Sunday 27th August 2006

Had a beautiful drive from Clitheroe to Lancaster through the Trough of Bowland. The weather was a mixture of sunshine and cloud that gave everything the texture of a watercolour. If ever my six numbers come to fruition I know where I shall be heading to look for a new property. It’s a world of old villages and churches set in rolling hills framed by blazing purple moorland. Everything reeks of permanence and continuity bound within the natural world. Had a brief detour to Morecambe and I want to use the word decaying grandeur about the place but mostly it’s decaying and rather strange. It has none of the exuberance of Blackpool, or the class of Southport. Shame really as it has splendid views over a wide, arcing bay and the hills of the Lake District.

In blackened yellow flash a solitary wasp works long into the encroaching dusk. Her fevered searching reveals nothing on this grey evening and I empathise from a safe distance. I can sense her resolve that tonight is fraying under a damp August evening as nothing remotely, edibly insectoid stirs under the leaves of the bay tree, or the arching fronds of the tree fern. I try to place myself into her sentience, but it is hard. Yet I never doubt that she is driven to find food to take back to a waiting queen anxious for the state of her nation. A nation encapsulated within a labyrinth of papery cocoons. Every chamber a royal dynasty waiting for the founding breath of spring. I imagine a low murmur seeps through the nest as yet another worker returns empty-handed from the field. How does this worker bear the burden of all this succession without any seeming gain? That all revolves around her and if she fails all is lost and her line dies forever. She does not think as you or I but there is a pattern within her and somewhere there is regret. Yet she never gives up hope and just as she will fail her task and return to taste the last larval milk a caterpillar stirs and she is victorious. Tonight they will cap the last chamber and all the food supplied form the larvae will be gone. All activity shall still and the precious galleries of hard borne and tended brood will demand that she must defend a royal nursery and when the task is done slowly decay into the autumn. But if she can stay alive just a little while longer then one sunny autumn evening she will see her defining moment as a stream of fertile sisters take to the air and rise on a sunbeam to dissipate on the wind. Then she shall fall to the ground beside her gracious queen-mother-sister and leave the world blessed and special from the love only the truly selfless are given. Just a s I have been given it by all the wonderful and special peoples around me who have loved me no matter what the cost was. They deserve nothing less that an eternity of bliss.

The last ant flies from the nest, last leaf floates down to rest
Copper tinged greens abound as the autumn hugs the ground
A soul wanders free in the eve of the summer’s leaving bliss
In hope of heartsease in the redemption of one beloved kiss

A day off work brings time to relax and revive and to remain wrapped warm and safe in bed, being close to you for longer than normal. Tea and toast and the chance to draw back the curtains and look at the trees standing tall against a brightening sky, that threads bands of orange among the wispy ribbon clouds. Collared doves rise and fall cooing in the distance. There will probably be rain today but for now I shall feel the warmth and read the newspaper even though I know the news will infuriate and sadden me. Ensconced here in peace it is hard to imagine that the entire world is not living the same life.

It’s 5.30am and the morning breezes take hold of the tall arched fronds of the tree fern and buffet them in random waves. Framed against the clouds in a lightening pale blue sky I see the brief vista of an oasis at dawn. Cool air hits my cheeks as step outside and this illusion dissipates rather rapidly. Black to grey clouds a re slowly seals the blue sky shut to make a dull August day. But there is work to be done and the wren already at work enquires after the health of insects embedded in the drystone wall. Deftly she leaves no point unsearched till at last breakfast is revealed. It is hard to feel anything but wonder in the cruel senselessness of it all. That something must stop its journey to enable something else to carry on. Thought for the day…don’t question just enjoy the wonder.

So soon the year arrives in August to balmy evenings heavy with a promise of wonders ready to burst into the world. Tonight is the turn of the humble ant, which for most of the year labours away steadily so that we are barely aware of its presence unless it wanders into our domain. Yet tonight each colony draws back the veil of secrecy and unleashes the culmination of its purpose into the warm night air. Thousands of virgins queens followed by eager males take to the wing in an outpouring of prolific, almost futile hope. I wonder, which few will survive and prosper to build a dynasty and which will fail and fall by the wayside enjoying one brief evening of freedom. Will that be fate or chance? I wonder and as the sun sinks behind the trees I head for home and leave the ants to their lottery.

Tonight the rain falls as the light fades from an ashen sky. We are moving through the summer and its daylight span retreats a little more each day. It is hard not to feel cheated of the light lost since those high days of June when the northern world carried on its outdoor evenings close to midnight. Days magically lengthened and stretch like a trick of time to accommodate the summer and where there was light I was freed from the boundaries of my four walls where previously I was hemmed in by the dark.