaxe mounted on a five-foot staff and Calthalán gripped a long-bladed dirk in his white-knuckled fist.
Surprised from the rear, the remaining northmen were forced to turn and fight. Three went down quickly under the thrusts and blows of the brothers’ unrestrained rage, their weapons cutting flesh and biting bone.
Only Ulf Gunnarson remained in the centre of the room now. He seemed untroubled by the demise of his men. His muscular heft and the slow swipe of his axe, larger than most, carved a circle around him, keeping the father and his sons at bay.
At a glance from Dùghlas, they closed in as one. Calthalán took a glancing blow from the flat face of the weapon as it swung out in defence and Cathal’s right eye was gouged when the brothers locked Ulf Gunnarson up in a desperate three-man grapple. At that moment, Dùghlas calmly put his sword through the viking, sliding it past his spine and out though his belly, then withdrew cleanly. Ulf Gunnarson’s eyes widened. They held him bear-tight in a mortal embrace as his life ebbed away. Once the murderous violence of his spirit had gone from the room, they dragged him out and threw his body aside.
Silence descended on the scene. Crow looked on.
In the slice of sky between the horizon and the indigo clouds, the sun began to rise, throwing light across the path the attackers had taken minutes earlier. Down below, the tide troubled the boat they had beached before dawn.
The morning light picked out splashes of colour on the slopes: the glowing flower heads of the thistles. Soft purple tufts topped spiny bracts so sharp they could make a man weep, and send him to his grave.
Suicide
I don’t think life is that important. It’s just not. It is not. People get too excited, about life: oh life! Fuck you, it’s not that… It’s…
Make a list of every shitty thing ever. That’s ‘in’ life.
Life is ok. I like life. I don’t need it. I’d be fine without it. I like life though. I do. You know how much I like life? I have never killed myself. That’s how much I like it. That’s exactly how much I like it, with a razor-thin margin. I like it precisely enough, to not kill myself. It’s an option though. It’s totally an option.
I’m forty-nine, I have two kids. I’ve flipped through the brochure a few times. I’ve thought of killing myself just to win an argument.
You’re not supposed to talk about suicide, even to your shrink. You ever go to a shrink and they’re like ‘have you had thoughts of suicide’ and you’re like ‘no’ because if I say ‘yes’ you’ll press a button and folks will run in and… Hold him down!
But you should be able to talk about it. The whole world is just made of people who didn’t kill themselves today. That’s who’s here, is all of us that went ‘okay I’ll… fuck… I’ll keep doing it.’
It’s an interesting thing about life. Life can get very difficult. Very sad. Very upsetting. But you don’t have to do it. You really don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do anything. You never have to do anything. Because you can kill yourself. If they send you a letter from motor vehicles ‘you have to come in and…’ No I don’t, I’ll kill myself. You can do that. You can do that once. But you can do it.
And it’s interesting because even when life gets bad, people generally choose it over nothing. Even the worst versions of life. Even a shitty shitty life is worth living. Apparently. Because folks are living the fuck out of them!5
Skylark
I’m up before the rest. Lark is up too. A thought occurs to me. I set out my chair overlooking the barley and play a piece of music: The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams. I want to see how they meet: the natural world and the artist’s response to it.
They meet well, and on listening again I wonder at how the composer managed to evoke a part of nature so skilfully. To take something that is naturally uplifting, soaring and softly spectacular, like the skylark’s vertical flight, and retell it in his own way, raising, elevating and lifting it up higher in the process, is some feat.
I love the part toward the conclusion of the composition, after the crescendo, when I imagine Vaughan Williams is visualising the lark descending. The music settles, as the bird might do after flight, and there is a blissful moment of tranquility.
The Lark Ascending stirs, and then stills, the soul.
It is a fine example of what human beings could be doing with their time: being in nature, experiencing its wonder, then reflecting it back by making something that is meaningful and beautiful, something transcendent that contains the essential essence of the original natural wonder and is then amplified by human consciousness.
This is what we are here for, is it not. It’s what the gods ask of us. They gave us these opposable fingers and thumbs, as Stephen Jenkinson6 suggests, to make and craft beauty as a prayer or paean. All our toil and labour could be a humble expression of gratitude to the incredible and improbable existence of the magnificent natural earth. Everything else is secondary, unnecessary even. Acts of reverence only. The gods are watching.
Skylark chicks become independent after only two weeks and parents can have four broods in a breeding season. The aim of the sudden, noisy, upward flight, is to divert the attention of predators who might be interested in an easy meal. It doesn’t seem to be such a smart strategy, as an astute predator would be able to use the father’s position, often directly above the nest, to locate the brood below.
They will sometimes sing for an hour before parachuting back down to earth. I learned recently that it is the male lark that goes up, not the female. A reader mentioned it to me because I had referred to her singing while praising the bird in a previous piece. I stand corrected.
When I write about nature I often anthropomorphise and as I have no intention of stopping, I am sure I will find myself repeatedly on the wrong side of literal facts.
But let’s not allow facts to go naked into the world where they will be seen for what they are; a bare-boned brittle skeleton. Instead, let’s cover them in juicy flesh and wrap them in exquisitely tailored clothes, even if they are misleading.
Learning Scottish: a sassenach abroad7
We came to Scotland in January with the snow, and I began to make a note of words and place names that were intriguing, baffling or beautiful.
Here are a few of my favourites:
Ben
mountain peak; high hill
My name is Ben. I am a mountain.
Brae-hag
the overhanging bank which has been undermined by a river
My children like standing on brae-hags and jumping off at the last second before they collapse into the water.
Broch
a circular stone tower with an inner and an outer wall
Found on the Orkney Islands, Shetland Islands, the Hebrides, and the mainland of Scotland. They are numerous in these lands and have a venerable, commanding presence, set so deliberately in the landscape.
Cludgie
a toilet
Satisfying.
Creel
a lobster pot
Up and down the north east coast we saw stacks of creels in the harbours we visited during the spring months.
Dreich
long-drawn-out, protracted, hence tedious, wearisome; damp, wet, grey weather
In Scotland, surveying the weather each day, one finds oneself frequently able to use this word.
Dunnet Head
most northerly point of mainland Britain
The Dunnet surname is taken from Downhead in Somerset, or Donhead in Wiltshire. These place names both derived from the Old English words dun, meaning hill, and he-afod, meaning head of land. Therefore Dunnet Head, which is a magnificent place with imposing cliffs, literally means Hill Head, or Head Head, or possibly even Hill Head Head.
Greet
to grieve; lament; cry
Cultures that have a specific word to gather up grieving, lamenting and crying, have something important to teach us about loss.
Haar
sea fog
meteorologists will tell you a haar is a cold sea fog which occurs most often on the east coast of Scotland between April and September, when warm air passes over the cold North Sea. In real life, the haar is an old familiar cloud of gloom that glides in from the sea when you least expect it, lying like a wet blanket over everything, bringing misery, doom and despair for the duration of its stay. Goes nicely with Dreich.
I write these words as skilfully as I can, and trade them with you for money 👇🏻
Stopping for bees
While cutting the grass on a ride-on lawnmower, I have stopped for a bee.
Me: [Cuts engine] Hello Bee.
Bee: What are you doing?
Me: Cutting the grass.
Bee: Why?
Me: To make it neat and tidy.
Bee: Why?
Me: So people will come here.
Bee: Why do people come here?
Me: For a holiday.
Bee: What’s a holiday?
Me: When human beings take a short break from their regular life and work.
Bee: Why do they need a break from it?
Me: Their lives and work are mostly tedious and boring so they come here to cheer up a bit.
Bee: What’s here that cheers them up?
Me: Nature mostly.
Bee: Like us bees and so forth?
Me: Yes, you bees and so forth, and those pretty flowers you’re landing on.
Bee: You mean the flowers you just cut down.
Me: Yes.
[Silence]
Bee: Don’t human beings have nature and flowers and bees and so forth at home?
Me: Not really. They live in houses in towns and cities.
Bee: But nature was there before they built those houses, towns and cities.
Me: Yes it was. But it’s gone now.
Bee: So they come here to get what they’ve lost.
Me: That’s right.
Bee: They want nature?
Me: Yes.
Bee: And flowers?
Me: Yes.
Bee: And neat and tidy grass.
Me: Yes.
[Silence]
Bee: Did you know you killed seven of my hive with your mower in the last ten minutes.
Me: Did I?
Bee: Yes.
Me: Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to.
Bee: If you kill us all, there won’t be any nature.
Me: No?
Bee: No.
Me: How come?
Bee: Pollination.
Me: Flowers and stuff?
Bee: Yes. And almost everything else: bees pollinate crops for animal feed, without that it will be harder for you to get meat, eggs, milk and such like; bees pollinate trees and flowers, which then support other insects, which then support birds, bats, mammals and everything else up the food chain with food and shelter; bees help to pollinate some arable crops too, even the ones that self-pollinate.8
Me: Oh.
Bee: Are you going to stop then?
Me: No.
Bee: Why not?
Me: I’m being paid to cut the grass and I need the money and it’s not my land so I don’t make the decisions.
Bee: Convenient.
Me: Yes.
Bee: Couldn’t you just turn the engine off and walk away.
Me: I could but…
Bee: You won’t.
Me: …no.
Bee: I see.
Me: I’m sorry.
Bee: That won’t help.
Me: No, sorry.
Bee: Sure.
Me: Ok.
[Silence]
Me: [Restarts engine]
Bee: [Flies to nearest patch of flowers]
Me: [Continues mowing]
Bee: [Dies under the blades during the next pass]
Tansy
If you came this far, thank you. Here’s a little something for those of you who persevered.
The yellow flower at the top is a photograph of a tansy plant that I found growing wild in the nature reserve overlooking Findhorn Bay.
It has button-like, yellow flower-heads, made up of lots of tiny flowers called disc florets, but no outer ray florets.
Tansy is the main food of the rare Tansy Beetle. Once widespread in Britain, it is now endangered and can only be found along the banks of the River Ouse around York and in much smaller populations in East Anglia.
Take a look at the swirls and patterns on the flower head: magical. The pattern seems to come and go. It fades in and fades out. It appears to both be there and, at the same time, not be there, but it’s definitely there. Isn’t it? Nature is fractal.9 It is simultaneously ordered and chaotic.
Now cast your gaze over the Tansy Beetle. The colours. The iridescent hue. Be dazzled. Fall to your knees. Can it really be possible?
Contemplate them together. The Tansy plant is the main food of the Tansy Beetle: the plant made the beetle. One impossibly beautiful thing was transformed into another.
Welsh writer and poet William Henry Davies, who spent most of his adult life tramping, captured the appropriate words for just such an encounter.
It was the Rainbow gave thee birth,
And left thee all her lovely hues;10
Human beings have the ability to give birth to beauty in this way. We can create indescribably exquisite things out of other indescribably exquisite things. Take Vaughan Williams for example.
If you put yourself into conversation with what is astonishing in the world, you allow the astonishing part of yourself to be found.11
Ah…
Imagine the possibilities.
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If you’ve got something bubbling, consider leaving me a message. I will read and respond to every comment (eventually) and because I’m an adult and not a child I like to engage with opposing ideas, criticism and questions. Having said that, being arrogant and egotistic, I also like compliments.
In Derbyshire slang scrats are small insignificant things and skerrets are little bits.
From Boy by Roald Dahl.
The Shrike by François Launet, inspired by Hyperion, written by Dan Simmons.
Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle.
Stephen Jenkinson comes back to this theme a lot. I believe he picked it up from Martín Prechtel whose speaking and writing also evoke this idea.
In Gaelic, a Sasunnach is an Englishman. The word is rarely used as a compliment.
Crops such as wheat, oats and barley are self pollinated and receive no benefit from insect pollination. Rye and maize cross pollinate, but pollen is carried largely on the wind. A variety of other grain crops, such as field peas, safflower, lentils, lupins, sorghum, soybeans and other oilseed grain crops such as linseed, flax and linola have been shown (in limited studies) to receive some benefit from insect pollination. However, other grain crops such as canola, sunflower and faba bean have consistently been shown to have a significantly higher quality and quantity of crop produced when honey bee pollination occurs.
The Kingfisher by William Henry Davies.
David Whyte reflecting on his poem Sweet Darkness. From his Three Sundays Series.