May 9th An Early Morning Ramble

I wrote much of yesterday’s blog early in the morning, finished it off quickly in the evening and submitted it to my editorial board, who was ready for bed. Before I pressed the Publish Button I made the mistake that I make most evenings, of re-reading it. The poem has always been for me, the perfect poem. It may not be for anyone else but in this instance my judgement is the only one that matters. Perhaps another mistake was to have provided readers with a link to the source material because when I looked at that the poem crashed. I had misread it and a couple of the final verses were factually incorrect and in fact contradicted what I had explained earlier. My editor had drawn my attention to this by saying it was confusing.

So at this time of night I was faced with a quandary. I had written the poem several years ago, published it and read it on various public occasions and no one had noticed the mystery of the bookshelves appearing in different churches. It hadn’t even registered with me when I found them in St.Mary’s. On the Crich Parish Website you will see one version and on my blog you will see a revised one. Despite Deirdre’s advice that no one would ever notice I had to be faithful to the truth, and to that desperate American PhD student in some obscure American university who is writing an analysis of my original manuscripts. It will be a short thesis as I mostly write on the computer so there are no original drafts. Sorry desperate American academic, but you won’t win tenure out of me. Anyway I had to dismantle some of my perfect poem and rewrite it.

It was, therefore, heading towards midnight when I took the bin out for next day’s collection. The fireworks and trumpet calls of VE Day were all over and it was a night of utter quiet and stillness. I stood in the middle of the road and looked down to where it dipped out of sight. The darkness was as tender and black as sheer velvet with the street lights blinkered by overhanging trees. I don’t know where the moon had gone, it had gone to where the moon goes, I suppose. It was a moment of sublime beauty and should have sparked my greatest poem, but it didn’t. I wrote in an earlier blog that everyone was planning to produce their magnum opus and now there’s speculation about lockdown lifting the reality is if we haven’t done it by now we’re not going to.

In my case the suspension of time, time as I am living it, is time not moving. As I am constantly aware, down below us time is speeding on as remorselessly as the Derwent in the valley, but I am living in a state of paralysis with my own ever rolling stream clogged with silt. I am blogging about it but not doing it, that annoying genre of literature where writers write about their inability to write. Poor old Gerard Manley Hopkins did a lot of such writing and significantly suffered from constipation at the same time. Thankfully I suffer from only one of those complaints.

I know people who are dynamos at the moment, ticking off the jobs to be done at an infuriating rate. Extensions are being built, gardens landscaped, homes decorated and no doubt operas and symphonies written while I stand and consider whether to clean the car or not. And decide not.

I offered to get some turf removed from the churchyard so we can do some re-wilding and am stultified by instructions on the seed packets that contradict each other as to when they should be planted. I hope the Autumn version is right because then I can delay further. My publisher has sent me details of a marketing project she wants me to undertake. It’s probably only about an hour’s work but when time has ceased an hour could be a year or nothing at all. There is a deadline and deadlines at the moment only leave me blinking in incomprehension. Surely when I return from time travel with the Doctor nothing in 2020 Earth will have moved on. Or it might be the opposite, I emerge from this frozen time warp to find everything is changed, like Washington Irving’s ‘Rip Van Winkle’,

“All now was hurry and bustle. The meeting of acquaintances-- the greetings of friends-- the consultations of men of business. I alone was solitary and idle. I had no friend to meet, no cheering to receive. I stepped upon the land of my forefathers-- but felt that I was stranger in the land.”

Then there is my magnum opus taunting me every time I open the garage door. The easy section I cleared out a couple of months ago, but there are still the shelves of paint tins to be sorted and cleared, all those left over from two decades of decorating jobs, in case we needed to touch up a wall or door. All the lids will have to be levered open, most of the paint will have gone solid, some are rusted up, some might be useful. Then there are the eight plastic boxes that came from our last house 18 years ago, and still haven’t been sorted. They were opened once I recall and then deferred to a later date, then deferred again, then forgotten and I suspect I’ll look in them and defer them to the next generation who’ll probably dump them without even opening them.

Last night we chatted with friends and of course there are people frantic with frustration because the lockdown has prevented them from doing their jobs or has endangered their jobs; or they are having to do their jobs in near impossible or even dangerous circumstances. For them this suspension in time is not a mere psychological block but a real physical block to their relationships, their livelihood and their plans. So I, standing idly by on the bank of the ever rolling stream, can now add guilt to my stockpile of uncomfortable emotions.

This blog is a photograph capturing this moment in my experience; it probably isn’t a photograph of yours. When you are forced to pause and survey it, this landscape of emotions constantly changes from moving cloud shadows to tingling spring sunshine. It’s just coming up to 8am. Who knows, by the time I press the Publish Button tonight, I’ll have re-wilded the churchyard, cleared the garage, composed and rehearsed a few songs, written a novel - but not washed the car.

9.30pm update. Have done none of these, but did plant some runner bean plants, which I really shouldn't have done because it's turning cold next week. A nice day, however.