Paying Ready Attention

Sixty years ago the landscape shifted in two different ways in two different countries. On one side of the world there was a shift in the political landscape that was a continuation of sorts, while on the other side of the world there was a shift in the physical landscape which marked a new beginning. In England a young woman began a role which at her birth she would never have thought to be her destiny. The politics of tradition had prevented her uncle from being King, and her father had taken on the mantle. On his death the crown passed to her. Sixty years later she is still queen. In Australia, probably after heavy rain, there was a landslide in a wooded valley. Trees fell and tonnes of soil moved, although I doubt anybody heard it. A small stream was blocked and the valley behind the slide began to fill with water. The valley side moved to the floor and a lake was born. Later, in a sign that Australia looked to the north rather than the region, the lake was christened Lake Elizabet...

Whoever said it is better to travel than to arrive never had to deal with the British motorway system on a bank holiday weekend. Or maybe they did – for there would be no hope for timely arrival, so embracing the joy of the journey is the only option. The classic 1970s holiday solution of setting up a picnic table by the side of the road makes perfect sense in these situations. A solution based on the austerity of a war that had ended in 1945, but still echoed through the thoughts and actions of people like my parents. The modern family would probably take a different approach. Selling coffee by the side of the road would have been a decent business plan when I think about it. Plane travel is no better and possibly much worse. Entertainment is provided not because it’s entertaining, but because the journey will be almost unbearable, even if it goes without hitch or delay. For a plane journey to be better than arrival you need to be sitting in the seats at the front of the plane and you...

The loss of swallows. The wind had backed off and swung around to the north. It was not the hard edged summer northerlies that leave you cut and dried, fearing fire, dusty eyed. This was a softer, rounder, wind. But still it grabbed, sticky fingered, at the pages of my book, trying to hurry me along, impatient to get to the end In defiance of the wind’s urgings I stopped reading and looked out into the surf, hoping for dolphins, but none showed. Switching from a near gaze to a more distant one breaks the book bubble in which I am wrapped, and I noticed the air is filling with birds. Swallows. One, two three. Another group over there - four, five six. More - seven, eight, nine, ten. More - eleven, twelve. More and more counting until counting no longer makes sense and they become simply lots. Their speed and flightful movement, conscious, way beyond Brownian, makes it impossible to do more than estimate numbers; ball park at best. Buried within the sea sky of movement are a few ...

The big horizon-wide windows faced south towards the sea. On most days they were still, but on some days you could feel them buzz as the wind from the west pushed across their surface. I would stand there at the start of each day just looking, waiting for the kettle on the stove to boil, waiting for that first, all important, cup of tea. A kestrel would often perch on one of the bushes between me and the sea, waiting just like me, but waiting for something different. It was a perfect place to stand and day dream, to plan the day ahead, to think about the day before, to wonder if it would be possible to get close enough to the kestrel to photograph it. It was a place to stand and for a few minutes – I never really could tell how long – become lost in the distance and the surf. I would be called back to the morning by the growing silver whistle of the kettle, sounding old fashioned, urgent and warm. Reminding me that, for a short time anyway, we were not connected by wires or waves to th...

I still think that its name was made up during an early advertising scheme. People are mad enough to do that kind of thing. Working to a brief that called for a name so Australian it could be nowhere else on Earth – but a name without the dozens of syllables favoured by the people who named the country in the first place. It needed to be iconic, definitely not ironic, and preferably short. Easy to spell would be a bonus as well. So they settled on ‘Kangaroo Island’, which seems to tick all the boxes, although I remember struggling to spell kangaroo on the rare occasions I used it as a child. Marsupials generally, and kangaroos specifically, were not thick on the ground in northern Somerset. It was ten years ago, almost to the week, that I first went to Kangaroo Island. Overnight on the sleeper train from Melbourne, with the car on a flatbed somewhere behind us. We had real beds, with crisp white linen. There was a dining car with metal cutlery, real glass glasses and a wine list. Ther...