Lights, Action … May into June 2024.

With apologies for the tardiness of this blog … there has just been so much going on and too much to do! ‘Writing between the gaps’ of life, family and work is something I’ve always had to do, as many of us do (and that in itself is political) but my goodness those gaps are getting narrower. I’m hoping to post these blogs on Substack at last, but I will continue to blog them here too. Anyway; some writing and after that, some chat, and lots of news! Thank you as ever for reading and staying with me – it is everything x

The last time I saw the aurora, I heard it too. I was 18 and, having clambered out the window of a borrowed bedroom in response to some carefully flung gravel, I found myself sitting on the sloping shingles of the roof of a clapboard house in my very English M&S nightie, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

It was my second half-year trip out to unofficially work, taking horseback trips out into the Rockies or working as a cowgirl. I’d seen the lights several times by now – they were a frequent and absolutely awe-inspiring sight, even to those who had a lifelong familiarity with them. I’d slept through an alarm on this occasion – we were making a very early start to camp in the mountains, and I pushed up the window to let the three cowboys below know I’d be a few minutes. Being the only girl, young and hopelessly, curiously, eccentrically English, they were very forgiving – and also very protective. They pointed up – and that’s what made me clamber out. That breathtaking, shimmering, wildly changing light and colour in the sky.

Beams and shards and rippling drapes of fluid, cellophane light in green, purple, white and red. Magenta. Kaleidoscopic, cinematic and rapidly changing so you couldn’t look away, not for one second. Coloured silk and glass. And the sound. I’d heard it before – it was an acknowledged, accepted thing here – was on the cusp of frightening. A raven-wing taffeta softness, then a static rush, a swoop, a crackle of something other. A high radio tuning that might have been inside my own head. Something I heard then forever in the old dial up internet tune; the rustle and rub of stiff fabric, and in a certain phrase of starling song; those colours carried through the spots and glints on the bird’s feathers.

To saddle up and ride out up mountain paths under those lights, with coyotes howling is something I’ll never forget.

Some 30 odd years on, I’d seen the alerts on Twitter and gone out, tired, with too much to do and think about. We are in central southern England, right on the line where the west country starts. The lights rarely get this far. But we have the good fortune to be living in a dark night sky reserve. The low horizon to the north is more difficult for us – there are woods – and I’d contemplated going up the big hill, but could see, already, a beaded line of headlights suspended along the single track lane over the downs. I was cross, because a beloved old farmhouse, nicely renovated to rent out to weekenders is almost permanently lit up like a spaceship, with highly sensitive outdoor lights, all round. It spoils our view of the hill at night, and shines into neighbour’s bedrooms, whether the tenants are there, or not. Still. My youngest daughter walked down the lane to the horses’ field with me, but we couldn’t see anything. It was nice though.

An hour later and I thought I’d just try again. Walked down to the field, let my eyes adjust and spotted what looked like a skein of white fabric stretched across the sky. As I watched, it firmed into a searchlight. The sky to the west was blushed crimson, the horizon, green. I sent out a rapid fire of WhatsApp messages to the village and roused the family, squinting against the phone light. It was happening.

For the next hour, I stood in the vast, empty field beneath it, with my husband and two of my children – messaging the third, who was watching from a beach in Falmouth with half the town, and took some photos, where through some digital trickery and even on our collectively, very old phones, it confirmed what we were seeing with the naked eye. We put our phones away. Pillars and beams of light shot out across the heavens in a kind of static starburst, curtains and sheets of colour unrolled, drew back, shifted; deepened through rose and violet, teal green, bottle green. Magenta. Lapwing colours. And, just as I thought that, I heard one. That’s when I cried. A sob, suppressed, bubbling up in that cinema light at all that beauty. I’ve not found them nesting this year, in the field we saved them in last, next door to this one.

A large bat – a noctule perhaps – flew below the stained glass light. A yellow meteor fell through it. Our neighbour’s cockerel crowed and strangest of all, a cuckoo called three times. It’s been a better year here for cuckoos. We watched and laughed, threw up our hands and said ‘wow’ and ‘woah’ and ‘look over there now!‘ over and over, in utter awe, all to the other irreverent sounds of the horses’ grazing, trumpeting farts. Eventually we wandered back to the house where a rainbow shaft seemed to plunge down the chimney.

Articles and News …

My Guardian Country Diary this month was about the wonderful, eccentric but also entirely neccessary and unique historic law-enforcing antics of Hocktide in our small, rural town of Hungerford. We are unique in the unbroken tradition of annually marking, renewing and celebrating this custom that has kept our rights of common in existence today. I have friends that live on the High Street that can keep a cow on the common, ostensibly fish and are entitled to wood for fuel. We are the only town to ‘own’ our Town Hall, as well as fishing rights, commons and nature reserves, a pub and Corn Exchange, and have a (now charity) that runs alongside the municipal Town Council, called ‘The Town and Manor of Hungerford and the Liberty of Sanden Fee.’ It resisted the takeover of the Town Council for some 50 years, before some of its renegade inhabitants and constable were threatened with imprisonment. It has a fascinating, deep and ancient history, but you can read about just a little, here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/03/country-diary-ribbons-rituals-and-common-rights-this-pageant-is-now-575-years-old

My Countryfile Magazine Opinion piece this month is all about the romance and buzz of bees and of course, of course, the ridiculous peril we’re putting them and ourselves in, by continuing to destroy them and not comprehending how key they are to the life of this planet. For the romance and wonder, I turned to Kate Bush (lifelong muse) with a ‘B-Side’ (oh stop) from 1994 ‘They got alchemy! They turn the roses into gold; they turn the lilac into honey…’ and other fabulous poets like Jo Shapcott and Eamon Grennan; and to the brilliant Professor Dave Goulson for the hard facts that make me want to rage and swear; that with the ’emergency use’ for the forth year in a row on sugar beet since the ban of neonicotinoids, only 5% of the pesticide reaches the crop. The rest leaches into the environment, where a TEASPOON of it has the potency to kill 4 LORRYLOADS OF BEES! But, important as ever to note, an increasing number of our best and brilliant farmers are choosing to risk going without (29% in 2022 and 40% in 2023) doubly disadvantaging themselves against those that do use neonics, because they are not supported by Government or industry. Lawkes, we should be supporting those farmers better, shouldn’t we?

Other things that went on …

I had the best time at Chelsea Green and FarmED’s Farm, Food and Literature Festival at Honeydale Farm above the Evenlode Valley in Oxfordshire again this year. It’s just the most wonderful, uplifting and intimate festival – the connections, energy, animated discussions and collaborative opportunities were electric, from playwrights to sheep, wolves to clothing (and fashion accessories) foraging, allotmenteering, family & ghosts – brilliant, beautiful, hopeful stuff. And dordi, delicious food too. I was there to help announce the winner and runner up of the Young Writer’s Prize on ecological, farm and food writing. More on that soon!

At the end of April, (most of) the 13 authors of Wild Service – Why Nature Needs You, ed by Nick Hayes and Jon Moses came together for the launch at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. It was a night of powerful and moving speeches, poems and song. I am so proud of every one of these authors, each with their own diverse, individual and compelling case for a new service to nature that we all practice, in our own different ways. It’s had fantastic reviews already, here: https://www.thegreatoutdoorsmag.com/outdoor-book-reviews/wild-service-book-review/ and here https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/19/wild-service-book-uniting-a-grassroots-movement-uk and there’s a Wild Service Online Book Club to as well as appearances at Festivals and the like. It’s a movement. Let’s move. https://linktr.ee/right2roam

And lastly, I’m looking forward to launching the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize at Hay Festival on Sunday 2nd June. I’m one of the judges and am on Radio 4’s Open Book talking about it on Sunday 26th May. I’m really excited about it and there will be more on this throughout the year. Storytelling can move and engage us and give us agency and hope. The prize aims to build on the example of climate novels that have gone before, celebrate new ones and broaden their reach. Do follow them on social media! Twitter @climate_fiction Insta @climatefictionprize

And, this is new to me, but you know, if you’d like to support my writing by ‘buying me a coffee,’ the link is here, and of course, absolutely and entirely optional, thank you!

https://ko-fi.com/nicolawriting