Solomon's Temple through time and space!

"Not really now not any more"!

Strange day down Fernilee!

 

Happy ninety fifth birthday Madiba!

A good year for the swifts?

It looks like good news on the swift front this summer. Last year swifts suffered terribly because of the inclement weather conditions. Many were forced to abandon their nesting sites often having to leave ill-fated and under nourished young to perish. Many local swifts gave up the battle with the rain, wind and cold and moved away further south' or even migrated earlier than usual to warmer climes. This year, although the local swifts appeared to be late in arriving, they seemed to have had a good year so far. We were excited to discover a pair nesting under our cottage eaves and it was great to see them swooping past the window and up to the nest at amazing speeds. We are glad to report the young have already fledged and are 'screaming' around the nearby houses, often skimming low over the garden like noisy fighter planes.

R.I. P. Mick of Time Team.

Going back in time. Near Sheildaig, Scotland.

 

Cairn built below Beinn Eighe by the shinning loch.

 

The Rites of Spring (Sheildaig)

Voices are rising from the river, murmurings

and whispers, myths and stories gather pace

among the rounded, silky smooth stones

like shoals of migrating fish spawning

tales and songs.

The birch trees glow and shimmer with trapped starlight

and the siskins dance among the spidery branches

like fairy lanterns, flickering green and yellow.

The boulders beside the mountain track

that weaves through the waking forest,

are blotched with lichen – like an artist’s pallet

splattered with earthly colours: browns, oranges, reds

and yellow; or like a random map of some imagined land.

Mountains rise from the mirrored loch, huge colossus,

some still capped with snow, even in late May.

The landscape is alive with noises: loons in the Bay of Herrings,

razorbills, guillemots and the ever-present flurry of gulls,

white flashes in the sunlight. A cuckoo calls from the rocks

above the house, a skylark dances and sings on the breeze.

Two seals, eyes like coal glide the mirrored surface of the loch

like ancients from a lost civilisation. The land is stirring,

unfolding like a new leaf.

There are bees on the pussy willow, willow warblers

among the alders and bluebells, summoned by the sun

to deck the mossy banks.

Butterflies dare to brave the scant flowers

on the woodland edge, a small yellow butterfly, like a firefly,

skims the golden curve of whins that erupt like sheets of flame.

The many-coloured light casts brilliant patterns on the loch

And I am bedazzled with the beauty of the place,

As the land gives way to the rites of spring.

Beinn Eighe from the loch.

 This is the loch mirroring the towers of Beinn Eighe, where in 1951 eight airmen met their death when their Lancaster bomber crashed into the mountainside. Some remains of the bomber still litter the scree as a time-honoured memorial to those tragically lost that night. A brass plaque nearby the crash spot recalls the accident in what is now known as Fuselage Gully.

Beinn Eighe. (A hymn to the Silence).

The mountains loom large and lonely

Towering into lofty skies.

Their peaks are craggy, their ridges sharp,

Their gullies yet full of gleaming snow.

The mountain trail leads us deeper

Into their embrace as we penetrate

The mystic silence of solemnity.

The shallow, weedy pools glimmer

With diamond light as if brimming

With glittering, dancing stars.

This is the realm of the majestic golden eagle

But the sky today is only full of golden sunlight,

The ghosts of mist and the skylarks’song.

After a trek we reach the loch, placid

Beneath a horseshoe of mountains

With a jumble of boulders and scree

At their base. From the mirrored water

A stream spills down a staircase of rock,

White and joyous into the valley below.

This is a silent place full of half-remembered spells,

Portents and lingering memories:

Beauty and tragedy live side by side here

In this hallowed place, like two sides

Of a coin forever spinning on its axis.

The litter of wreckage has morphed itself

Into the landscape, merged with the stones

At the mountains’ feet where winter hid its secrets

For so long after: another bomber

That never arrived home and eight airmen

Now frozen for eternity in old photographs.

I heave strange patterned rocks onto a flat-topped boulder

And build a small cairn, pay homage to memory,

Build something for the wind, for the sun

And the driving rain and snow; for a starry night

And the moon’s cold embrace.

I build it for the lingering spirits of the place,

The frailty of human-kind and for perpetuity,

Then I murmur a hymn for the silence.