Below is a selection of my writing:



The Horse Chestnut

The villagers don’t take much notice of the old horse chestnut tree anymore.

It towers over the roadside, thick roots anchoring it beneath the misshapen granite hedgerow, weathered stones cradled in mossy fingers. These days, its presence is overshadowed by the nearby oaken corridor, two rows of gnarled figures forming an arboreal sabre arch for anyone who wanders the lane beneath.

No one is sure how long the horse chestnut has stood, but it may have been planted by the local blacksmith several hundred years ago to shade the horses waiting to be shod at the nearby forge. It has forgone some of its earlier elegance. Its thick, weather-beaten trunk is twisted and cankerous, decorated with lumps and hollows alike. In its broad crown sits the gap where it was once badly pollarded and never quite grew back. And its trunk bears a scar where it was struck by lightning during a storm that caused the tree to lose a branch - a sacrifice which ultimately saved it from becoming entirely engulfed in flames.

 

At Beltane, the horse chestnut’s spring flowers appear. Great candy floss candelabra’s that cascade down the crown. In years gone by, it overlooked the ewes’ suckling lambs in the balmy spring sunshine, their gentle bleats providing an undertone to men calling from neighbouring fields as they erected scarecrows to watch over the barley. And on a dark night, when one of the ewes struggled to lamb, the horse chestnut’s candles seemed to add extra illumination to the field. The farmer, bent by his oil lamp, worked to help the mother bring new life into the world, pulling on the front legs till the bundle slipped out, before he tore at the sac around its mouth, and its mother licked it to life. As he leant back on his heels, he felt the relief flood his veins and his stomach flutter like the moths around the hedgerow honeysuckle, till a tawny owl, hooting gently from the horse chestnut’s boughs, calmed his heart.
Now the sheep are gone, the wool not as lucrative as it once was. The current farmers’ focus is solely on winter barley. In spring, he mounts his tractor, pulling a crop sprayer that showers the field in chemicals, clearing weeds and wildflowers alike, leaving only the newly growing barley stalks. But the flowers of the horse chestnut offer a lifeline, and the bees hum around it, attracted by the rich nectar. When they leave, their baskets laden and their fur powdered with pollen, they head back to their hive to make a smooth honey. It would have once been made in the farmers’ skeps to be added to cake or stirred into the cider pressed from the old orchard, before that was paved over with the new bypass. A blue tit stalks the horse chestnuts’ branches, picking at the insects that run along the bark, and the sound of hammering echoes across the field as a woodpecker excavates a nest in the trunk.

 

In bygone summers, the farmer, joined by the county’s sheep clippers, took refuge from the midday sun beneath the horse chestnut’s parasol crown, the sheep temporarily gated in its shade. Coarse hands deftly steadied the animals as the shears cut the fleece off in one swift movement, and the wool piled up. Afterwards, the men celebrated with home-brewed beer, surrounded by the lingering smell of lanolin and salted-sweat, their backs resting against the tree’s steady trunk, grateful for its heavy shadow.
Now the mechanical whirr of the harvester replaces the swish of scythes, threshing the ears and winnowing the chaff with little effort. The last of the skylarks pirouette above as the crops are swiftly felled beneath its blades, any more efforts at nesting thwarted for the year.

The villagers may once have gathered beneath the horse chestnut’s canopy, watching as the last of the barley was reaped and held high to the cheers of the onlookers before they headed off to the village for a celebratory feast, the children weaving corn dollies from the leftover stems and sneaking brown bread and marmalade. But with such traditions lost within the folds of time, the barley stubble is left shorn and uncelebrated in the vibrating heat before the field is cultivated once more.

 

Come September, groups of children make their way along the path, back and forth to the local village school, new shoes shining in the autumn sun. In years gone by, they would have gathered beneath the horse chestnut, collecting conkers from the branches that hung over the road. The children would have jostled to get the biggest, shiniest, or roundest, throwing sticks into the tree and causing a shower of spiky green cases, tearing into them to reveal and compare their mahogany gems before stuffing them into pockets. The crepey, orange leaves, edges burnt from the long summer, would have been kicked high, fluttering them across the road or gathered in handfuls and thrown at each other, the sounds of rustling lost beneath laughter. The local women would have collected some to shell and grind into flour, making loaves for the village harvest fair, all hoping to win first prize. And in the field, the farmer would have gathered the leftover conkers and ground them down to feed to his horses, boosting the shine in their coats.

But the women don’t come anymore, and whilst the smallest children pocket a few conkers, still at the age to be lured in by shiny treasures, most of the kids are bent double over screens or scuffling and joking together as they amble along, discussing games and videos. The conkers are mostly ignored as they fall into the road, giant SUVs crushing them beneath heavy wheels and scattering them across the ribbon of asphalt. But the red deer stop to take a few as they slink along the hedgerow, helping build their fat stores for the winter. The leaves are left to pile up and mulch and become a gathering place for woodlice and millipedes before the road sweeper comes along and sucks them all away.

On the other side of the hedgerow, the conkers also lay untouched by human hands; the farmer has no use for them now, the horses switched out for machinery long ago. The next generation of crops has been planted, and the horse chestnut provides a sanctuary for the birds hoping for the last of the insects before winter comes. But food is sparse now as the neighbouring fields have become an extensive building site, a large shiny board advertising the sleek new housing estate with identical plastic doors and identical plastic lawns.

When winter settles across the landscape, the goldfinches picking the seeds from the bones of the hedgerow teasels bring a flash of colour to the pewter sky. A plastic bag, caught in the horse chestnut’s branches, rises with the wind like a ghostly apparition, and it sparks the memory of a story passed down through the generations. A few of the older villagers, gathered in the pub and deep in drink, take to storytelling. One tells of a winter of long ago when the ground was hardened by frost, and the villagers’ hearts hardened by an accusation. The story, so entwined with folklore no living soul knows what is true, tells of a maiden’s stolen innocence kindling a village’s anger, an unjust trial, and a recalcitrant mob dragging a young man across frozen fields. Of a rope thrown high into the branches, of the screams and desperate protestations as a makeshift noose is placed around a neck. Of the cries replaced by a silence, broken only by the steady creaking of a rope, and the steady croaking of waiting crows hoping to break their inadvertent winter fast. Some say the body was buried beneath the tree when the frost thawed, the roots its only coffin, the trunk its only gravestone. But from then on, people avoided the horse chestnut, their guilt causing them to conjure up images of spectres seeking revenge and forget how they had once loved the tree and all it had given to them.

The story is seldom told now, only when the horse chestnut’s skeleton haunts the winter’s skyline, and a lone robin sings its maudlin wintry song from the bare boughs.

In the road, little branches of cracks have begun to appear. The horse chestnut's roots have started to push upwards, fracturing the surface. When the rain freezes in the small gaps, it forces the cracks further outwards, the tree’s roots slowly signing its own death warrant. By next spring, the holes will be large enough to cause the cars to bump and jolt. Complaints will be sent to the council, who will fell the horse chestnut, branch by branch, till only a stump is left behind. The wood will be shredded, dumped, and left to decompose, an ungainly end for such an enduring tree.
But the worms and the centipedes will move in, and the beetles will come to lay their larvae amongst the fungi that grows in the damp, dark spaces. And in death, the tree will support life once again.

A home. A shelter. A larder. A playground. A gallows. A grave.

But the villagers don’t take much notice of the old horse chestnut tree anymore.

 

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Skeletons line the coast path, dancing jerkily in the wind as the goldfinches pick the last signs of life from their bones. These corpses, a final nod to the year gone by.

Beneath the earth, little pearls of hope begin to unfurl..

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Heard my first cuckoo this morning.

It must have arrived under the full moon and waited for the gentle rising of the sun before serenading the valley with a rhythmic song to announce its arrival.

The starlings, gathering nesting material in the garden, paid it no heed.

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Untitled.

Her skeleton lay unceremoniously on the beach.

Her bare bones, rotted to the core, were casually dumped in her final resting place. I gazed at her and wondered about her story; the seas she had sailed, the storms she had fought, the passengers she had carried, the life she had led. Until finally she was left, forgotten, to decay on the sand. There was something about her, lying alone, the water lapping gently around her. She was hauntingly beautiful, as though completely out of place, yet in the very home she was built to belong in.

To us, boats go hand in hand with the ocean, yet from a natural point of view, they don’t belong.

She was made of wood. Possibly oak, it was too hard to tell; her former glory now a distant memory. Her decomposed panels barely clung to each other, desperately holding on, keeping her together. Just. The hull, now non-existent, was just a bed of sand. Her port side now merely vertical planks which jutted into the sky. Minute flakes of white paint still visible on what was left and I considered them; in all the time she had lain there, what chemicals had she seeped into the ocean? What serious damage had she unintentionally done?

I ran my fingers across what was once her bow. The wood, now soft, crumbled lightly under my touch. I bent down, looking closer at her, and noticed, in her crevices, she was not as bleak as on first suspicion…

Barnacles were encrusted in small patches where flat, undamaged wood remained; tiny, rough mounds, sharp to the touch. Some were closed tightly, others just empty spaces. Amongst the small white blotches, limpets also clung on. Tiny radula marks in wayward, erratic lines across the wood, revealing their short journeys, undertaken when no one was watching. Kelp fronds had moved in on top of them, anchoring themselves to the conical, curved tops. I imagined the plants, rising with the tide, then engulfed by water, fluttering in the current like torn flags on a ghostly pirate ship.

Ragged clumps of seaweed hung between the gaps where her stern once was. I pushed a section aside, loosening some salt water which trickled down my fingers. A louse, disturbed by my sudden intrusion, flitted wildly, in random directions, succeeding in its aim to confuse its ‘attacker’. Empty mussels adorned her sides. Their inhabitants had long gone, leaving the shells open like butterflies heating their wings in the sun, delicately painted by Mother Nature in hues of opalescent blue and white. Glistening alien blobs hid in dark, damp crevices of her wood, lying in wait for the water to rise again, when they could unfurl their tentacles and once again bloom beneath the waves.

I noticed a crab hiding in the shadows and bent towards it. Its claws, tentatively open, hovered near its face as though waiting to go 6 rounds with an invisible opponent.  Two pinpricks sat atop conical tubes, swivelled erratically, nerves causing it to be wary of everything. It took a few steps back, further into the shadows, and I realised I was the source of its fear.

I had overstayed my welcome. I stood up and cast my eye over the vessel in full. The boat, which from a distance had appeared a sparse, empty shell, had been brimming with life up close. A tiny world, barely noticeable to the untrained eye.

I continued my walk along the beach again, hands stuffed into pockets, face towards the bitter wind and watched as the waves rolled along each other before they burst like white fireworks and flitted away. I took one more glance back at her as I walked. She looked so different now. Not lonely, not sad. She had new purpose.

Man may have given her up to the sea, but nature had given her life again.

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The Visitors

The Vikings have invaded again. They have come from Scandinavia, crossing 1200 miles in a potentially deadly journey, alighting at our shores ready to plunder once more. But these aren’t the fearsome warriors who have come looking to lay claim to land or steal Christian gold; they are, in fact, fieldfares and the treasures they seek are sweet, rich berries.

The large thrushes overwinter here in the UK, arriving from October. They could be mistaken for mistle thrushes but are slightly smaller and are identifiable due to their pale blue-grey heads, white bellies and yellow rings around their dark glass eyes. Around 700,000 fieldfares (Turdus pilaris) come across the North Sea to winter in Britain from Norway and Sweden; only two pairs are thought to breed here. The winters in Scandinavian countries are too harsh for the birds to cope with, so they choose the milder weather here in the British Isles, where they know they will still be able to find food.

In Sweden, the birds are known as ‘björktrast’, but the British common name comes from the Anglo-Saxon word ‘feldware’, meaning ‘traveller of the fields’. Handy advice really, because to find them, looking in fields is a good place to start. They enjoy open spaces where they can spy insects or picking through hedgerows around pastures where they can pick off berries. Hawthorn is a particular favourite, the berries are an important food source during the scarce winter. Hawthorn has a long history as a plant which can help to protect your heart. Rich in antioxidants and minerals, it was thought to have been a staple in the diet of those in the Neolithic times. It has been recorded as the herb to strengthen the heart, as well as aid with gastrointestinal issues, when eaten raw or brewed into a tea. In fact, hawthorn is one of the oldest known medicinal plants and was prescribed by the Ancient Greeks and Native Americans for those with heart problems. Here in the UK, the Celts also held the tree in high regard, linking the plant to luck and romance, believing that couples would fall in love beneath its canopy. Some people would place sprigs on their doors to attract love and luck into their households. At the festival of Beltane during the spring, hawthorn flowers would be used in decoration to thank the gods for the offerings provided by the earth.

But spring and the delicate pink-white blossoms are far away and as the temperature drops in the UK, the berries of the hawthorn are already starting to dwindle. Thankfully, the ground is still soft enough to pluck fat, juicy earthworms from. When the weather does plummet, and the ground becomes hard, fieldfares will flock into urban gardens, competing with the local sparrows, blackbirds and blue tits for the scraps laid out by human hands.

I have taken to making my own fat balls for my own garden visitors; seeds or dried mealworms mixed with leftover oils or fats into reusable pots. I place them out on the table and leave the garden. When I return, the small pots are empty, only beak-shaped scrapings made at the bottom hint that there was once anything inside. And whilst many of the birds are not visible, the tell-tale shaking of the trees and bushes around me let me know that the residents are here and waiting for their next feed.

I wonder if I will be lucky enough to have a fieldfare grace my garden this winter? For now, the resident robin’s presence will have to suffice.

 

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Prints In the Sand

 

The corrugated roof of the recently abandoned Winniaton Farm has become inhabited for the evening. The metal canopy, which has been heating up all day in the spring sunshine, is now covered by a congregation of companionable birds; herring gulls, starlings, woodpigeons and sparrows are amongst the faces huddled together, enjoying the warmth on their feet. Soon, they will be joined by migrating swallows that use the tiny gaps underneath the farm roof to nest in. Along the hedgerows which surround the estate, stonechats temporarily break their song to mutter alarm calls to one another about my presence as I head towards the rocky beach.

Like much of Cornwall, this area has a long history of smuggling. The caves here are said to be linked by a series of tunnels where contraband would be dropped off, leading to different safe locations in the area. Shipwrecks are also thought to have been frequent due to rocks offshore. A Spanish ship carrying several tonnes of coins is thought to have been lost a few miles out to sea, and some claim that the money washes up over the years, making the beach's name, ‘Dollar Cove’, seem very apt.

This coastline is laden with riches, but it isn’t historic gold coins that I am referring to. Instead, I am on the beach looking for burrows containing treasures of a different kind. On the north-west facing sandy cliff, a flock of birds is flitting around several holes and my heart leaps at the sight of them. These sand martins have recently undertaken the 7,500-mile journey to summer here on the Cornish shore. They arrived in late March, taking up residence in the cliffs, as they prepare to welcome their young in June. I love to watch them in the summer, taking turns to leave the nest to gather food as the chicks get bigger, sometimes lots of tiny brown faces all poking out of one nest, appearing as though they don’t quite fit. Then, usually around September, they are gone as quickly as they arrived, and the cliff is quiet again, only the empty holes serving as a reminder of what has taken place here over the warmer months.

This site attracts around 50 birds, although at other locations there can be hundreds in one colony. It is a joy to see them circling and swooping around the cliff tops, sometimes clinging to the side of the rock face before disappearing down a burrow, leaving a trail of sand behind them as they excavate it for their nest chamber. In the summer, you can see their outlines as they skip over the waves, the pink sun setting behind them. Every year it feels like more of an honour to see them, especially as there has been a decline in sand martin populations over the last few decades due to droughts in their winter home of Africa. Extended hot periods mean that the damp habitats where they usually reside have been struggling, and insect populations have decreased, meaning the birds are finding it increasingly hard to find food. Here in Cornwall, however, food is plentiful; the washed-up seaweed rotting in the midday sun attracts a plethora of insects to feed upon.

I watch for a while as the birds fly up and down the coast before a black shape appears overhead, sending the birds into a sudden panic. They flock towards the sea as the female kestrel swoops closer to the cliff. This kestrel is a familiar face to the area, often perching on the flags at the golf course, waiting for small mammals to break cover at dusk. Her youngster, a male who she had two years ago, has the domain directly next to hers, choosing a life on the cliff edge where he looks for small birds and mice in the long, tussocky grass.

The female kestrel sits motionless, her frame a shadowy figure perched atop the cliff overlooking the nest holes. A brave sand martin circles back towards her, screeching as it does so, getting ever closer, before it is finally near enough to have an effect and the kestrel takes off backwards towards the graveyard.

The last sand martin, its duty done, then disappears around the coast with the others. As I wait for the birds to return, the sun begins to drop behind the horizon, and the cold sets in, finally forcing me to leave without another opportunity to see them.

As I walk past the farm again, the roof is now mostly vacant.