Feathers - Hair Cut

I did a stupid thing in 1971. Yes, another one. That year was full of it from start to finish and I’m still embarrassed by some of the incidents. This is one of them.

I wasn’t happy to be uprooted from my world which was the pub on the prom, my school, my friends, my nights at the ice-rink and everything I held dear. I would have done anything to stay and tried a few ideas, including moving in with a friend so my GCEs wouldn’t be disrupted. Nothing worked. I wasn’t taken seriously. I was a stroppy teenager. Yes, indeed, and who is to blame for that? It wasn’t all down to hormones. The family, such as it was now, moved to another pub in Cheshire. I was the self-conscious new girl at the local Secondary Modern, a school which I quickly discovered was taking an alternative path towards the exams than the one I’d been following – not too closely, I admit, but that wasn’t the point – there were changes between Lancashire and Cheshire education departments. The National Curriculum was years away. I soon knew that I was different on a personal level. My new friends, pleasant and welcoming girls, couldn’t help but nudge each other and give knowing looks about my embroidered jeans and floaty tops when we met after school. I don’t know what they thought, but over a short time I toned down a bit and dressed more like them when I got a Ben Sherman shirt and some two-tone trousers. I went to the weekly gathering at the town hall where the music was mod, soul, reggae and everything ‘not my scene’ but I wanted to fit in so I learnt the Dave and Ansel Collins ‘Double Barrel’ dance. This is the time that the stupid thing happened. I cut my own hair. I fashioned a feather-cut with nail scissors, taking it into the nape of my neck, leaving long straggly rats tails. I’m not a hairdresser, not even close, so the going blonde turned out hit and miss. No one said anything at home. My friends thought it was ok, even better after one of them went over a bit that I’d missed. What a mess, is what it actually was.

At half term I went to London on the train, on my own, to stay with family who lived in Roehampton. Whether my dad had said anything to my aunt or whether she just took charge I don’t know, but one of the first things I remember was being taken to her hairdresser and given the full treatment of colour, cut and blow. She bought me new clothes back in my own style and I felt like myself again. During my stay, Dad had been in touch to see how I was. My aunt gave me the good news that we were leaving Cheshire and returning to Blackpool to live in a house. Another first.

It was good to be me again with my Moody Blues and Rolling Stones and leave my hair alone for the properly cut feathers to grow out. I learnt something from those few months, ‘To thine own self be true’.  It didn’t stop me doing stupid things, though.

I kept in touch with those friends for a few years and I remember them fondly whenever I hear ‘Double Barrel’. I don’t think my ankles are up for the dance, sadly.

Here’s Emily Dickinson,

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

                           Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

 (Not my photo, chosen for illustration)

Read More

Fine Feathers and Mr Lear

Many would agree that Edward Lear (1812-1888) is best known for his delightful poem The Owl and the Pussycat. What many do not know is that he was an incredibly skilled self-taught artist producing thousands of diverse images including exquisite ornithological drawings, paintings and prints. Sir David Attenborough is a great admirer and collector of Lear’s Ornithological work and has said “he did it as well as anybody, and some say he did it better than anybody.” (1)

Orange-winged Lorikeet (detail) - Edward Lear (1835-1836)
Graphite and Watercolour, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Victorians were fascinated with the natural world and Lear’s interest and talent in this realm was apparent early on. At age 20 to showcase his work, the ambitious young artist produced a collection of 175 A2 hand-coloured lithographs to be sold to subscribers and later bound into a book.(2) This large folio of natural sized images, Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots was printed between 1830 and 1832. It was one of the first folios ever produced of this large size. Audubon, another naturalist artist was working on his Birds of America around the same time.(3)

As inspiration for the folio Lear “sketched live specimens and bird skins.” (4)  He particularly spent an enormous amount of time at the London Zoo whereby he caught the eye of John Gould, the principal curator and taxidermist. After two years, Lear’s entrepreneurial folio endeavour was a financial failure and it was Gould who took control of the work and sold the remainder of Lear’s lithographic ornithological stock.

Red and Yellow Maccaw (detail) - Edward Lear (1830-1832)
Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots
Hand-coloured Lithographic Print, Houghton Library, Harvard

It was during his time drawing, painting and communing with parrots in the cages at the London Zoo that Lear’s work came to the attention of Edward Smith-Stanley, who later became the 13th Earl of Derby of Knowsley Hall (1834). Lord Stanley at the time was president of the Linnean Society (1828 – 1834) and the Zoological Society of London (1831-1851); he was very well connected within scientific circles and extremely influential. On his own estate he also had a private menagerie and an aviary larger and of greater importance than the London Zoo. (5)

Lord Stanley, commissioned the artist to produce illustrations of his menagerie (possibly the finest in the country) which included 318 species of birds, 94 species of mammals, fishes, reptiles and eggs. Lear worked on the Knowsley estate for many years. (6)

Tocu Toucan (Ramphostos Toco)
as collected by the Earl of Derby (7)
Edward Lear (1836) Watercolour

It was at Knowsley Hall that Lear’s nonsensical works began to develop as entertainment for the Lord Stanley’s (later Lord Derby’s) grandchildren and their cousins along with aristocratic guests’ children and sometimes the guests themselves as this quote attests:                    

                        One visitor attributed Lear’s invitation to the family dinner table not a
                        nervous, kindly gesture of Lord Derby, but to his grandsons’ insistence
                        on speeding away from the dining room because it was ‘so much more
                        amusing downstairs’. Why? ‘Oh, because that young fellow in the
                        steward’s room who is drawing the birds for you is such good company
                        and we like to go and hear him talk’ So Lear, allegedly, was summoned
                        upstairs, to make the adults laugh too. (8)

Eventually a collection of nonsense poems and drawings were produced and coming to light in 1846 as A Book of Nonsense. The Owl and the Pussy-cat poem came later and was first published in a subsequent book in Lear’s Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871). Between 1846 and 1871 and beyond, Lear was also traveling, painting, writing and illustrating other books including several travel journals such as Journal of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria (1852) and Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica (1870). (9)

Lear had extraordinary creative talent. I’ll take leave with a return to Mr Lear’s feathered friends in a form one may be more familiar with, three limericks from A Book of Nonsense:

Thank you for reading,

Kate J

(1) Higgins, C, 2012. Attenborough’s Treasured Lear bird prints reproduced for Folio Society, The Guardian, 24 October, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/oct/24/attenborough-lear-bird-prints-book (Accessed 17 June 2023).
(2) Antiques Boutique, 2023. Edward Lear. https://www.antiquesboutique.com/antique-drawings/edward-lear---superb-set-of-six-hand-coloured-lithographs-of-parrots-/itm113658 (Accessed 19 June).
(3) & (7) Hyman S, 1980. Edward Lear’s Birds, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
(4) Metropolitan Museum, 2023. Eclectus Roratus, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/363843 (Accessed 17 June 2023).
(5) Peck, R M, 2016. The Natural History of Edward Lear, David R. Godine, Boston.
(6) Prescot Museum. Edward Lear and Knowsley Hall. https://www.prescotmuseum.org.uk/information/ (Accessed 17 June 2023).
(8) Uglow, J., 2017. Mr Lear A Life of Art and Nonsense, Faber and Faber, London.
Noakes, V., 1991. The Painter Edward Lear, David & Charles, London.

For further information...
Abbott Hall has several watercolours and drawings by Edward Lear created during his tour of Cumberland in 1836.
https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Display---Around-the-Lakes-with-Edward-L/71499EFC72DA084C

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has 164 Lear letters, drawings and paintings. You can book an appointment in the print room to get up close and personal. I’ve done this. A very special experience.
https://collections.ashmolean.org/collection/search

The Harvard Houghton Library has thousands of Lear’s original creative works. There are around two hundred natural history sketches, studies and finished paintings with around one hundred bird sketches, watercolours and prints of birds relating to Illustrations of the family of Psittacidae, or parrots (1832).
https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/24/resources/3385/digital_only#

Read More

This Bird Has Flown - Bless You, Billy

 

A recent episode of the new All Creatures Great and Small took me back to my childhood. The story included a blue budgerigar, left at the vet’s surgery for minor treatment, to be collected later by the owner, a blind lady. Spoiler alert – skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to know what happens. Sadly, the budgie chooses this excursion to fall off his ornithological perch, expired. Rather than give the lady bad news, the vet decides to replace her pet with another and is sure she won’t know the new budgie is a green one. The small detail of the blue one never singing and the green one being very chirpy was overlooked, otherwise all was well in the end.

One day when I was a young child, I came home from school to find a new addition to the family. In the sitting room, in a cage hooked on to one of those bird-stands, a pretty, pale blue budgerigar was tutting to its reflection in its own vanity mirror, head going side to side. I was in awe, it was so sweet and I loved it straight away. We named him Billy. My dad took charge of his care but showed me how to top up Billy’s seeds, give him fresh water and wedge a piece of cuttlefish shell between the bars of the cage to rub his beak on. I was thrilled to have another pet. We had a dog that liked his own company and a cat that was always pregnant or nursing kittens, so it was better to leave her alone. I could stand and talk to Billy, tell him about school and how I was doing. I was shocked to go to the cage after school one day and find a green budgie. My dad told me Billy had matured. He said all budgies started off blue and turned green into adulthood. Of course, I believed him I had no reason not to. Many years later the truth came out. Bless him for saving my tears. I have read that some types of budgies do change colour as their feathers are replaced, but this tends to be a shade darker, or a mix.

Lovely Billy, blue or green, long gone but remembered with fondness and All Creatures Great and Small gave me a happy memory.

Maya Angelou's Caged Bird

The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More

Hats - Not For Me, Thanks

My mother had a pill-box hat made of tiny pale blue feathers sweeping round the circular shape. She wore it for my aunt and uncle’s wedding. She didn’t like hats much. They were for church and special occasions. A headscarf would do for popping to the shop, a stroll on the windy promenade or for keeping her hair neat on the walk back from the hairdressers.

My granddad never went out without his signature tweed Trilby. He might have had more than one, I don’t know, but he didn’t object to me dressing up in it when I was little. The inside rim was shiny with his Brylcreem and it smelt sweet, like him.

I’ve recently been knitting cardigans and matching hats for my new baby granddaughter, Matilda. I love making children’s clothes and each item is a one-off, for a particular little person.

Crochet is not my speciality, I’m a bit hit and miss with it, apart from Afghan square blankets, but I managed to design and make Minion character hats for a local primary school Christmas Fayre. I’m not looking to give up my day job on the strength of it, not just yet.

I miss working with infants, especially literacy and reading. There is so much to learn from the four-to-sevens when looking at their world and listening to their stories.  The developing imagination of a child is fascinating.  I’m starting to introduce well-loved stories and poems to my grandchildren.  A current favourite is The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Soon we’ll be on to Dr Seuss and Edward Lear. I don’t mind if they grow up thinking that I am completely bonkers as long as they remember having lots of fun. And that I always dressed ‘in character’ for the benefit of the children who knocked on my door at Hallowe’en.

Apart from my black, pointed, witchy thing with the illuminated spider on the side, I’m not really one for wearing hats. I have a couple of home-made knitted ones for very cold weather that also keep my hair off my face in the wind. I’ve got a wide-brimmed sun hat for sitting in the garden and a ‘posh’ hat that I wore for a wedding, once. Me and hats don’t get on. It’s really my hair. I’m burdened with very fine, flyaway hair that reacts badly when I take a hat off. Most of all, I hated my compulsory senior school hat.

Someone else must have hated my school hat, too, because the first thing she did when she got on the same bus home was to grab it off my head and kick it all over the dirty floor, encouraging her friends to join in. This was a slightly older girl from another school. I knew her by sight from being in the year above me at the same junior school. I would already be on the bus for a short time before it reached her stop and I would dread her arrival.  She snatched the hat out of my hand once, when I tried to stop her getting it and another time it was my satchel that got thrown all over the place. Eventually, I agreed that my mother should intervene and she telephoned a complaint to the bully-girl’s school. Whatever was said and how it was dealt with worked. There was no alternative, we had to share the same bus, but she never bothered me again.

Amongst my special keep-sakes is the beautiful hat my late mother-in-law chose to wear for our wedding. It’s a pretty, navy blue satin pill-box hat, trimmed with navy net and a bow of navy velvet. A memento of a lovely lady from a wonderful day.

 

I hope my choice of an Edward Lear poem raises a smile,

 

 

The Quangle Wangle's Hat

 

I 

On the top of the Crumpetty Tree 

      The Quangle Wangle sat, 

But his face you could not see, 

      On account of his Beaver Hat. 

For his Hat was a hundred and two feet wide, 

With ribbons and bibbons on every side 

And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace, 

So that nobody ever could see the face 

            Of the Quangle Wangle Quee. 

 

II 

The Quangle Wangle said 

      To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, — 

"Jam; and jelly; and bread; 

      "Are the best of food for me! 

"But the longer I live on this Crumpetty Tree 

"The plainer than ever it seems to me 

"That very few people come this way 

"And that life on the whole is far from gay!" 

            Said the Quangle Wangle Quee. 

 

III 

But there came to the Crumpetty Tree, 

      Mr. and Mrs. Canary; 

And they said, — "Did every you see 

      "Any spot so charmingly airy? 

"May we build a nest on your lovely Hat? 

"Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! 

"O please let us come and build a nest 

"Of whatever material suits you best, 

            "Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!" 

 

IV 

And besides, to the Crumpetty Tree 

      Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; 

The Snail, and the Bumble-Bee, 

      The Frog, and the Fimble Fowl; 

(The Fimble Fowl, with a corkscrew leg;) 

And all of them said, — "We humbly beg, 

"We may build out homes on your lovely Hat, — 

"Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! 

            "Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!" 

 

V 

And the Golden Grouse came there, 

      And the Pobble who has no toes, — 

And the small Olympian bear, — 

      And the Dong with a luminous nose. 

And the Blue Baboon, who played the Flute, — 

And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute, — 

And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat, — 

All came and built on the lovely Hat 

            Of the Quangle Wangle Quee. 

 

VI 

And the Quangle Wangle said 

      To himself on the Crumpetty Tree, — 

"When all these creatures move 

      "What a wonderful noise there'll be!" 

And at night by the light of the Mulberry moon 

They danced to the Flute of the Blue Baboon, 

On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree, 

And all were as happy as happy could be, 

            With the Quangle Wangle Quee.

 

 

by Edward Lear,  1812 - 1888

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

·         

·         

·         

·         

 

Read More

Tails Up!

By a clever contrivance, feathers is the blog theme in this week of the annual RSPB nationwide bird census, held traditionally at the end of January. I like to imagine our feathered friends look forward to it as much as we do. The Big Birdwatch week-end certainly provides them with a bit of a feast and a boost for the cold days that lie ahead.

Many people are under the impression that the wren (pictured below) is something of a rarity in these islands. That's possibly because it's a shy little creature, more often heard than seen, whose diet is insects and spiders, not standard fare on your average bird table or hanging feeder. In fact, the wren (troglodytes troglodytes)  is one of the most populous birds in the UK, our commonest nesting bird with somewhere in the region of 8 to 10 million pairs. That statistic surprised me, I must say.

According to my trusty Popular Handbook of British Birds (which requires quite big hands as it's a hardback, runs to 500 pages and weighs a ton), this tiny brown bird with its distinctive round shape and perkily cocked tail is easily identified even in silhouette. It flies with a quick whirring action of its short, stubby wings, usually in straight lines and never very far. When hunting for food, it does so low down or on the ground, mouse-like, probing nooks and crannies with its long and slender beak. It is a bustling creature by nature and never still for a minute except at night when it roosts in holes or crevices - which is how it earned its genus name of troglodytes from the Greek for cave-dweller.

Even though it is tiny, at under 10cm (about 3.5 inches), the wren is not the smallest bird in the land; the relatively rare firecrest is slightly smaller and the fairly common goldcrest is tinier still. However, for its size, the wren packs an extraordinary sonic punch. Its song is remarkably loud, a strident, prolonged mixture of notes usually terminating in a series of high trills and delivered with such force that the little bird trembles with the sheer effort. It sings at virtually any time of the year and its song is as distinctive as its shape (check out the audio link at the end of the blog).

 

the beautiful little bird with the big voice and the perky tail

When it comes to mating matters, the male part-builds a series of nests around his territory, loose balls woven out of dried leaves, moss and grass and then goes all out to attract a female. She chooses one of the nests which he then completes, lining it with more moss, hair and feathers to her satisfaction. (The rest of the nests are left unfinished.) The female lays a clutch of five or six eggs, white with reddish speckles and the pair raises two such broods of offspring in the mating season. Wren numbers decline when there is a harsh winter, their small size making them particularly vulnerable; but the population climbs again in more temperate years such as the one we're experiencing now.

In addition to our British - or more strictly Eurasian - wren (troglodytes troglodytes), the genus can be found around the world in nearly one hundred distinct regional varieties. Some of the names are so fanciful (to the point of being poetic) that I had to list a few here. They include the Black-Bellied wren and the contrasting White-Bellied wren, a Black-Throated wren, a Cactus wren, Canebrake wren, Marsh wren, the Musician wren and more specifically Flutist wren, a Peruvian wren, a Tooth-Billed wren and my three favourites the Whiskered wren, the Giant wren (really!) and the Happy wren (lovely). I kid you not.

From my childhood I still remember the wren as featured on the reverse of the British farthing, a small but iconic bird for the lowest denomination of pre-decimal coin, worth a quarter of a pre-decimal penny. (There were 960 farthings in a pound - and millennials think that the 5p is a fussy little coin!) Wren farthings were minted from 1937 until 1956 and ceased to be legal tender in 1960, ten years before decimalisation. It was the wren's appearance on the farthing that gave me the starting point for today's poem.

Minted
As bold as brass
but mostly quite unseen,
this tiny bright-eyed passerine
when in the mood
stumps up, no quarter given
and throwing wide its slender bill
explodes into a song
of fiercest joy.

Once started,
nothing can alloy
the richness of its rill,
a stream of rapid notes
poured forth like silver
on vibrating air
to the final flourish
of a rising triple-trill.

To coin such phrases
makes its little body shake
and nothing quite compares
in terms of size to volume
with the thrilling sally
of the jaunty wren,
or the happy silence
it leaves in its wake.


To listen to the distinctive sound of the little bird, click on this hyperlink: wren singing

Thanks for reading. Look out for our feathered friends, S ;-)

Read More

Feathers - Superstitious? Me?

 

 

 



 

 

 

I knew that the small, white feather on the bedroom floor had escaped from the duvet as I made the bed, but for a fleeting moment I was happy to think it was a sign from my late father and I smiled.  Superstition, of course, but it gave me a few moments of joyful memories of my lovely dad and there’s no harm in that.

 

I was brought up to understand that peacock feathers are a bad omen and not welcome in the house. They are a sign of doom, even death, apparently. In Greek mythology  Argus, a monster covered with eyes, was changed into a peacock by Hera, so maybe that is where the superstition comes from. A peacock in full plumage with such rich colour is beautiful and majestic.  Even so, I heed to those who have gone before, just in case.

 

Magpies bother me and when I see one, or hopefully more than one, I have to say the rhyme. If it is alone, I say “Good morning, Mr Magpie” which should be enough to protect me, again just in case.  Magpies have stunning deep blue colouring on their wings. The only time I’ve seen a magpie up close is when the unfortunate, motionless bird was gripped in the jaws of my springer spaniel.  No wonder I feel doomed.

 

I found this paragraph in an article about the superstitions of feathers in Nature Center Magazine, written by Emma Springfield.  I’ve never heard of this before and as it made me laugh, I’d like to share it.

 

    “Feathers from a wren are used by sailors to prevent shipwreck. The wren must be chased, caught and killed on Christmas Eve. Then it was carried on top of a pole with its wings outstretched.  For a coin one feather was bought.  At the end of the day so many sailors would have purchased a feather that the wren was practically featherless.  It would then be buried on the seashore.  The sailor would keep the feather on his person in order to make it home safely.”

 

White feathers have been a symbol of cowardice. The Order of the White Feather was founded at the start of World War I and reinstated at the start of World War II, where white feathers were given to men who hadn’t joined the military forces and considered to be ‘conscientious objectors’.

 

The feather that came out of my duvet got pushed back inside one of the sections because I couldn’t bear to throw it away. It is the warmest, lightest, most comfortable duvet we’ve ever had because it is filled with goose feather and down. As a child I remember the Paisley patterned eiderdowns we had, the same as my grandparents, back in the days of sheets and blankets before duvets or continent quilts reached our shores. Our beds were never cold, thanks to the feathers.

 

I found this poem,

 

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Emily Dickinson

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

Read More