The River at the bottom of my garden: 3 inter-dimensional portals and a goddess

Rivers of Ireland? Story 1: The River at the bottom of my garden: 3 inter-dimensional portals and a goddess

Ok. Try this for size. I suppose you could say that the whole basis of Aaronovitch's world in that there is magic just out of sight for most of us and that you can sense it if you just take the time to experience the vestigial. The submerged rivers of London are both characters in their own right and a metaphor for the magic.

In that vein, I'm going to describe some stuff. I'm not going to say I believe in the magic (I don't) but I'm going to hint at the vestigia and sometimes give the prosaic explanations too. I'm not going to attempt to imitate Aaronovitch's writing. The experiences and places and people are real, even if I've made small adjustments. I could take you to the places, show you the sights and you would experience some of the experiences. Whether or not you experienced the vestigia would be inside your own head.

Story 1 - The River at the bottom of my garden: 3 inter-dimensional portals and a goddess

I remember when you were over, oh so long ago, I took you to look into the field at the back of my house. I don't remember if I took you down to the river. Getting into the field used to be inconvenient. I had to walk down the road a hundred yards or so to reach the gate and then walk back to reach the back of the hedge of my own property. Well, now there is a better way.

This is one of a few good things to come out of COVID. Every year I trim the hedges around the boundary of my plot. It takes me a while because there is such a long boundary and so much hedge. And of course, Leylandii is what Kevin McCloud describes as "a horticultural thug". At the back of the house, I trim the back of the hedge on the field side too, because if I don't, the bits I can't reach from my side become a straggly ugly mess. I used to do this last because it involved walking down the road to the gate etc carrying the petrol hedge-trimmer.

Mid Covid, I set about trimming the hedge. This was one of the things I was allowed to do. Nobody, ever said I couldn't wander around inside my own boundary. The hedge was a job which needed doing, so I did it. In the back of my mind I must have been thinking about the back of the hedge. 

You know how it is when you notice something which has been there all the time in plain sight? Well that's what happened to me. I was cutting the hedge in the far corner of my garden, next to the boundary with my neighbour on that side, when I noticed that the hedge was less dense that I expected. There seemed to be a hedge plant missing and I could see a concrete fence post, complete with diagonal to take the strain, which created a sort-of gateway with the corner post between me and my neighbours. I pointed all this out to Nnnn and said "you know, I think I could go through there and it would make access to the back of the hedge much easier".

So we agreed, and I cut away the hedge and removed a piece of chain-link fencing (there is a chain-link fence, fronted by the hedge), and Bob's your uncle, there was a gateway. This was a job which, amazingly, went much easier than anyone expected. The (prosaic) explanation is that when my house was being built, the builders put up the boundary chain-link fence but left a gateway (complete with concrete sill!) in the corner for ease of access (they didn't want the problem I had encountered with walking along the road to the gate). When they were almost finished they had sealed the gate with a separate piece of fencing and planted the hedge. They'd been a bit economical with hedging plants in that corner but eventually the branches from two plants reached out towards each other and the closed the gap. It became invisible. All I had done was expose something which had been there all along. Surprisingly, there was a short pathway through a piece of natural hedgerow (not Leylandii) outside my boundary, where my neighbours had been taking their dogs out to walk in the field. By that time we'd been in the house for about twenty years and this was the first time we had noticed! The hedge is that thick!

After I had removed the piece of chain-link fence and done a very little bit of trimming I was left with an empty gateway between two concrete posts about 3 feet apart leading through a thick Leylandii hedge which is about 6 feet high. At the foot of the gateway is a short length of concrete kerb which the builders had installed as a door sill. They had really gone to that much trouble to make a proper gateway before eventually sealing it up. I filled the gateway with a simple low wicket gate constructed from pallet wood, liberally doused in creosote and closed with a bolt. Simples! The gate opens onto a short pathway (barely 6 feet long) through a natural hedgerow, leading from my neighbours land, outside my boundary, into the field. 

With the gate finished, I cut the back of the hedge at the bottom of the garden. What a difference the gate made! No more lugging the petrol hedge clipper all that way, throwing a cable over the hedge and using electric tools practical and forgetting a pair of loppers and having to go back for them was no longer a disaster. The job got done very quickly indeed. Only, a man's work is never done. Nnnnn didn't like being able to see the neighbours going to and fro to walk the dogs, and actually neither did I. There was something obtrusive about it. I like them, they get on with me, but I didn't want to see them and I didn't want them looking into the back garden. After a little thought, I constructed a high but very lightweight hurdle to put in front of our side of the little wicket gate. I fronted the hurdle with a piece of trellis with artificial greenery. The effect was miraculous! The gate was now invisible. The plastic leaves blended in with the evergreen hedge.

Time passes. I now go through the hedge and walk down to the river at least once a week, often several times. The gateway starts by being "invisible". Even for me, it doesn't stand out from the hedge. From the field side it is almost invisible too, and the eye is drawn from it by the route into my neighbours garden. The neighbours don't mind, the farmer doesn't know and the agricultural contractors who cut the grass for silage don't care. The cattle, when they are there, don't even notice. There is something magical about the process of going through the hedge. I start in front of the plastic greenery, remove that, go through the wicket gate, unfasten and refasten behind me a flap of square wire fencing and then duck under a single, almost invisible, length of galvanised wire at waist height and I'm in the field. Four, barriers in quick succession, two of them almost invisible. It's like parting curtains, one after another.

Each walk down to the river is an experience because the field and the river are changing constantly with the weather and with the seasons. I'm a good boy, so I usually walk round by the field boundary. Even going that long way round it's a short slow walk, 5 minutes at most, down a gentle slope to the bottom corner where the ground gets soft. The margin between the river and the field is marked by native trees: rowan and alder. In the summer and autumn my view of the river is obscured by a screen of bracken. Now in the winter I can see across the river. The water flows clear (but not too clear, the summer day when the water flowed "gin clear" is a different, bad and sad, story). In May the air is filled with May flies and in high summer damsels dance and flirt. There are several places where, if I am fortunate, I may glimpse the goddess. There she lies, lithe and elegant, facing upstream, sinuous limbs and muscular back, emerald green hair streaming down her back. Her skin is golden, mottled dark like a toad or lizard. In the summer she wears white flowers in her hair. I have never yet seen her face. I long for and fear what I might see.

Walking along the bank the atmosphere changes. The air becomes calm. The sounds of the road, far away, always quiet are silenced altogether and replaced by the whispering of the river. If I look towards my house it is no longer visible, even thought the line of sight is clear. I have passed into another world adjoining our own but separated from it.

Continuing along the river bank I climb a gentle slope to a point where the river margin widens to become a riparian woodland. As I climb, unexpectedly, the house becomes visible again just as I reach the boundary of the wood.

The prosaic explanation of the strange and perfectly real effects of the change in atmosphere and sound and the house being invisible are due to the lie of the land. The slope of the field is sort-of "s" shaped creating an effect like a ha-ha. There is a flat area near the river which is completely obscured from the top and you are not even aware of what you cannot see. You could pitch a small tent, and a man standing would be invisible from the top. The goddess in the river is the light on the broken limestone of the river bottom, illuminated by dappled light through the trees. Her flowing hair is water-weed growing from the river bottom. 

The entrance to the woodland is another multi-layered gateway. First there is an electric fence wire to duck under, then a galvanised trip wire to recognise, avoid and step over, and finally the remains of a collapsed fence to avoid. This brings you into a vestibule or anteroom from where you can look down on the rapids which are quite loud or forward, through trees to a well-trodden pathway which forks down to the river beach or forwards along a terrace into dense woodland. And every gateway should have a guardian, and this one is guarded by Lala (yes, the Teletubby), perched in a tree, who has been watching over this path since before I have known of its existence. If I were remaking this as real fiction, I think I would replace Lala with an animal skull.

   

   

A book and a machine

Hi CCCC, How are you keeping? I was doing something and I thought of you.

We've had an eventful start to the year. The events were weather related. We got snowed in for a few days and lost our water supply for a day (maybe two) and we lost power for a different couple of days. On two occasions I walked down to town to top up on groceries ("there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate equipment"). I have "appropriate equipment"! I actually had to open the neck on my jacket to maintain the right temperature. One time I got a lift there and then back. The Irish are good like that. Then there was the wind and we lost power for another 24 hours. Lack of power knocks out the oil fired boiler but we're ok, because we also have an open fire, with plenty of smokeless fuel and logs.  Dress up warm, eat sandwiches, read until the light fades, go to bed early. All rather primitive. Doesn't bother me in small doses.

Book: That's the project at the moment. Remember the photo I showed you. I'm reconstructing a photo album of my sister's early life. It's for me, my daughters and my nephew deserves to know more about his mother than he does.

Machine: This was what made me think of you. As a short diversion I decided to make myself a "muffler" to go round my neck. Reason? I wear a dayglow yellow jacket when I'm cycling. The jacket collar was getting grubby from rubbing my neck and the jacket is not suitable for washing. Solution: muffler made from a new tea towel. I sewed it up using a sewing machine which belonged to my aunt. The serial number was allocated in December 1921 (at the Singer factory in Kilbowie, Clydebank), so the machine is comfortably 100 years old and still quite useable. It's a little stiff, but I'm reluctant to mess with it other than a little sewing machine oil. May (my aunt) married in 1924, so I like to imagine that the sewing machine is either a wedding present, of a young woman preparing her "trousseau" in preparation for marriage. Both ideas are rather romantic.

Doing the sewing made me think: am I unusual? Using a sewing machine isn't a hobby for me, it's just something I know how to do. If I need to make or repair something, then one of the first things I think of is the practicality of doing it myself. I thought I needed this piece of cloth (which by the way is very comfortable and warm) so I made it!

Anyway, must go and get on with the photo album. Keep well.

Regards,

Gateways and Boundaries

Do you like mysterious doors or gateways, maybe even to ways to other dimensions? Of course you do, everybody does! Here's a little tale for you. Of course it's all true, but maybe the contrast and brilliance have been turned up to eleven in places.

When you were in K???? I remember taking you along the road and through a field to go and look at the River A????, which flows down from F???? village to where the river joins the larger River D???? in K???? town. 

Every year, when I cut the hedge which forms the boundary of my place, I have to trek along the road and then back through the field, so I can inspect and cut the back of my own hedge. It's all a bit of a nuisance. The hedge itself is Leylandii and somewhere inside of that is a chain-link fence supported on concrete posts. As I'm sure someone must have said, sometime, "it ain't going anywhere". Fortunately, I took the growing heads off the plants shortly after we moved in, so it’s not going to get out of control. Now I wish that the people who built the house had used something other than Leylandii, because it's too vigorous, but I'm not complaining because it’s attractive and maintenance free apart from once a year. 

Last year, I cut the inside and top of the hedge and had got to the stage of thinking about going round to the back. Cutting my hedge takes several days, so the job can spread over weeks. For some reason, I cut a little deeper into the hedge than I do usually in one back corner, and I noticed that the hedge growth was a little less dense there than normal. I poked around a bit more and found that the posts for the chain-link fence had been arranged in such a way that they formed a gateway inside the hedge.

This potential gateway was intriguing, so I showed it to Noreen and said that I thought it would be practical to make a gateway out into the field. The effort of creating the gateway would make the exercise of cutting the back of the hedge a whole lot simpler for the current  year and all future years (no need to walk a hundred yards along a busy road and back through the field). Noreen agreed, and a day or so later I had a gateway. 

I think the background story of my gateway is that when my house was being built, the builders constructed the gateway for access. They even put a threshold sill stone in place. When they were finished with the house, the builders filled the gap with an separate bit of fencing and planted the hedge, which over time obscured the potential gap.

A little more work, and I had constructed a little wicket gate to fit the gap. I can even point to evidence of the gate being completed on 25th August last year. Gate construction was made easier by having square upright concrete posts to work to. Not only is the gate easy to open and close, but it is invisible from both my garden and from the field! From my garden it is camouflaged by a piece of trellis covered by plastic pretend hedge, and from the other direction it exits into a wooded field boundary and is invisible from the field itself. So, now I had a hidden, secure gateway between my garden and the field beyond. It’s the sort of thing children love (and that includes children of advancing years).

The gateway served its intended purpose in simplifying the maintenance of my hedge, but it gave more. Now I have the gateway, I'm in the habit of walking down to the river, typically once a week. The distance is 150 metres as the crow flies or 350 metres around the perimeter of the field (which is the way I go, 'cos I'm good). 

Nobody would describe my place as urban and to call it suburban would be a positive insult, but access to the river takes rural to a new level. All you can hear on the other side of the hedge are natural sounds and the gentle whispering of traffic on the distant road. 

It really is peaceful down by the river. Having access to the river is a great improvement to my amenities.  Come the summer, I may spend a bit more time down there. My neighbours don't mind (because they walk their dogs down by the river), and I don't think the person farming the field will ever know!

When I’m walking around the field something strange happens. The atmosphere changes and everything becomes much quieter. The sounds of traffic from the road cease completely. This always happens in the same place. The effect does not change with the weather, in sunshine or drizzle, the same peace descends. The silence is welcoming, waiting to be filled by the sounds of the river. 

When I reach the river the banks are clothed by mature native trees and beyond the margin on the far bank there is a dark plantation of commercial conifers. Upstream there is short length of rapids and downstream the river broadens and becomes much quieter. On the opposite bank a tree trails a dead limb into the water. When the river is high this branch is dragged forward with the current and flicks back when the tension overcomes the water. The motion is repeated rhythmically. The atmosphere is quiet except for the sound of water, no houses are visible, not even my own, which is only 150 metres away. I am in another dimension, separate to, and completely insulated from, the modern world. Every time I go there I pass through a hidden portal and traverse a zone of silence and when I return the experience is reversed.

I’m afraid there is a prosaic explanation to my inter-dimensional portal. The field has an uneven slope between my house and the river. The steeper slope in the middle means that when I'm at the river the houses are hidden and all the sound from the road passes above my head. Whatever you may think, unnaturally, I choose to ignore the obvious and continue to visit my magical realm via a hidden gateway and barrier of silence.

4th February 2023