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Monthly Archives: April 2020

Human Sorrow, Environmental Joy & the Wisdoms of Danny The Dealer.

26 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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ABBA, Alinsky, Angel Delight, Berni Inns, big data, Cimate Change, CO2 Emissions, COVID 19, Danny The Dealer, Drugs, Enlightenment Now, Environmentalists, Free Market Dynamics, Good vs Evil, Hamsey, Indira Ghandi, Joy, Magpies, Marwood, Ouse, Poverty, Radiohead, Rules For Radicals, Sorrow, St Albans, Stephen Pinker, Susan Shanks, Thanos, The Tudor Tavern, Walter Scheidel, Withnail & I, Yeats

MV5BYWFhZDRlMzQtY2Q3Ni00MDQyLWE5ZGYtZmUxNWEwOTVlMjk1L2ltYWdlL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTgwNTk5MDU@._V1_.jpg

Bear with me as I just want to set out the slightly odd logic that got me to here.

While walking along the banks of the Ouse towards Hamsey, mist rising off the sky soaked water, a chattering Magpie swooped and settled on the dewy path in front of me.

Good morning Mr Magpie: 

how are Mrs Magpie 

and all of the other little magpies?

Thats what I should have said at least, if I were a man truly stitched into the natural fabric of Albion’s rolling, rural majesty and the echoes of our medieval ritual and lore. But it was in fact the Magpie theme tune from the 1970s children’s show, with accompanying electric moonage graphic intro that came to me first, through a rose-tinted mist of Angel Delight, It’s a Knockout, Berni Inns [the Tudor Tavern in St Alban’s to be precise], ABBA, and Susan Shanks.

This was closely followed by an passing echo of Radiohead’s:

Good Morning Mr Magpie,

How are we today

Now you’ve stolen all the magic 

And took my memory

At which point I settled back into the familiar One for Sorrow, Two for Joy, Three for a Girl and four for a Boy refrain. And it was the word Sorrow that finally popped to the top of the pile in my head. 

As I walked I remembered a passage in Stephen Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now which alluded to Sorrow and something about pandemics.

For those who might not know him, Stephen Pinker is a Scientist first and foremost, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and an Elected Member of the Academy of Sciences. He is also an advocate of Eco-modernism or what some call Eco Pragmatism, and actively refutes any attempts to create a morality play around issues concerning the environment and climate change. He dismisses the positioning of these arguments as being those of Good vs Evil and rightly questions all of the incumbent fanatacisms that come with that framing from either side. To some Green Revolutionaries and Climate extremists this places him firmly in the opposition. 

Why had this Sorrow Pandemic thought demanded revisiting? Because recently in the pursuit of seeking out and discussing positive outcomes from our current crises, I’ve been reminded that some, especially those at the bleeding edges of the Environmentalist establishment [and yes, you are as much of the established order now as those you damn], see the crisis unfolding around the world as licence to make unrestrained and slightly gleeful statements and exaltations about the impacts of COVID 19.

There is no doubt that this cloud does contains a multitude of silvery positives. That there is barely a plane in the sky, no travel to speak of, a collapse in oil demand, a shrinking if not collapse of unfettered consumption, the return of certain ecosystems to their purer nature [the canals of Venice’s return to beauty is a much trumpeted benefit of the collapse of its tourism trade], and a general re-engaging with nature in all of its glory are indeed to be somewhat thankful for. But they come at a price.

There is also a sense from some that COVID will act as a great leveller, and that, just perhaps, this crises may lead to a shrinking of inequality in the world; a rebalancing in favour of smaller living and needs and a greater balance between humanity and the natural world. 

The upsides are plain to see. But where my issue lies is that these upsides often seem to be dislocated from the downside price we will have to pay for them – and what’s more, unfettered from whom will pay that price eventually. It is that dislocation that concerns me. And it is the glee present in some of the exhalations that pricked me; the whiff of a misanthropic, Thanos-shaped righteous mania that is in need of checking, in my humble opinion at least.

The piece I remembered was in fact to be found in his chapter on Inequality, and if you’ll bear with me I’ve reproduced it below in its entirety:

‘The historian Walter Schneidel identifies “Four horsemen of Levelling”; mass-mobilisation warfare, transformative revolution, state collapse, and lethal pandemics. In addition to obliterating wealth [and, in the communist revolutions, the people who owned it], the four horseman reduce inequality by killing large numbers of workers, driving up the wages of those who survive. Scheidel concludes, “All of us who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions it was only ever bought forth in sorrow*. Be careful what you wish for. ‘

Source: Stephen Pinker, Enlightenment Now, Penguin Random House

*my emphases

There it was – careful what you wish for. In reading this I had mentally added to Sheidel’s prize of greater economic equality those of greater environmental well-being; an equality of possibility for all regardless of gender, colour, creed or background; a reduction in industrial carbon emissions; greater respect and care for the creatures we share the planet with; a return to less nihilist consumer tendencies; and a general rebalancing of humanity and planet.

All of these are eminently desirable, but must exist within a universal order under natural laws, and therefore there are losers and losses to be accounted for with these gains. Positive and negative externalities. We must be cognisant of that.

And this is where I come to my point [at last]. 

I have a simple request to those whom might quietly caw and reel and dance as the old order burns about them – the price for your glee is being carried by human beings who do not necessarily deserve your dance at their despair.

To punk and pimp Yeats:

But I being poor have only my sorrow:

I have spread my sorrow under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my sorrow.

Before you say or do anything in celebration of the upsides, just be conscious that there is a bill: the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives; the deaths of precious loved ones, the loss of millions of jobs and the supplementary well-being and progress they bring to individuals, communities and economies – and a severe loss of momentum on the social and technological progress that might just accelerate humanity out of the poverty that fuels so much of what’s wrong on the planet.

In his chapter on The Environment, Pinker quotes Indira Ghandi; ‘Poverty is the greatest polluter.’

If we only look to the negative environmental impact that historic and more recent scale industrialisation brings and discard the fact that the advances inherent in these epochs have in turn raised millions out of poverty, of course we will see a doomsday scenario. 

Pinker’s book reminded me that for all the degradation and diminishments the industrial revolution and subsequent technological advances have bought [and he does not shy away from pointing to the dreadful scale of them, and equally the role of tyrannies of both the extreme left and the extreme right in escalating them], he reminds us that once the leverage of progress has lifted millions out of poverty and away from scratching a daily subsistence, they are able to raise their eyes and minds to higher-order issues and challenges that might face us not just as individuals but as a collective.

In the act of liberating millions from poverty, enlightenment stops being the exclusive preserve of a small cabal of highly-educated and righteous minds exercising the luxury of their conscience above everyone else. Enlightenment becomes democratised across millions, eventually billions, of people – and through that enlightenment comes the responsibility it brings.

The rise out of poverty allows any society to educate and enlighten those liberated millions to the positive and negative impacts of our existence, both on each other, the environment and on the planet as a whole – and it elevates and accelerates that society’s ability and capacity for making and acting upon smarter choices. There has to be some good in that.

And in regards to a point I made earlier, whether Pinker is the opposition or not, here’s a thought in regards to how we might nurture greater consideration and consciousness of others in the machine of all of this. 

Break out of your echo-chamber. Every now and then. Move away from those that celebrate the same beliefs and value systems as you and consume the same feedback loops of ‘suitable’ or relevant data that you consume. Read texts that make you feel uncomfortable; texts that hold the opposite of your belief system; texts that present research findings, insights and correlations that contradict those you usually rely on to support your beliefs – seek out the peta-flip-side to the peta-flop of big data points your echo-chamber usually feeds on.

Big Data and the feedback loops of insight and ‘truth’ it brings are the drug of Now. But this presents us with somewhat of a dichotomy. What makes one ‘truth’ right and the other wrong? Who decides?

What we trust and why is a shaded and complex thing, as Withnail’s provider of Phenodihydrochloride benzelex, Danny the Dealer points out:

Marwood: Give me a Valium, I’m getting the FEAR!

Danny: [very calmly] You have done something to your brain. You have made it high. If I lay 10 mils of diazepam on you, it will do something else to your brain. You will make it low. 

Why trust one drug and not the other? That’s politics, innit?

Why trust one ‘drug’ and not the other? Though the data point itself may be scientifically or statistically immutable and solid, it does not stop the purveyor, distributor and propagator of that data point ‘framing’ it for their own benefit and in such a way as to suit their immediate need. So for balance, and in search of illuminated self-enquiry, it pays us to see and contemplate on all sides. In doing that we might achieve a slightly more universal, humane and less partisan perspective.

You might of course align yourself with Saul D. Alinsky’s Rule for Radicals of polarity and extremity as the only way to drive transformative change. You may choose to remove any of the naturally occurring grey and revert to a black and white absolutism underwritten by the fifth rule of Ridicule and think ‘Fuck your Trumpist orange-man point of view’, in which case, enjoy your radical bully-hole. 

You might be so delighted at the evidences of nature’s ascendency that everything else can go whistle.  That’s also fine. Unlike millions of people who still live under the shadows of poverty, tyranny, ignorance and degradation, you live in a society that treasures and upholds free speech and the application of free will. So you’re free to utilise your educated, enlightened mind to think and say what you like.

And if, given all of that, you quietly and simply don’t care; and see the doomsday scenario of natural reordering and devastation required to deliver your aims as worth cheering for in the face of others sorrow, then crack on.

All I would ask is this – that you and your opposites, those who trumpet and celebrate free-market dynamics and profit while dismissing the destruction and degradation they bring on humanity, our communities and our environment as a fair price for the gain, do us all a favour:

Get a room, and leave the rest of us to try and make the best of this.   

Up-Close & Silent. Firing up intimacy in a Zooming world.

23 Thursday Apr 2020

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Broadband, Cheech & Chong, COVID 19, facetime, Gaze, Google Hangouts, Intimacy, Lockdown, Noise, people, Performance, professional Angst, Silence, Zoom

Screenshot 2020-04-23 at 17.35.32.png

This is a really simple, and hopefully, rewarding and meaningful exercise we can all do.

The only barrier to participating will be your broadband connection.

If it is dodgy and you already spend indeterminate amounts of time waiting for the frozen rictus grimace of the person you’re zooming or hanging-out with to unfreeze, what I am about to impart as an exercise in intimacy will be lost on you. Though you may want to try filling the down-time by capturing screen-shots of the best ‘frozen faces’ and creating a ‘rogues gallery’ to while away the moments.

But, if your broadband is bulging with bandwidth, we’ll crack on.

Now, hands up who’s spending a ridiculous amount of time on Zoom meetings or call meetings or meeting meetings of any kind? Thought so.

It seems that though we are winding into our newly virtually-streamlined dance of life and work reasonably well, some of us are finding it hard to shake the need to be busy being busy.

Working from home seems to be an exercise in existential professional angst.

“Should I have a Google meeting Calendar?”

“Should I just ‘be around, dial in whenever’ or more formal and less available?”

“What is ‘too many meetings” in a COVID 19 world?”

“ How do I project value to my employer while ‘not in the room’?”

We also then have the aesthetics and logistics of the Lockdown Screen-Age. There’s been lots of adjusting, and light moving, all to sort the Zoom friendly ‘best angle.’ We know full well that people are surrepticiously viewing our Now – the life of us visible around the edges of our in-screen head when we meet. Slightly to the left? To the right? Painting or book shelves in shot? But which books? Which artists? What do they say about me? Back to the wall, or space behind me? Comedy zoom-bombing by family members [or pets]? Or door cemented shut with barbed wire?

Questions questions questions.

The one outcome or effect? 

Zoom & FaceTime saturation. And a staggering disappearance of natural intimacy.

Once upon a time when it wasn’t used for everything FaceTime was fun and quite personal. Not any more!! You are as likely to have your line manager, CEO, business partner or the accounts department on FaceTime as you are your 12 year old and the family dog.

And it’s also getting a little ‘performance’ out there.

We are trained almost chimp-like to ‘lean in’ [the crap silicon valley speak for being half-interested] when the camera is on. And we seem to be suffering from accelerating excitability, so desperately in need are we of a new face/conversation/topic/theme/human to point ourselves at.

So we tend to perform a little more – and in turn perhaps be a little less genuine?

So how do we rediscover intimacy not only in the absence of hugs and physical proximity – the rub of life – but also in the accelerating tsunami of zoom screens and facetime?

And here is my thought – and, as I say, it’s really simple.

Select someone you love – family, friend, child, grandparent, anyone – and the best channel on which to connect with them – hangouts, face time or zoom.

Then do the following:

  • Agree in advance that you will only be on the ‘call’ for 5 minutes max – no more
  • Agree that after the first minute, you will both stop talking. 
  • Agree that you will just look at each other directly; no wriggling or evasion
  • Agree that you will do that for as long as possible.

And see how you do.

This is about a simple shift in behaviour with big impact. And putting the staggering intimacy of silence and direct gaze to work.

And it’s tough. You may only get 10 seconds in – or, perhaps, like a lot of other things recently, you may surprise yourself and last longer. 

But don’t underestimate it. To engage, fully, in silence – to truly look at the person, and not demand noise, action, words or response; that is ‘powerful shit, man’ as Cheech may well have said to Chong at some point in the late 60s early 70s.

To look at the person directly, and just be comfortable with that and the deafening silence of it can be remarkable and so intensely intimate you’ll be amazed. Or terrified.

Someone mentioned that they’d be lucky to get through 2O seconds without either breaking wind, slurping tea, cackling randomly or bursting into tears.

Well, all of those sound great to me. But perhaps all at once might be a challenge. 

Give it a go and then at least you’ve tried and there’s another thing to cross off the Things To Do In A Lockdown list.

Bon Chance

Soul Telly, Snacks & Reasons to be Cheerful.

11 Saturday Apr 2020

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85% Cocoa, Ashes to Ashes, Blackadder, BREXIT, carrot batons, Celebrity Gogglebox, Chaucer, Chipsticks, Chocolate Fingers, Chocolate Rolls, Dave, Dr Who, Fawlty Towers, gogglebox, Hummus, Ian Dury, LEAVE, Life On Mars, M&Ms, Maltesers, Marmite Toast, Patagonian, Pinot, Plebs, Reasons to be Cheerful, Remain, Shameless, Sorry, The Blockheads, The Detectorists, The IT Crowd, The Sweeney, Thunderbirds, Tyrell's Naked Crisps, UK Sample, Wordsworth

Screenshot 2020-04-11 at 10.51.29.png

Love Gogglebox. Every fidgeting, gasping, shrieking, bantering, bolshy, camp, caustic, crass, deep, playful minute of it.

Gogglebox is soul telly.

There is no better reminder in these C times of why things will be alright. Gogglebox reminds us that the genius of every British sitcom from Fawlty Towers and Sorry to Plebs, Shameless and the IT crowd is rooted in the fact that basically they’re us, but with a director and a cameraman attached. But there’s more to soul telly than meets the eye. And its just one beautiful piece of the puzzle

In the words of the master Blockhead, Ian Dury, that timeless funk-punk Chaucer, Gogglebox brings Reasons to be Cheerful, 1, 2. 3.

So let’s pick through those Reasons. Starting with the biggie. No. 1. Gogglebox is Soul telly. And I really need to be clear about what I mean when I say Soul Telly so we don’t get muddled up. For me there are many kinds of telly so I break them into four buckets just for my tiny brain to order them better.

First there’s Brilliant telly. Now Brilliant Telly is the Oh my God have you seen…? format of telly that people refer to as having ‘water cooler’ cache [though I prefer to call them Kettle Conversations as we’re keeping this British!]. Brilliant telly is the likes of: Blue Planet, Peaky Blinders, Killing Eve, The Nest. Brilliant telly goes off like a rocket and lights up culture and conversation.

Then there’s Reassurance telly. We all know this one. It’s the t.v. solution to ‘now THAT was a shite day. Is it wine o’clock yet? Right answer. Yes.’ Once the liquid and the nibbles are sorted [more of the later], next step, reassuring telly. The increased likelihood of Reassurance telly viewing can be mapped in direct relation to the degree to which you’ve had a shite day, are knackered, and simply can’t be arsed to start a new box set, navigate Catch Up or start a movie. At the intersection of all of those variables a moment occurs. ‘Modern Family? Love it. I’m well in the mood for that. Pass the Chipsticks and that full-fat hummus, right now.’   Reassurance telly is telly that is an old friend. You know each other and you are happy in each other’s company and it requires little effort on either part. And the biggest upside? You know you’ll have a good time and you shall go to sleep quietly happy.

Then there’s Nostalgia telly. V. different to Reassurance telly. Nostalgia telly does a very particular job. It is the televisual equivalent of sticking your thumb in your mouth and having a good old suck. Nostalgia telly is when you purposefully call up something that is as much a part of socio-cultural memory and history as it is of your own personal intimate memories. For me that can be anything from The Sweeney [the original] and Thunderbirds [the original] to Dr Who [the third one]. Granted some telly does a weird slip-shift thing between Brilliant and Nostalgia – Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes are a perfect example of this. But don’t be fooled. These anomalies are Brilliant first and foremost. Nostalgia tends to announce its presence – like the screen format giving away the fact that it was built for the old television format. Porridge. Fawlty Towers and BlackAdder fulfil these things nicely.

And finally there’s Soul telly. And this is a transcendent level. Soul telly seems to be able to reach something that, to punk an old beer advert, other telly cannot reach. And Gogglebox is one of those for me. It is not just something I look forwards to; or something I love to watch with my family; or something that just makes me feel better.  It fundamentally restores my faith in a very British humanity. This is not solely reserved for reality formats. The Detectorists, a masterclass in gentle, wry, rolling storytelling  is one of the most sublime pieces of soul telly I have ever seen.

NOTE I have not included the slightly difficult 5th child. Shite Telly,  as I didn’t want either to pretend I give a shit or to intellectualise what is effectively shite by its very nature. And to be fair it demands a whole journey into the underworld of its own.

So, Reasons to be Cheerful – part 1.

Soul Telly.

Now Reasons to be Cheerful parts 2 and 3 exist, in my world at least, directly in relation to part 1. This may be currently due to the lockdown and the country calling on us to park our arse on a sofa and crack on. But to be truthful, it’s not that much of a change for me. 

When I’m not wandering around the Downs in my over-tuned trainers pretending I’m Wordsworth, or perched at my lap top typing stuff like this, or undertaking any of the various other task-based living that makes up my day, I can be found parked in a blue, poplin armchair in front of my television. [I can’t bring myself to call it a smart screen TV as it isn’t – it’s my mother’s old telly which I’ve never upgraded.]

Sometimes I am doing this with my children. And sometimes alone. But for the purposes of this piece I’ll stick with the version that includes nearest and dearest. When we do, as has already been pointed out, there is always some form of snack close to hand . 

Which neatly brings me to Reasons to be Cheerful – part 2. 

Snacks.

Yup. Snacks – or nibbles. Some form of savoury snack is always welcome – piles o’ toast. Crisps, chips n dips. [Naked Tyrells for me]. Or sweet stuff. Maltesers, M&Ms or some such chocolate. Chocolate Fingers. Whatever. [Be warned, it’s a bit of a push dragging 85% Patagonian cocoa chocolate with organic caramel splinters into this environment – a little like trying to watch Corrie with Donatella Versace but – everyone to their own.]

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Make no mistake, snacks are REALLY important to the Reasons to be Cheerful. They are not discretionary. They are a pivotal part of the whole shebang. But, again, I cannot be generalist here. In this instance, for me, snacks require a nature of self-containment if not portability. Snacks need to come in a packet, bag, sachet, wrapper or box. Cakes should be of the already individually-portioned, or of the complete-format variety – for example; chocolate cake rolls or eclairs. Though I LOVE Marmite toast, marmite toast is a step or two beyond ‘snacks’. It is for want of a better word – un-contained. Toast? Fine. But Marmite Toast. It requires toasting – and the buttering – and then spreading.

It is no surprise that every one of the gorgeous, funny and highly individual families and units on Gogglebox always have some form of snack on the go, from expansive picnic-like extravagances, red wine and chocolate, to cup-a-soup, glazed eclairs, and spray cream. They play a profound role in the dynamics and integration of the people in the room. A catalyst to lean in.

One question that does arise in my mind though is why Dave, one of the Malone family’s dogs, doesn’t eat the piles of snacks and treats on the table? Plastic props? Discuss.

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Which also brings us to Reason to be Cheerful – part 3.

Company.

There is something simple and human about the intimacy and proximity of the people in Gogglebox and the company they keep [even when they are not always human]. And once we’ve got beyond the slightly self-conscious construct or conceit of us watching them watching telly – a simple truth reveals itself to me every time. 

We’re going to be alright. If this is a half decent mirror of British society, give or take a little tweaking around the edges, we will be fine.

I am uncertain as to the degree to which they programme tries to ensure that it is being ‘UK SAMPLE’ representative but there seems to be a reasonably decent balance between types and natures and backgrounds in the Gogglebox regulars with little preference shown to any one unit. 

And as if we needed proof of the great leveller of it all, Celebrity Gogglebox simply proves that however extraordinary the things people do, they are still ordinary people. Whatever makes and bakes their fame, they are still broadly the same: same quirks; same glitches; same beliefs; same values; same need for simple acts of togetherness and belonging.

I am reassured by the fact that if I were to put a camera on myself I am no different. When I sit and watch The Detectorists while stuffing Tyrell’s Naked crisps in my face, nibbling a Malteser, or scoffing hummus with carrot batons [I just HAD to use that word], I am them. And they are me.

I am no different to any of them really. And the reason that makes me cheerful is this:

Before the big C popped up, we have been living arse-deep in divisive shite. If it wasn’t the strange and quite unpleasant hectoring and bullying of BREXIT, the utterly slippery nature of how all sides presented themselves at any given time, and the civil war of LEAVE and REMAIN, it was the hysteria of identity politics, with seemingly intelligent people sucked into messy, unravelling justifications for carving society into finer and finer pieces in some insane slice and dice race to the bottom of the self-assertion barrel. And however good the cause that one or other crowd or tribe might ignite, the nasty social smack-down bullshit of the echo chamber prevailed, and it got uglier and uglier and noisier and noisier. Cheerless, Soul-less. Charmless. Over protesting. Needy. Crooked. Divisive.

In Gogglebox. I see a celebration of shades of same. Not difference. And I think right now, out there, the majority of people are proving everyday in so many ways that shades of same are a beautiful thing. Something we’ll all stand up for and fight to protect. And it is not isolationist to look to our own first before we look to others across the world. We must secure the integrity of our society first and foremost. We’re no good to anyone elsewhere if we don’t. 

And if Soul Telly, Snacks and Company underwrite that sterling effort… I’m in.

Vestigial Tales, Trainers & other Natural Wonders.

07 Tuesday Apr 2020

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A27, Alluvial Plain, Beachy head, Birling Gap, Blue Tits, Chalk & Flint Terrain, Chimpanzees, Cliffe High Street, Cretacious, Culfail Tunnel, Downland, East Sussex, Gatwick Airport, Grasslands, Grazing, Gym, Iron Age Hill Forts, LeneLovich Birdsong, Lewes, Mount Caeburn, Newhaven, Ouse River, Pheasant, Pigeons, Saucony Trainers, Shakespeare, Skylarks, Southerham Farm Reserve, Sparrows, starlings, The Sea, Typewriters, Urban.

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     The sponging of dense grass and moss muffles up through each footstep. Each earthly percussion creates a physical feedback loop that drives the next step and the next. There is something of the mechanical meditation in this walk. Each step reaches further than just the simple exchange of calorific energy through muscle and sinew for propulsion. Each footfall connects me with the deeper history of the chalk and flint ground beneath my feet. My pace is steady. [My speed hovers somewhere around the 7 in gym treadmill terms.]

That I connect to this ancient soil through the soles of my very urban white, red and green Suacony Jazz 91 trainers doesn’t quite fit the idyllic bill. But in their defence, they have carried me through hundreds of hours of walking around this Downland over the last 3 or so years. So they have earned their place, however incongruous they might seem amidst the herds of professional walking boots and shoes we pass.

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The wind-blown tree sits on the prow of the hill. The tree is my first marker. Beyond the tree, decompression and a quieting of the mind awaits.

As I pick up my pace, I imagine each heel-crump and sole-scuff echoing down through the Cretaceous layers beneath me. The chalk here is a vestigial blanket beneath the patchwork quilt of the East Sussex Downs – a residue of microscopic plankton skeletons from the bed of the shallow sea that once covered this area. As I veer left towards the tree I see the roof-tops of Cliffe High Street and the scimitar curve of the tidal River Ouse behind and below me as it exits Lewes. I also sense the Culfail Tunnel that cuts beneath me behind the chalk cliff-face that rises up over the south-easterly point of Lewes.

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The walk takes me up and into the Southerham Farm Reserve, just south-east of Lewes. The grassland here has developed into the close-cropped downland pasture through over a 1000 years of grazing. South Downs sheep speckle the hillsides, bobbing like fluffy white and grey corks on the waves of chalk and flint hills rolling back towards the sea some five miles off to the south of me. The Reserve footpath scarps up a green incline to my left punctuated with sheep and meat-herd cattle. In front of me to the right and below where I am standing is a curved hollow that wends around to the right and down into a dip through which a farm track runs – a natural amphitheatre with topographic welts running along its steep sides – the long grassed-over furrows of some older crop raising. 

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Vestigial echoes are a theme up here. Another quirk of my Saucony Jazz trainers is that the left one wheezes slightly each time my heel hits the ground. [Well, more of a  squelchy-sigh than a wheeze.] The right remains inscrutably silent. I speculate that this lop-sided sound effect might be due to the fact that I carry more weight on my left foot. A physical echo perhaps, of an L1/L2 prolapse disc that demonstrated itself [sciatica] in my right leg and foot. The echo here resides in the heel of my left trainer as evidence of my ‘carrying’ it still, [my leg that is, not the trainer] some 18 years after the fact.

Beyond the wizened tree, the ground raises upwards in a gentle slope and then steepens. The meat-cattle are closer now, bunched in this narrower spit that runs around the top edge of the amphitheatre to my right. As I move to the prow where a stile opens onto the next leg of the walk, the wind blows up a little. I am suddenly aware that there is not one obstacle between me and Eastbourne to the immediate east and Beachy Head and the Birling Gap to the south-east of me.

Sound overwhelms me here, the wind buffeting my ears. Until this point the walk has been wrapped in the birdsong of skylarks hovering and flitting 20-30 yards above my head. The warbling sing-song of them wafting over the downs just above ground level is particular to this landscape.

The purity of their song marks a clear phase in the walk. Earlier on, as I climb the tarmac hill from Cliffe High Street up past the golf course to reach the downland, the birdsong is an exquisite collision of sparrows, starlings and blue tits, tinged with the corvid caws of crow, magpie mutter, wood pigeon coos, and the wood chatter of a distant woodpecker.

This blanket of birdsong is soulful evidence of a universal grammar at work in the natural world. Current research shows increasing evidence of the links between birdsong and the universal grammar evident within it and the syntactical rhythms of creature speech. It would come as no surprise to me that humans have mined and mimicked bird song to elevate and sophisticate the basic range of primate vocal communication. Chimpanzees may well write Shakespeare given a typewriter and long enough. But it takes birds to elevate the human language to a sonnet or an aria.

Once past the golf course and out on to the downland, everything falls away.  I am left with only the skylark song all about me. It is punctuated every now and then by soaring seagull calls high above me and the distinctive cocking of the male pheasant below me, scuttling along the fringes of the low copse woods. Ive decided that, at their harshest, pheasant calls sound like a hybrid between a crow caw and a fan-belt slipping.

As I look up into the blue, scanning to find the various protagonists of said songs, something reveals itself to me. Before the lock down came, even up in this beautiful and reasonably unspoilt part of the world, there would still be a steady, low level of noise pollution coming both up from the traffic rush of the A27, and down from the planes heading for Gatwick Airport.

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Now. Just blue. And silence. As testament to the emptiness of the sky bar the birds nature put in it, I spy just one high distant vapour trail. This blue canopy is usually criss-crossed with the vapour scratches of windswept and interesting air travel. No now at least.

The lockdown has given those of us lucky enough to live at the fringes of nature an opportunity to reconnect with her beyond a simple Sunday walk. The silences left by the absence of air and road travel amplify and elevate the natural orchestra of the wild. Greater tracts of time and a far deeper need to reflect and interrogate some of the turbulence and anxiety the COVID 19 pandemic has bought compels us to spend longer out in nature than we might otherwise do. Thats not a bad thing. And it is a living privilege that I am deeply grateful for.

As I loop my way up and across the downland, Mount Caeburn sits to my left-hand side at the highest point, with Lewes to its north and the silvery Ouse snaking beneath its gaze southwards to Newhaven and the sea. This hunched, moated echo of an iron-age hill fort is from a time where defence against the dangers that might lurk all around the settlement, against what might harry and kill the occupants, was the key to survival. It was a defended place everyone could withdraw to and take refuge in. It strikes me that every home in the UK right now is less a castle and more a Mount Caebourn.

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The sun is up properly now and the mists are starting to lift off the alluvial plain below and to the south. The striding dark sigh of me falls away to my right across the grazing field.

It makes me think.

The shadow that falls from me is not the stretching shadow of an evening sun whose lengthening signals the coming darkness of a long night. This is a morning walk. On this day, for the moment at least, much like our impacts on the environment, my shadow will only shorten as the sun rises and the day fills to blooming.  And with the coming of the mid-day sun that shadow will briefly disappear. To nothing. The long shadow of my presence on the downland will have passed into memory, for a short while at least.

It would be rather nice if our impacts on the only planet we have did much the same.

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