ECHO 23/1/06 - Burford.

Waking to the noise of hundreds of crows in their tree-top roosts; a cacophony of calls that never ceases or takes a pause from dawn through to mid-day.

Photos of the couple that own the house we are staying in for a night. Everywhere. Some in triplicate and most posed in studios and shot through semi-romantic misted lenses. The pair gazes into each other’s eyes or smile wanly and misty eyed out at the camera. I find it unsettling, at odds with the ease of a relationship as if they are trying too hard.

In Stow-on-the-Wold the Brethren preachers come out and stand on the corner of the market square, calling out their messages and sermons, warning the people of apocalypse and sin. Catherine of Siena may well have been proud (see yesterday’s entry)! These three men, two well into their seventies, the other a grey looking man in his thirties are immoveable, as if their feet are stuck fast to where they stand and their mouths keep on bellowing, cavernous. I guess this is an event at least 400 years old.

The cracked iron hearth–plate in the ancient fireplace – cracked into three pieces, yet still upright there – a man on horseback, Lord Fairfax, his steed broken at the sides so the head is separated as are the hindquarters from the rest – it dates from the time of the English Civil War – blackened with age, torn apart, yet still standing – I half expect it to get up and move, to trot off on the baying horse and spew musket smoke and powder and brimstone (seems to be the order of the day here) – fervour and bloody violence underneath the ‘peaceful’ Cotswold town. And as if in prompt my Father tells the story of how, after banning a wholly unpleasant character from his hotel bar for causing damage to it, was beaten up by some of the locals one night. Turns out they all (including the banned man) were members of the local branch of the National Front and they had decided to meet out their brand of ‘support’ for their fellow racist.

- - - - - -

the fieldfare is my echo
gazing from this window to where
he stands – son, marshal, devotee –
listening to the mid-day moment
and the certainty of the next windfall

the radio signal guides me
toward evening - if I’m lucky enough -
swinging through comedy at the basin
cold feet on the ticky tiles
worried about rising ennui