A Totally Worthwhile Risk - 2

Tonight, clouds build as the high pressure breaks. Speculative gusts of wind kick blackthorn blossom ghostly white along the towpath and the full moon seeps heavy and watery through a blanket of cloud. Join us tonight as we continue hearing Mum's account of a risk that was totally worth taking.     

Journal entry:

7th April, Monday

“Warm snowflakes
 Of blackthorn float and drift
 Along the towpath
 Among cowslip yellow
 And bluebell blue.

The sheep are loathe
 To move, preferring to lie
 On the grass
 White with night frost,
 Enjoying the heat
 Of the sun
 On their backs.”

Episode Information:

In this episode I read:

‘Blackthorn Blossom’ by John Bond
‘Young lambs’ by John Clare

In the thumbnail photograph, Mum and Dad are the couple facing each other and closest to the camers. For other accompanying photographs, please go to noswpod.

With special thanks to our lock-wheelersfor supporting this podcast.

Gabriela Maria Rodriguez-Veinotte
 Kevin B.
 Fleur and David Mcloughlin
 Lois Raphael
 Tania Yorgey
 Andrea Hansen
 Chris Hinds
 David Dirom
 Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

General Details

The intro and the outro music is ‘Crying Cello’ by Oleksii_Kalyna (2024) licensed for free-use by Pixabay (189988).

Narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed by Helen Ingram.

All other audio recorded on site. 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:27 Journal entry
• 0:57 Welcome to NB Erica
• 2:54 News from the moorings
• 3:58 'Blackthorn Blossom' by John Bond
• 7:32 'Young Lambs' by John Clare
• 8:48 Cabin chat
• 19:47 A Totally Worthwhile Risk - 2
• 42:13 Signing off
• 42:33 Weather Log

Transcript

JOURNAL ENTRY

7th April, Monday

“Warm snowflakes
 Of blackthorn float and drift
 Along the towpath
 Among cowslip yellow
 And bluebell blue.

The sheep are loathe
 To move, preferring to lie
 On the grass
 White with night frost,
 Enjoying the heat
 Of the sun
 On their backs.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It is as if the night is holding its breath. The wind drops as if it no longer has the energy to push against the sluggish air. The barometer on the study wall begins to anti-clockwise. The spell of high pressure is breaking tonight. The air closes around us, us – the Erica, the wide-eyed moorhen, the ducks in their twos and threes and fours, the rabbits in the warren high above the canal side, perhaps even the sloping fox and badger all root-snuffles and paws. And we all wait. Wait beneath a night heavy with change. The light of a full moon seeps and bleeds milky through the cloud. The cowslips glow like little ghostly ladies in nodding bonnets on the bankside.

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a close and claggy April night to you, wherever you are.

I'm so pleased you could make it! It is really lovely to see you and I was so hoping that you could come tonight. Thank you for coming. I've put the kettle on and restocked the biscuit barrel. So please come inside, take the weight off your feet and the worries off your shoulders. Let's spend tonight quiet under the brooding sky. Welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

Black blades of sedge new growth are shooting among the yellowed-bone rattle of last year’s reeds and rushes. The towpath and hedgerows foam and billow with airy clouds of blackthorn blossom. In places, we walk down avenues lined with walls each side of us of white petal and scented memories and old tears. 

It is only at times like these that I realise how many sloe bushes we have along here. Misty dark globes of midnight sour shining with such perfect flowered starlight. I found this among a collection of poems that Mum had gathered and printed out in a little book that she called A Celebration of Plants Wild and ‘Tame.’

‘Blackthorn blossom’ by John Bond (Spring 1994)

[READING]

And then there has been the light. Such perfect April light that paints the colours in the way only April can. The deep, rich, range of greens – emerald, lime and dew-freshened spearmint, and the yellows – coltsfoot, celandine, dandelion, cowslip, avens and primrose, sprinkled with deep blues and violets of vetch and bluebell, the tiny purple trumpets of ground ivy, and the chalky pastel of forget-me-nots blue. Oh! and skies of such blue. The speedwell blue that you could only find on the cover of a childhood annual or a Krøyer painting. It has been a good thing that the sun has been shining so strongly recently, for the depths of such blue would surely put out and drown a lesser one.  And more recently, whisps and swirls of cloud forming and gathering and so, today, for the first time in what seems a long while the sky has turned milky with cirrus feathers and washes of stratus.

This morning, I saw local ducklings for the first time this year. Tiny, newly hatched, balls of fluff and awkward feathers. Twelve of them that buzzed and bobbed around a wary mother. One of our neighbours told me about a toad she had heard near her boat. I now can’t unhear it. Sporadic croaks that seem too loud – subterranean, sub aqua. They echo around my consciousness in the way that the call of the cuckoo does, or the siren of an emergency vehicle.  

Carp are sunning themselves in the shallows where the coltsfoot and cowslips blaze. They are beginning to somersault too. Thrashing the water into a crystal scattering of light and forming enigmatic circles across the mirror stilled surface.

Meanwhile, Maggie has been making friends with the lambs. There’s a small paddock where those who have either been rejected by their mothers, or who have other needs that require them to be hand-reared are kept. They get plenty of attention and are hand-tame and inquisitive, nuzzling up to the fences for a sniff or a head rub. When Maggie goes past, they cluster towards her sneaking their muzzles through the gaps between fencing rails. There they rub noses. 

 'Young Lambs' by John Clare

[READING]

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

A TOTALLY WORTHWHILE RISK (PART 1)

Reading Mum’s account again, what strikes me most powerfully are the descriptions of the giddy disorientation of what we would now call culture shock. Mum and Dad really were stepping into a totally new and almost alien world to them – certainly one very different from that which they had left in lower middle-class southern England.    

In the last episode Mum and Dad had started out on their new life in Canada on board the liner Seven Seas. Their excitement was slightly dampened by Mum experiencing seasickness. However, thanks to some strange but sage advice from their cabin steward, Mum soon got over it.

[READING]

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very restful and peaceful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG