Gwaith 24 (Catch Up): Bonfire Night, Bridge, 5 November 2016

Hi Everyone

This catch-up post is out of chronological order because of today’s date. One year ago I attended a Bonfire Night in Bridge, a village near Canterbury, UK, with my good friends Simon and Lise. And so, I wanted to blog about it to celebrate the anniversary of that event.

We don’t celebrate Bonfire Night in Australia anymore, for a variety of reasons, some to do with safety and some to do with a distancing of our culture from such English customs. I remember the bonfires of my childhood on the empty block of land on the other side of the road from our house. The whole neighbourhood participated. For days, people brought old furniture, timber off-cuts, and broken fruit boxes and piled them high. I wrote about these memories in ‘Fall Out’, a poem about a dead childhood friend, which won a national award many years ago and was published in Azuria #4 in 2015. Below is the opening stanza:

Dead now thirty years or more, you were

just one of the neighbourhood knockabout kids

kicking a rolled-up-newspaper-and-twine footy,

racing bikes and billy-carts down the hill,

playing gangs in the paddock across the road

with its grass hillock hideaways, rubbish mound forts,

whooping and hooting with the next fruit box tossed

flinting sparks and flames on the Guy Fawkes bonfire,

skyrockets whoosh-slicing the night to the refrain

of bolts and penny bangers in metal pipes.

So, when Simon and Lise suggested we attend the Bonfire Night being held in a local field, I jumped at the chance. Once night, with a light touch of dew, had truly descended, we joined a couple of hundred people crowded at the fence line around an enormous mound of wood in the middle of the field and cheered when fire safety officers 'lit her up'.

We were treated to a sprightly fire that at times grew menacing, with its raging, crackling sounds, its tumbling and crashing timbers, and its glowing embers and burning debris carried by the north wind, which troubled our eyes and threaten to ignite the nearby oak and beech trees. The fierce heat baked our faces with grins, gasps and exclamations. The erupting, rolling, leaping flames took on whirling shapes with elongated mouths and jagged limbs.

Then came the fireworks, a magnificent, wonderful, splendid, surprisingly long, keeping-your-gaze-engaged set of explosions and colours. Whistling rockets. Crackling white star bursts. Dazzling splurges and cascades of yellow, red and green against the backdrop of night. Sooty embers raining down around us. The smell of burnt air and gunpowder. Cheers. Little children pointing and clapping. Adults with arms around each other. Faces turned upward and glowing.

Afterwards, we went back to Simon and Lise’s ‘Wendy House’ for some beer and wine and a pre-dinner reading of entries from The English Year: The Nation’s Customs and Festivals, from May Day to Mischief Night. Padstow Oss. The Wooden Horse of Kent. And, of course, Guy Fawkes:

Remember, remember!

The fifth of November,

The Gunpowder treason and plot;

I know of no reason

Why the Gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot!

A great end to a night that was part nostalgia and part wonder.

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any memories of Bonfire Nights, do share them in the comments if you like.

Best Wishes

Earl

Cyfaredd 1: Visit to Bridge

Hi Everyone

Now that I have settled into my residency at Stiwdio Maelor in Corris, North Wales, I thought it time to report on my first few days in the UK, where winter is verging on spring.

Crocuses, one of the first signs of spring. 

Before I do that, just a word about the title of this posting. I have now been to this part of the world four times: to the USA, UK, Ireland and Europe in 2007 (with Jo); to the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, Ireland, in 2009; to England, Wales and Scotland in 2013, for a conference and for research; and now to the UK again, to visit the same three countries. As some of you know, I handwrite all my first drafts, whether of poems, stories, articles or memoirs, and then enter them into the computer afterwards. Whenever I’ve typed up the notes and journal entries for my previous trips I’ve given the project a name. The one I’m using for this trip is the Welsh word for enchantment, cyfaredd. I feel this word sums up what I hope to experience in England, Wales and Scotland as I work on the next draft of my novel, continue to research settings, and re-connect with what I see as my spiritual homeland.

Gracie (Mrs G), Simon and Lise's cute cat    

Now for my report. I arrived at Heathrow early on the morning of Thursday, 5 March, and headed straight down to Canterbury, then on to the little village of Bridge to stay with friends for a few days. I suffered a little from jetlag, but the many walks and inspiring conversations I had with Simon and Lise over-rode any tiredness I felt.

Unlike where I live in Melbourne, I can leave the house at Bridge and within a few minutes I am in the country. The one thing I like about walking in Britain is the use of right-of-ways. People have been walking alongside and across fields for centuries and it is illegal for farmers to block such common law tracks. And so we walked across fields filled with the song and ascending flight of skylarks—the first time I had ever heard or seen them—and past other fields where the first lambs hobbled on thin legs as they chased after their mothers and once there knocked at the teats to get a drink. Walking by another field, we watched a kestrel hover high above, waiting patiently for something small and tasty to make a sudden dash to safety. And at another field we saw a young fox break out from scrub, its square-like head (or so it seemed from our perspective) out of proportion to its red, black and white lean body.

One of the surprises about Bridge is the number of esoteric, literary, artistic, and historic associations either in the village itself or in surrounding areas. The co-designer of the Rider-Waite Tarot, A E Waite, lived his last years in the village and was buried in a nearby graveyard. Joseph Conrad lived for a time in the ‘Oswalds’, a house not far from the village. At the pub The Duck in Pett Bottom (what a wonderful name, though not as vivid as Lynsore Bottom), Ian Fleming wrote You Only Live Twice. And the sculptor Henry Moore lived for six years in a house in nearby Kingston.

The house in Bridge where A E Waite lived his last years.

The ‘Oswalds’, where Joseph Conrad once lived.

The Blue Plaque on the wall of The Duck.

The Blue Plaque for Henry Moore.

Given that one reason I am in this country is to experience the historic and mythic landscape I wish to evoke in my novel, Bridge also offered appropriate omens. Just outside the town is Old England’s Hole: a hollow in the landscape that is reputedly the site of the last battle between the British and Caesar. Naturally enough, it really should be called Old Britain’s Hole, the English (Angles, Saxons, etc.) not arriving on these shores until several hundred years after Caesar’s time. And nearby is a ridge that holds an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.

Old England's Hole. You can just see the lip of the hole.

The ridge that is the site of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery

A movie I took of the location of the 'hole' and the cemetery.

That’s about it for now. I hope you enjoyed this little tour of Bridge and environs. Any comments would be most welcome.

Pob hwyl (Welsh for ‘Bye’)

Earl