Once Upon

Once Upon

Thursday 17 October 2013

In the Outside..

I spend a large proportion of my life inside a darkened room. My work in theatre (the stage type, not the operating type) often requires me to replicate outside, inside.
Through the magic of smoke and whistles, I often turn what is a dark inside into a light outside, and sometimes a light inside into a dark outside...or even make a light outside turn into a darker outside as the inside becomes lighter...because its dark outside....or vice-versa....Its all a bit inside out, so no wonder that when inside, I yearn somewhat for the outside.

The change of season is starting to visibly occur (outside), and so off I went for a short wander inside my local neighbourhood woods. The variant leaf-colour has not quite gotten into its full autumnal livery as yet, but is teasingly hinting at things to come, the air chilled and dampened,  a general feeling of preparation for winter's approach all around.,
I approached the edge of the wood via a small soggy rise of well tended pasture that blended into a more overgrown belt of rougher thicket and 'bramble', and as I looked back over the town behind me, I realised, somewhat pompously, that the old school motto relating to its geographical location was actually quite apt.
Inter silvas et flumina habitans....(We live between the woods and the river).....Pretentious..moi ...surely not.
Anyway, whilst I mentally ran through a few Latin declensions (not)..I noticed a pairing that I suspect are not often seen in close proximity... Oak trees and Bull-rushes.
I may be wrong, but I thought I'd mention it.....also, a proliferation of acorns...
The path through the woods was, as ever, a sheer delight, made even more pleasant by the aforementioned autumn changes starting to take place...a thick carpet of fallen Beech and Chesnut leaves making a seasonal welcome mat.....
....

In direct contrast to the 'inside-outside' silliness of my existence in dressy-up pretend-land, and in keeping with my floppy-haired classical musings prompted by Latin quotations, I was pleased by the fact that the the good burghers of my home town were pretty much 'does what it says on the tin' people when it came to naming some local features.
This bridge across the river is named Planky Bridge....because it is actually planky. It is made of planks.






A little further along the river, and passed Willow corner, named because...well it's a corner....with a Willow tree....

...and along the lane where the humble hedgerow echo'd the changing hue of its distant bigger arboreal cousins by sporting itself a bright smattering of berries in colourful challenge...

The next bridge across the river is named..... Blue Bridge...yes, you guessed it.....because it is blue.

..and just to round things off, I walked through the infeasibly attractive area of patch-work cultivation that is born of our local proud chapter of Allotmenteers. An area of outstanding vegetables, fruit, flowers and ramshackle structure...and no doubt, hidden caches of Peruvian sherry.."just to wet the whistle, and keep the slugs at bay".
This area was once owned by local farmer, Tommy.
It has, of course, been named......Tommy's Field.


Ahhh, all is well with the world if such beautiful, logical sense can purvey in the naming of things.

1 comment:

Stewart M said...

Very nice post - I miss all of those shades of green!

Cheers - Stewart M - Melbourne