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Skylarks
The Skylark
by John Clare
The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—
Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,
And o’er her half-formed nest, with happy wings
Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,
And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then
That birds which flew so high would drop agen
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,
And build on nothing but a passing cloud!
As free from danger as the heavens are free
From pain and toil, there would they build and be,
And sail about the world to scenes unheard
Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!
So think they, while they listen to its song,
And smile and fancy and so pass along;
While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,
Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.
This is the third year in early spring that I’ve said to myself, the day I hear my first skylark I’m going to hang Clare’s* poem on the blog.** And then I forget. It’s a long time from morning hurtle—when we’re out somewhere we might hear skylarks—to the middle of the night when I’m squeezing the last remnants of semi-coherent thought out of my brain for a blog entry. I’m remembering this year, finally, perhaps because it’s so late—usually I start hearing skylarks in February. Apparently they haven’t liked this winter any better than us humans and hellhounds. I hope the extravagant cold has merely stopped them singing and that the local countryside is not dotted this spring with unmarked skylark graves. Skylarks are endangered, but not around here; we’re teeming with the things. I hope we’re still teeming with the things. I love them. Love, love, love, love, love. I can be in the blackest, bleakest mood, stomping grimly after hellhounds because hellhounds must be hurtled, and . . . for the duration of a skylark’s song I am the world’s greatest living writer, the Dalai Lama, the Archangel Michaela, and the inventor of Green & Black’s mint dark chocolate, all rolled up into one. It’s a thrilling sensation. It’s a thrilling song.
There are plenty of recordings of skylarks on the web, but I’m not even bothering with a link. They don’t sound like much, recorded. Oh, you can tell it’s probably an exciting noise—but it isn’t exciting when it’s tinging out of a computer at you. It’s like the difference between a poster of [insert name of chosen iconic heartthrob here***] and Zaphod Beeblebrox† himself. WOW.†† I like to say, grandly, that I’ll take skylarks over nightingales any day . . . but I’ve never heard a nightingale live.††† And I’m happy with my skylarks.
And I’m glad finally to have heard one this year. Except when I’m complaining about the weather I like the middle of March, because the days are suddenly as if impelled by rocket launchers getting longer—it’s about this time of year I always really notice that they’re getting longer. We had sunlight this morning too so hellhounds and I had a delicious hurtle, accompanied by a skylark who is apparently ready at last to set up housekeeping.
I had read very little John Clare before I moved over here; he’s one of those slightly obscure English English writers who [cheesy generalisation alert] while you may have admired them in a semi-engaged sort of way‡ suddenly make profound and exhilarating sense when you’re standing on English ground viewing English landscape. And, if you’re very lucky, listening to English skylarks. There’s a solidity, a reality, to Clare’s skylark that appeals to me—the song is the thing, but what produces it is a little brown dust-spot with ‘happy wings’—I like the happy wings. I also like the hare ‘like some brown clod the harrows failed to break’—which nests on the ground among those clods. None of the aerial high jinks of swallows, say; any metaphor you want to hang on a skylark has to include the low nest in the corn.
And my low nest among the corn at present is the frelling proofs of PEGASUS.‡‡ See you tomorrow.
* * *
* No, not frelling Shelley and frelling Shelley’s very famous skylark. http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Shelley/ode_to_a_skylark.htm
I think frelling Shelley is a big washy self-regarding pain in the behind. Sure he was talented. He wasn’t as talented as he thought he was and gods does he go on.^ He’d’ve been scary if he’d lived in the computer age, when everyone goes on too much.^^
^ HAVE YOU EVER READ ADONAIS? CHEEZUM ZORK.+ GAH. ETC.
+ Here speaketh the Phi Beta Kappa English lit major.
^^ Ahem.
** There are, I’m sure, plenty of copies of it on the web, but I’ve typed this one in so it’s here.
*** No, I’m not being coy. I don’t seem to get crushes on photogenic celebrities any more.^
^ I keep telling you old is better. Although maybe you enjoy your overheated fantasies more than I ever did. This may be a downside to having this vivid an imagination: coming back to ordinary reality always felt like waking up to discover I was a liver fluke. The better I’ve got at channelling this stuff into stories the happier I’ve become.
Although this does bring up a sensitive topic. I don’t like graphic on the page—I have a number of rants inappropriate for these (mostly) clean family pages on the subject of Bad Silly Literary Sex—and I’m damned if I’m going to write it. I think the best steam is produced in pressure cookers with the lids on.
† Oh come on you Windows programmers. You’re giving me a jagged red underline for Zaphod Beeblebrox?
†† Although in Zaphod’s case, probably not a good wow.
††† Peter says we ought to have nightingales around here, that it’s the right habitat. They don’t think so.
‡ For at least having the decency not to be William Wordsworth^
^ Yes. Another of my unspeakable prejudices. The English department at Bowdoin College and I really did not get on at all well. Even Peter has trouble with my attitude toward Wordsworth. Another of these fatuous spoilt self-regarding blokes who thinks that golden daffodils shine out of his backside.
‡‡ Not feeling too archangelish at the moment.
Cambridge
I rang Cambridge last night.* My first surprise method, that holy of holies and scary of scaries.
Well. A little bit of Cambridge. But even that is a substantial miracle, like . . . managing to sing for Oisin tomorrow afternoon, supposing I do. It was also an excellent example of Wild Robert at his maddest. I think I wasn’t blogging yet when he pitched me into Stedman after I’d been ringing about a year and a half and could just about struggle through bob doubles on a good day. Stedman was like yanking the toddler off her tricycle and entering her in the Tour de France. Gah. However, the grind mechanism was engaged and I did, in fact, learn Stedman. Grind, grind, grind. Eventually.
Ditherington has been going through a bad patch for practise night ringers and Wild Robert clearly had a rush of blood to the head when there were more ringers than bells last night . . . and the fact that only three of them could ring Cambridge—himself, Niall, and Ditherington’s fearless tower captain Marilyn—he waved airily aside, and told Michelle and me to learn the line. Now. Right then. This moment. When we weren’t ringing little stuff for the learners, that is. GAH. Do you know how long learning a complex line takes?** Gerald, it must be said, should have been learning the line, but he is one of these people—all occupations have them***—who fancies himself a good deal more competent than he is, and I only mention it because his unique contribution makes our eventual semi-success that much more heroic. We got through about half of it, and since the standard means of learning surprise† is by individual lead, of which Cambridge minor has five, we obviously all get medals.
The other interesting†† thing that happened last night is that I had to call some bob doubles. You hardliners who actually read these posts when they’re about bell ringing may recall that Wild Robert informed me, like a clap on the ear, about a fortnight ago that I was to call a touch of Grandsire. I did this successfully, to everyone’s amazement††† . . . but I could do it because for this particular touch you the conductor, by the calls you make, are calling yourself through a very easy sub-pattern within the entire method. The other ringers are performing the sweaty bits. Last night Wild Robert, grinning maleficently as he snatched my diagram book out of my hands, open, as it was, to Cambridge, stated that for my next trick I would call a touch of bob doubles. Oh, I said warily. I’ve been reading up, you know‡, and I ventured a remark about having perhaps some clue about the bob doubles equivalent of that Grandsire touch the other week. No, no, said Wild Robert, grinning even more maleficently, Denis gets to ring that bell. You have to call it from an affected bell . . . in other words I would be ringing all the sweaty bits and trying to remember to shout BOB at the correct intervals. And learn Cambridge in my spare time.
I admit that my calling was not quite the clean victorious sweep that it was for the easier Grandsire touch. But we got through and I shouted BOB and . . . and I can learn this. I really can. I understood what I was supposed to be doing—I understood the concept. How did this happen? It’s a bit like realising a few months ago that I was, in fact, going to make it to ringing surprise—how did that happen? And while I have thought that I ought to learn to call something, I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect with any enthusiasm. So the second thing about the experience is that . . . calling is actually kind of cool. So, yeah, okay, I’d like to learn to call a few touches. . . .‡‡
I blasted out of bed this morning still slightly overheated (morally anyway) by last night’s unexpected manifestations of ability. Which doubtless explains why today has been one long downhill skid. Sigh. However it began at the beginning of the month with me remembering that Wolfgang’s annual road test is due in February and dutifully booking in at the garage . . . who couldn’t fit us in till tomorrow. Arrgh. ‡‡‡ And then Peter also wanted to go visit Luke § and there was some backing and forthing about this and it turned out to suit them if he went up for evening visiting hours today, and comes back tomorrow. Which left me dealing with Wolfgang. In the sluicing rain—usually I use either picking up or dropping off Wolfgang as an excuse to hurtle hellhounds in the other direction. And because I don’t wake up anything like early enough to get him out there tomorrow morning for 7:30§§ I was going to take him in tonight. Okay, I thought, we can hurtle back in time to let Colin and Niall into the cottage for handbells at five, handbells at 5 o’clock being my usual Thursday excitement . . . until I noticed that we were ringing at four and at Niall’s house, which is about a twenty-minute walk from here . . . and did I mention the rain?
And then we couldn’t ring anything. Toward the end of our two hours of self-immolation Niall looked at the other two of us and said, We aren’t usually this bad, are we? Noooooo. Sometimes we get through entire minutes without going, Crash! Frell! Sorry!
And have I told you we’re trying to learn Cambridge?
* * *
*Translation: I won the lottery. I was crowned Queen of England. They just gave me the Nobel Prize for Literature. I discovered the Elixir of Happy Creative Middle Age that Lasts Longer Than a Few Decades.^ I found the answer for world peace.^^
^ See previous blog posts for remarks about how old is better.
^^ It was behind the sofa.
** Hint: it took me months to learn Stedman. Although that was my first diabolical method, and nothing can be quite that diabolical again. It’s like learning to ring inside for the first time. You will never learn it and furthermore it is going to kill you. And then it doesn’t. Oh.
*** I find the level of self-delusion rather interesting. Lots of people think they’re, oh, say, better, ahem, writers than they are. But bad writing does not literally go CLANK.
† Which includes knowing in advance so you can have studied the line before you came to practise
†† I am so living in interesting times
††† And then Niall the Ratbag made me do it again at New Arcadia
‡ Steve Colman, The Bob Caller’s Companion, http://www.ringingbooks.co.uk/ No self-respecting Deputy Ringing Master would be without.
‡‡ WHAT DID I JUST SAY????
‡‡‡ Note to self: next year remember in January.
§ No real change. Please keep those candles burning.
§§ AAAAAAAUGH
Announcement
Jodi has an agent.
http://jmeadows.livejournal.com/ 745925.html
Our very own Jodi Meadows, Days in the Life mod, ferret wrangler, extreme knitter*, flautist, eater-of-chocolate and, lately, shoveller-of-snow . . . and writer of stories, has just accepted the offer of representation from a literary agent.
YAAAAAAY.
Back in my day it wasn’t absolutely required to have an agent, although it was generally considered a good idea. In my case Harper & Row, as it then was, took BEAUTY before I had an agent. My first novel was plucked off the slush pile. Yes. But that was over thirty years ago. Times have changed a lot.
In the present day you pretty well do need to have an agent. I don’t know if there are any commercial publishers who will look at unsoliciteds any more. But certainly if you want a crack at the Big Six you have to have an agent. And it’s going to be hard to be taken seriously even by the little independent houses if you haven’t got an agent.
Jodi wants to get published. Jodi needs an agent.
Jodi has an agent.
Did I say YAAAAAAY?
YAAAAAAY.**
Chocolate, confetti, flying ferrets, dazzle, sparkle, glitter and applause***: Go Jodi.
* * *
* ‘extreme’ in this case means she also spins and we have the guest blogs to prove it
** I never squee, of course. I’m too old. SQUEEEEEEEE.
*** Partly because I never saw anything so calm and understated as the brief announcement on her blog. THIS IS CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION. SOMEBODY NEEDS TO ACT LIKE IT.^ Eeesh.
^ Repeat after me: YAAAAAAAAY.
Home
It is so beautiful out there right now. There are lights on the main road but both the long mews drive and my steep little hill are dark . . . except they aren’t. There’s moon behind the cloud and the white snow lights up amazingly. And it’s all new and fresh and . .. white. This entirely mundane little town is a fairyland, just like the stories. We might have found ourselves in Lothlorien.*
. . . Phew. And that was a brief flicker of power outage. No, no, I want my broadband.** And my electric blanket. There are towns not far from here where the electricity is lying in a snowdrift in a dead phone zone too.
One of my hellhounds’ loveliest virtues (paired as it is with its opposite virulent nuisance) is that they’re always up for an adventure. They’re sleepy this time of night, when I roust them to stagger out to cold dank Wolfgang, and especially lately when we just keep driving till Wolfgang warms up, by the time we get home they’re all warm and cozy and crashed out again and don’t want to go through the whole moving business again. . . . But when we got out there tonight and I turned toward the drive instead of the car they were awake and ready for business instantly. Hey! An adventure! Just what we wanted at 1 a.m. in a blizzard!
* * *
* Does it snow in Lothlorien? I can’t remember. And Galadriel would probably whap me up longside the head for ‘fairy’.
** And it’s just taken me two tries to get on.
Fangirl
Squeeeeee. 
I have a mad friend. Well, I have several mad friends.* This particular mad friend is a major goer to concerts of folk and Celtic music, and we bonded a while ago over the fact that Steeleye Span rules.** I think it was last year that I missed dragging Peter to a relatively local Steeleye concert by not finding out about it till something like three days after it happened.*** Major ratbags. Major bulging purulent ratbags.
So this year Fiona rang me up a couple of months ago and said, hi. Steeleye Span is going to be playing in Salisbury on 19 November.† I’ve bought two front-row tickets. I’ll swing round and pick you up at about 5:30, okay?
Blah! Brah! Arrgh! Augh! Let me not leave out of the story that Fiona lives about an hour from here, and an hour in the wrong direction.
But . . . Steeleye Span. And they’re not coming any closer, this year. And I don’t really do long-distance driving any more.††
Okay, I said cravenly. Thanks.
There’s nothing like going somewhere for the first time in the dark and I don’t think we got there exactly the most efficient way. But we got there.†††
And it was heaven.‡
Squeee. 
I don’t know who the old broad on the left is (great cardigan though‡‡) but that’s Maddy Prior.
* * *
* Like calls to like.
** Her trajectory is her own. Mine was that I was living in the back woods of Maine in the early 70s, turned on the radio one day and heard ‘Alison Gross.’^ It was like absolutely nothing I’d ever heard in my life before and I was riveted. It nonetheless took me several more years and moving to Manhattan to discover the whole Celtic/traditional music thing. Blew my head off. I know that I’ve tended here in the blog to emphasize classical over all else but that is to some extent a function of the fact that I have Radio Three going about twenty hours out of twenty-four^^ which barring the occasional burst of so-called world music, which does occasionally include Celtic, is mostly classical. But good ‘folk’ music has always got me hard right where I live, an awful lot of the classical composers I’m most attracted to use a lot of folk music—and the stuff I write or am trying to write is as clearly bent folk as it is bent classical.
Thirty years ago if you’d asked me whether I’d rather my fairy godmother gave me a voice like Marilyn Horne’s or Maddy Prior’s, I’d’ve had to stop and think about it.
^http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/steeleye_span/alison_gross.html
I’m a little uneasy about the copyright, but if you poke the video button, you also get them singing it. And (almost) forty years later+ it still gives me that thrill of something new and wonderful.
+ Forty years. My gods. How time flies as you keep breathing. 
^^ The other four are talking heads and jazz. I’ve heard some live jazz that was as good as anything of any kind I’ve ever heard, but there’s almost none I’ll listen to on the radio or CD. I used to have the same block about organ music, but a combination of Messiaen and Oisin seems to have done me up there. The jazz equivalent has not yet arrived in my life.
*** Thank you, Park Records. And I think I have marketing problems.
† This year’s flyer from Park Records arrived yesterday.
†† ME, my little friend. Not. I’ve told you, haven’t I, that that split-second alertness necessary when you’re behind the wheel—and which most people with no strange auto-immune defects aren’t even really aware of—is a nightmare when the ME’s active. And if I’m behind the wheel very long, it makes the ME active.
††† The scenic route is somehow . . . not so scenic, after dark.
‡ I’m too tired^ to make the kind of sense I’d like to, but it really amuses the ungleblarg out of me seeing all these old people blazing away up there on stage. Yes. It’s true. People over fifty^^ still have lives and energy and ideas and good stuff to share. Maddy is delicious for a variety of reasons but one of them is that she demonstrably couldn’t care less that she’s past it by the usual beach babe standard. She’s up there wearing lace and bright colours^^^ and dancing—dancing gracefully. We should all get to age like Maddy Prior is ageing.
I was also reminded that while, up till my road to Damascus conversion rather recently on the subject of the classical violin, I was not a fan, I’ve always loved ‘fiddle’. And Peter Knight is amazing. There was a point during the selkie song that I swear he was double-bowing and plucking all at the same time—is this physically possible?—he sounded like an entire string section all by himself. And while he has an electric fiddle, he spent most of the evening on an acoustic one that had its very own microphone.^^^^
^ Watching Fiona do all the driving really wore me out
^^ Even over sixty.
^^^ I urgently want to know where she buys her clothes. She was wearing a lavender and pink and white layered, very very full and twirly skirt in the second half that I might have tried to steal, only I didn’t want to embarrass Fiona.
^^^^ There are advantages to being introduced to the band by someone who knows them. Peter Knight hugged Fiona, so when she introduced me to him he hugged me.
‡‡ It is so too warm today to be wearing that cardigan. But I was DETERMINED to wear it to the concert. So I did. Gasp. Swelter.
Been there, done that, got the t shirt. 
