Wednesday 28 April 2010

All the beauty is as gentle as silence


Fields await their crops. Mist floats from the lake. Sunshine beams brightly. Sheep graze safely. Church bells clang. It is 8 in the morning. The restaurant owner who lives opposite the church bell tower rallied against the early morning peal making such a fuss that the appointed hour was delayed! See what power important individuals have in their community.
Down the lane, nightingales sing incessantly, but to identify them in the hedgerow is nigh impossible, so private are they. Cuckoos and other birds challenge the chorale performance. Frogs croak, herons quark, dogs bay, cockerels celebrate the day, tractors churn in distant fields and far in the sky, the blue is criss-crossed with flight paths of planes transporting people to their destinations. We note there is more air traffic than usual and ponder on people who live near airports and how the sound levels they normally endure ceased when the Icelandic volcano ash cloud descended over Europe to halt all air traffic. Inhabitants had a brief, spooky respite as they marvelled at the sounds of bird song and bees humming in an ostensibly silent world but now subjected again to the deafening onslaught of giants in the sky how many of them are wondering whether they could escape to the tranquillity that is here? Sometimes our silences are deafening and one can become irritated by the sound of dogs barking at the kennels!
Returning home we find the swallows wheeling and chattering, swooping and streaming, chasing each other around the lilac bush, speeding along the roof ridge, near the smoke from the chimney, to follow the gentle downward curve of the roof as they dive into the passage at the front of the verandah. We’ve never experienced this before! They usually stay by the barns, soaring through the skies, then twitter on telegraph wires.
One can stand in the midst of a ploughed field and imagine times past and times to come and always in the middle of this field it was and will be the same and that there was and is no one else on earth! Stop still and listen . . . . . . . . one can hear humanity amidst the natural environment. All the beauty is as gentle as silence.
COUNTDOWN: 2 days

3 comments:

dick said...

we have spring in Suffolk but quite as advanced, nor so closely observed. Carol & I ventured out on bikes with our tent into coastal south Suffolk. We left our car at Orford and made our way to a beautiful site at Sottisham. They had pedigree hens which were very engaging. The Sorrel Horse provided dinner. Next day we visited Shingle St (Ore mouth) and endured a rain shower before drying off in the Butley Oyster. Another lovely meal and Adnams. I tell you all this to remind you of English delights which can still be found! We finished off by bouling into Orford and a public brew-up near the quay whilst watching the boats.
What is the countdown?
Dick

SweetpeainFrance said...

Great to see you still are reading .... I am very much aware of Suffolk Delights and miss the Suffolk coastline enormously but I don't think I can afford to live there! Maybe next time we are there you can show us the delights you mention!!! As you see the COUNTOWN expires demain so check in and see!

Carolyn said...

A lovely entry in your blog today. Flora Thompson said there are three things missing now that existed back in her Edwardian childhood--the only one I can remember is silence.

Okay, so tomorrow is the day we find out the surprise. I will check in bright and early (here we're 5 or 6 hours behind you, so I probably won't be the first to read the news).