As well as the sunflower seeds the birds have peanuts, which they’re not so keen on. I brought the peanut feeder down to near the Irish yew and filled it before christmas but there’s still plenty left. Are the peanuts too old? They were at it just now though, tits and the woodpecker. And I’ve started putting out breadcrumbs and other bits and pieces for the birds that don’t cling or eat big seeds, so now we have dunnocks feeding, blackbirds, the pair of wood pigeons and robins of course, as well as great tits and blue tits, the occasional chaffinch, the odd coal tit, and the glorious woodpecker.

James Sweeney!  the romantic life of a roadie in the seventies and eighties, the old banger of a guitar. Alcohol: ”can’t live without it, can’t live with it.” He always had kind words for my gardening, and joined in sometimes. I’ve a photograph somewhere of him in the greenhouse, a watering can carefully lifted up to water plants on the bench. I gave him a copy of it, he said, “I could give that to my mum, if I knew where she lived.”  Not so unusual maybe to have lost contact with your mother, though I remember I found it shocking at the time, more unusual to then still want her to see him doing something, making himself useful. He does something he feels good about, and immediately wants his mum to see him doing it. And his Birmingham accent, his heavy, soft face, the shoulder length greasy hair, still dark. In all the raucousness and aggression and boasting at Cedar’s, his mildness and passivity stood out. He made me feel that my work was worthwhile, he probably did more for me than I could do for him. It was he who made me first feel that a lot of what we do is more like working in a hospice than anything else, easing the way to death rather than setting out on the road to Recovery.  James died quickly in the end, of liver failure.

As I was getting up this morning what made me think – If Osama bin Laden was evil, in his merciless pursuit of what he saw as wickedness, how many of our generals and other soldiers, kings, judges, inquisitors and other religious leaders were also evil? And that trick which licences cruelty, the denial of the humanity of others, of black people, jews, communists, heretics and also fascists, gypsies, paedophiles, murderers, drug dealers, witches, industrialists, soldiers, policemen, man united fans – there are so many ways in which other people fail to be human, there’s nothing we do quicker than cursing.  Then I remembered a time at  Millennium Green when I caught the dog once again bloating herself as fast as she could with a pile of disgusting old rotting food, and I lost my temper with her kicked her into the van and hit her in the face as she cowered, until she bared her teeth at me, like an uncertain grin, frightened and defenceless except for that gesture, and I was overcome with shame.

In 1964 when I was seventeen I spent three weeks staying with a family on a farm in Hülptingsen, a village near Celle, a town near Hanover. One sunday afternoon some neighbours came round and I was introduced to one man with whom I shook hands, and then someone said (something like) ”there! That didn’t hurt did it! You’ve just shaken hands with an SS man! Not a monster, is he?”  and everybody laughed except me. Of course he wasn’t a monster. How much easier if he had been. The problem is that he was fully human, fully banal.   This was two years after the Eichmann trial, and I must have already been familiar with the phrase ‘the banality of evil’. After the war, before he escaped Germany,  Eichmann had spent two years living in a remote village on the Lüneburger Heide, the Lüneburg Heath, close to Celle which was later used for tank exercises by the occupying British forces.

We visited the church of St Michael in Hildesheim which was framed with wooden scaffolding as it was slowly, patiently restored with blocks of pure, white limestone hauled up  block by block  by rope and pulley, in the same way as it had been built a thousand years earlier.

Frau Bode sat me down and told me that they knew nothing of what was happening during the war. And she was worried that I ate so little.  Actually I was stuffed. I got terrible constipation to which I could not confess. In the end I almost shat myself when I got back to Southampton.

They’ve brought ibex back to parts of the French and Italian Alps where they’d been hunted to extinction, reintroduced beavers to the Scottish highlands and the great bustard to Salisbury Plain – they tried at least –  and the wild boar has reintroduced itself after escaping from captivity in the south west. Can’t we have a few sparrows? What is it about ‘charismatic’ creatures – the red kite and the white tailed sea eagle are two others which have been reintroduced successfully in recent years.  But anyway, isn’t the sparrow charismatic? Has it not at least acquired charisma in and through its decline? Give us a few. I promise I’ll look after them. 

I was reluctant to write a conclusion, because of its banality, and because I’m embarrassed that I didn’t read the landscape more clearly at first.

The combination of order and confusion, of care and neglect, gives a special feeling to the estate. The agricultural buildings are all dilapidated, but the main house and cottages are kept up.  The woodland is thick with both saplings and dying trees and fallen branches, but the paths and verges are neat, and the grass in the almost empty walled garden is mown. Mowing and strimming stand in for all other kinds of maintenance and management. The wilderness of the woods has clean edges. There are no vegetables in the walled garden but no nettles and thistles either and mown grass lends a sense of orderliness.

I googled Peniarth-uchaf to try to find out about the history of the estate and found the web sites of book cottages, cottage choice, cottage reservations, cottages4you,  welsh country cottages,  visit midwales,  travelpod,  drivingwithdogs,  accommodation britain, apartments.oodle, uk holiday shop, world stay.com, wales.olx.co.uk,  self catering.travel, trip advisor, wales directory. So that peculiar combination of neatness and decay is the world of the holiday rental. And the friendly notice on the door of the walled garden, allowing us entry if we bolt the door behind us afterwards,  is addressed, not to the curious traveller, but to the tenants.

 Yesterday I woke up writing.

that’s the cover of the book.

and this could be the last page:

There are two years, could maybe be twenty, between these photographs, which were taken on a dilapidated estate called Peniarth-uchaf in the Dysynni valley, which runs up from Tywyn towards Cader Idris in North Wales.  Here’s an aside, before approaching the garden: this is what dilapidated means:

Sorry – I got that wrong. Dilapidated means ‘de-stoned’,  but now I see that it’s the stones that fall last; first the windows, slates and timbers break, rot, slide off.  Gardens go first, but the idea of the garden might remain. The root idea of a garden is an enclosure. The walled garden at Peniarth is an almost empty box. The wall is capped by slates with a silvery sheen, similar to the Welsh sky, in even the weakest sunlight.  The bark of the trees has the same sheen.

I meant to write a very simple little piece about gardens, but I’m very shy of approaching the subject directly and am immediately taken with the meanings of the thickening tangle of branches obscuring the plain but distant  rectangle with its silvery gleam, and was distracted by the pedantic possibilities of ‘dilapidated’.  I remember that coming up to Wales on the train I saw that same grey silver in a thousand cars in Birmingham.  I’ll start again with the story.

  The walk began with a different kind of garden in Llanegryn. Is this a garden? If not, what is it?

The silent estate at Peniarth, where on three visits I have never seen a living soul, is approached through woodland along public footpaths which give confidence to those whose walks in the British countryside can feel like recces through battlefields of class conflict and fear they might be threatened or prosecuted as trespassers, (especially if they are with a dog, however well behaved.)

In the middle of the estate you come to a dark thicket of yew trees, and behind them a gleam of light:

On the door is a notice, and you think it’s going to say KEEP OUT! GO AWAY!

But it doesn’t:

And inside is an old apple tree snowed under with lichen:

 having made heavy weather of that, (more grey than silver,) I’ll leave it there for now

I had thought that people liked to be asked about their past. The trouble with that sentence of course is the word ‘people’. But in my work at St Mungo’s I’ve met many people who’ve lit up when asked about Ireland or Scotland or Portugal or Morocco. Or Kent or Islington. Maybe that’s because they weren’t going anywhere. The past draws near as the future recedes. On the other hand, refugees from Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia don’t want to talk about home. What Nassim told me about eating cherries with lemon and salt is the only thing he ever said about Afghanistan.

I think again about the Kindertransport memorial. The original little girl seems to have no future. She’s traumatised. She was surrounded by the things of the past, the things of home, photographs of the dead, children’s books and toys. The children with their heads in the air who replaced her, they do have a suitcase or two, and a violin, but they’re looking towards a new destination. They’ll take the future in their stride.

(Remembering now that recorded message: ‘the destination of this bus has changed. Please listen for further announcements’. Shortly afterwards comes another: ‘this bus terminates here.’)

This is my favourite recent language joke:

That it is to be found in several places in the valley is an open secret. Seeing me looking at flowers a couple told me where I could find some of the orchids, Frauenschuh in German, women’s shoe. Soon after, someone who saw me taking photos of other flowers asked me if I knew where they were to be found. I ended up having four or five little conversations about them. Not advertised or sign posted,  they encourage human contact, and trust. The best known site is obvious once you’re on the right track, a well worn circuit of narrow paths leads you round seven or eight gorgeous little colonies, all intact, all sacred.

Sheila and I had seen one or two once before, in the Vercors, near Grenoble, when again someone led us through the trees to find them. But it was growing dark -we had got lost – and we could hardly see them. In France they call them ‘sabot de Venus’.  There’s one  in Yorkshire, they say, where no one gives away the secret location and they are reputed to be guarded round the clock. We call them lady’s slipper.

Take your pick.  Frauenschuh, down to earth;  lady’s slipper, more refined; but I prefer sabot de Venus. The French win with that nice conjunction of clogs and Venus. (Like the pop song? Venus in blue jeans?)

And cypripedium… why do some names stick? I spent half the weekend trying to remember the word  ‘decathlon’,  even looking at labels on my cagoule etc, but they just said ‘Quechua’ of course. Why Quechua – another forgotten language? and what a disappointment when I did remember, or rather finally found the word on a little label inside my rucksack; at first I could only find ‘Forclaz’. (What’s that?)   Anyway, cypripedium also means Venus’s slipper. (As in Cyprus, the island of Venus.) But calceolus  means ‘little shoe’, so the whole name is clumsy, if unforgettable.

This morning I woke up at 10.30 – gone downstairs, she’s doing the mail. –any mail? You’ll have to come back in an hour’s time. Walked round the block – go back – we’re doing change over, come back at 1.30. – please, just see if there’s any mail for me? You have to come back at 1.30…  just a simple answer to a simple question! – just tell me yes or no! – I’m pissed off…. 

Wasn’t this the ideal world for sparrows? And still they disappeared. One day just before Christmas I realised that I hadn’t seen a sparrow since – I wasn’t sure when. I asked other people, and no one could remember the last time they saw one.

The decline of the sparrows is yesterday’s news, hardly talked about any more, like the loss of the elms in the 70′s.  We’ve got used to the disappearance of 90% of London’s sparrows. I assumed that, especially in such safe places as St John’s churchyard, the other 10% would settle down, regroup and advance to take back their city once more. That having survived the mysterious plague, they would, like the survivors of the Black Death or the concentration camps, multiply. Instead, with few letters and articles of lamentation in the newspapers, the last of them are quietly fading away.

But the authorities promised much. This is part of a document from the London Borough of Lambeth:

E) What will the House Sparrow Action Plan do?

Objective 1. We will work to help understand key factors affecting the population and distribution of house sparrows in Lambeth, contributing to and supporting London and UK-wide research and surveys. A programme of scientifically valid research to explain the decline in house sparrow populations will be delivered by 2010.

Objective 2. We will involve local people in projects and activities to raise awareness of house sparrows, including commissioning and completing a Borough survey by the end of 2006.

F) Who is involved in the House Sparrow Action Plan?

1. Partnerships

The Lead Partner for the Lambeth House Sparrow Action Plan is Lambeth Council’s Parks and Greenspaces Business Unit (Lambeth Parks).

The Lead Community Partner would be the Central London Local Group of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and/or British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). Other Partners include the London Wildlife Trust, Greater London Authority, London Natural History Society and the Council’s Grounds Maintenance Contractor.

2. Contact for information

For more information on the Lambeth House Sparrow Action Plan, including copies of this plan in paper or electronic format, please contact:

Dr Iain Boulton, Environmental Education Officer Lambeth Parks & Greenspaces 4th Floor Blue Star House, 234-244 Stockwell Road, London SW9 9SP  Tel: 020 7926 6209; Fax: 020 7926 6201; email: iboulton@lambeth.gov.uk

3. Further information and advice

Further advice on the house sparrow, its ecology and conservation, and the management of habitats to protect the house sparrow and other British bird species, can be found on the following websites.

_ DEFRA (http://www.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-countryside/resprog/findings/sparrow/chapter3.pdf)

_ RSPB Sparrow Watch (http://www.rspb.org.uk/sparrowatch/)

_ London Wildlife Trust (http://www.wildlondon.org.uk/)

_ Greater London Authority – House Sparrow Survey Findings (http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=1572)

_ “Wild About Gardens” (http://www.wildaboutgardens.org/)

_ British Trust for Ornithology (http://www.bto.org/gbw/HOUSP/)

Did they deliver (by 2010) a programme of scientifically valid research? If they did, I missed it, and I think I’ve been paying attention. I don’t know when I wrote the above, clearly before 2010. We still see, or rather hear one or two sparrows occasionally. But they’ve become very shy. In the open they dodge from one bush to another soldiers under fire. That’s why I was even more surprised and delighted by the sparrows of Berne earlier this summer. I had a couple of hours between trains and went to see the cathedral which has a great 16th century judgement scene above the west doors, beautifully restored. Sparrows were flying in and out of it, not caring whether they were in heaven or hell. In a little park with an open air cafe near the cathedral they would come right up to you if you threw a few crumbs, they had that boldness, that cheekiness which used to make the cockney sparrows both endearing and sometimes annoying.

I meant to write about the time I got trapped in the room where I was sleeping at Aunty Eva’s house, right by the Giant’s Causeway. I went over for the burial of my Uncle David’s ashes in the cemetery where Hamills have been buried for centuries.  David’s wife, Aunty Helen, came over with her family – lots of cousins – from England, and Helen was also staying at Eva’s. I woke up at  five in the morning and needed to pee, got out of bed, went to the bedroom door, but the handle just span round and round: it had become detached from the spindle. The pressure in my bladder began to rise as I began to panic. I didn’t want to shout for help and wake and maybe scare the two old ladies, one 89 and one 93. I went over to the window, but it was quite high and not very tall. And bsides, it was already broad daylight and the window looked onto the road. I went back to the door, not quite able to believe the ridiculous situation I was in. The handle span round and round. I had to make some sort of decision quickly. There were no jugs, mugs or bottles in the room. (Later, Uncle John told me he always keeps a chamber pot under his bed.) Two or three times I went from the door to the window and back again,  postponing a decision by keeping on the move. In the end I managed to climb up onto the window sill and with my head crunched down under the ceiling and my knees bent I peed out onto the corrugated plastic of the conservatory roof where the rattling of urine was deadened by the incessant, diluting rain. Then, feeling relieved, I went back to sleep again. I woke soon after eight and called out, Aunty Eva came and let me out, ‘oh yes,’ she said, ‘someone is supposed to have fixed that door last year.’

It’s not often that I have a story to impress all my relatives, but that one did nicely.