As the Crow Flies

May 2024

Like (I presume) many people entering old age, I keep getting ambushed by sudden collapses in the internal mental timeline of my life, like a landslip or sinkhole opening up as the years accumulate into an unstable mass. This can be somewhat startling. In a recent post on Mike Johnston's Online Photographer blog he remarked in passing that the film Das Boot is over 40 years old. Forty years? What? How did that happen? I can still remember as if it were... well... not exactly yesterday, but quite recently that I was glued to my 8" portable TV when the six-part mini-series of Das Boot (far better than the film, I think) was broadcast on BBC2 in 1984 – the year I moved to Southampton from Bristol to take up a new job – sitting on the sofa in the flat I had just bought. Sure, 2025 minus 1984 equals 41 but, somehow, simple arithmetic doesn't correlate with lived, felt experience until – bang! – something triggers a collapse, and you're staring across a chasm of time, wondering, where did it all go?

So now it seems that it was exactly ten years ago – impossible! – that it was my partner's turn to make a move in the employment-and-property game: she took up a post as a professor in the University of Bristol, and bought a rather pleasant flat overlooking the Avon Gorge as a place to stay during the week. However, after a few years she became disenchanted with that job, left Bristol, and returned to work in London's University College. But she kept the flat as a handy bolthole in a city we had enjoyed together as young adults in the "punk and reggae" years of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and where we still have friends and family.

February 2025

Ever since, that flat has been something of a Happy Place for both of us. The spectacular view, especially, has been a constant source of enchantment. The best part of half a mile of airy void lies between our fourth-floor kitchen window and the matching elevation on the far side of the Gorge, a crow's flight that crosses over some woods that lie below our block of flats, then the busy Portway, the tidal rise and fall of the river Avon in its muddy bed, the Portishead railway branch line, and ends in Leigh Woods opposite. That window faces roughly SSW, so the sun passes from left to right during the day, sometimes creating spectacular lighting effects at dawn, especially if the Gorge is misty, and igniting dramatic sunsets when low in the west. Naturally, I keep a camera on the kitchen table, and open a window to take a photograph or two whenever something interesting is going on, often before getting dressed in the morning or while cooking in the evening. Most often, though, I simply sit at the table and gaze out at the sort of view you'd be happy to walk many miles to find.

October 2015

We were there last weekend, and it was very cold and very foggy most of the time. On Saturday morning I rolled up the kitchen blind and the far side of the Gorge had vanished behind a bank of impenetrable mist. At the edge of the woods below us, just across a lawn, there is a venerable oak tree that often acts as the focus of my leisurely picture-making. It, too, was barely visible. But as the mist started to thin, its gnarly, truncated shape was silhouetted against the faint background, and a crow was sitting at the very top, having just seen off two magpies from this desirable perch. Perhaps it, too, was contemplating the misty void as a perfect metaphor for the passage of time. Or, more likely, it was wondering which side of the Gorge was most likely to provide a decent breakfast on such a chilly morning. Crows are smart, opportunistic, and adaptable, but haven't yet figured out the advantages of double glazing and central heating. Although they'd probably reply that them two-legged wasters of perfectly good food would be better off figuring out the advantages of feathers, wings, and a decent beak. 'S all I need, mate. Though some pockets would be nice, it's true...

February 2025

February 2025