Alison Brackenbury

Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire. Neolithic settlements (the last burnt after battle). Two Iron Age settlements, the 2nd with huge unfinished ramparts, both burnt. Two post-Roman villages, split between richer & poorer... but all burnt. Abandoned, except for quarries. Now the jackdaws stay in charge!

#internationalwomensday
A good day to listen to grandmothers...You can download the Kindle/phone/computer edition of 'Village' FREE today with all Amy Mary's stories.'I always remember'...opening her paper bag of Mint Imperials, from a wall of ranked jars in Mr White's shop up steep Vicarage Road!

Sunday review: entrancing CD! In 'The Road to Horn Fair' Joshua Burnell's music is lovely & lively by turns.He writes an irresistible tune for a 'wronged' Tudor shepherdess insisting on marriage.(No more nights lambing?)Dubious,as JB says, yet the lyrics end 'merry'! 'Horn Fair's also fascinating...

This exquisite (? young) wren has been diving very noisily & repeatedly into the ivy on a post. Is it a male contemplating nest building? I believe they build several, so female(s!) can choose. I'd advise wrens to decline this one... too low... too open... Do you have wrens?

The garden is proud to introduce.. its operatic blackbird's co-star. Although there is fresh water in a special lower dish, just yards away, this fine female blackbird OF COURSE drinks out of the old pan catching rain - & , new to the garden,almost falls in! Best balanced wishes!

Bird bulletins! Delighted & relieved that our latest show-stopping male blackbird has a mate. She'll be along soon... Meanwhile, even opera stars must eat...

What did Amy Mary,my clever village grandmother,think of her grandest employers? The Kindle/phone/computer edition of 'Village' is FREE today.This is not the world of Downton Abbey. But Amy Mary's bag of fragrant mints may rustle open! SEARCH ALISON BRACKENBURY VILLAGE AMAZON #women'shistorymonth

Yes, heating oil- never mentioned in my Gloucestershire suburb - is a huge issue in villages with no gas. (Coal wd have been my childhood equivalent.) When I found the excellent village Facebook page for my Brackenbury grandfather's Lincolnshire home, it was dominated by anxious posts on oil prices!

Violet Bonham Carter,Liberal politician,reflects - in an interview in her old age - upon attacks on introduction of State Pensions, by the Lords.'Can you believe that such days & men existed? These cosy old peers, living fatly on an unearned income. What about their "self-respect and moral fibre" ?'

'No man would ever want to dance with a girl who knew Greek'...
Stern words from her governess to the young Violet Bonham Carter!

'It's Women's History Month!' the villagers tell me.'We need a free day!'So the Kindle/phone/computer edition of 'Village' will be FREE this Sun 8 Mar from 10 am.
Widows in cottages, heaving in washing.Bored housemaids in Rectories..& the lady of the Manor reaches for a drink.. #womenshistorymonth

Thank you!
An industriously tuneful blackbird
... singing on our gable end before day. Very best spring wishes!

'Where we perceive a chain of events, the Angel of History sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage...The Angel would like to stay... & make whole what has been smashed..' Walter Benjamin, in @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social's 3 part series on progress,Radio 4. Recommended!

Solo birdsong! You can never satisfy a spring blackbird. Distressed by the crow and woodpigeon who gatecrashed my previous post, the blackbird has requested an encore...
#blackbird #birdsong #birdsong #gardenwildlife #urbanwildlife

You can hear the (male) blackbird who has adopted our town garden, enchanted by the deep mulch I have put around the damson trees - which it throws everywhere! I am worried that I haven't yet seen a female. The blackbird, in morning moonlight, sounds unworried.. #blackbird #birdsong

Very strong 'Verb' with @imcmillan.bsky.social.George Szirtes is enthralled by Edith Sitwell.Irina Starovoyt tells of poems hidden in Ukrainian boots. @zainrishi.bsky.social explores a Carl Phillips poem, a world - & Katie Clarke recalls how e e cummings led to quiet talk of time in a dementia ward.

I am so glad to hear that, David! An expert friend once confirmed my suspicion that, in spring, there is a kind of 'lapwing bus'! A flock passes over and drops off pairs at their nesting sites. I hope that your lapwings have disembarked from their bus and will stay! Very best wishes!

Thank you very much, Mary. I'm very touched. Yes, their cry is thrilling! Very best March wishes!

All that young energy! So good to see! Like the rip roaring start of 'I saw her standing there', which John Lennon said (wistfully?) was one of the few echoes of their days as Hamburg rockers. I believe he once said 'We could have been the Rolling Stones'... Very best wishes!

This is a newer,companion piece to my 'Lapwings' poem from my latest @carcanet.bsky.social collection: 'Thorpeness', 2022. I scribbled this poem after spotting a lapwing, alone in a field,as I travelled by train to @poetryinaldeburgh.bsky.social Different-but a story of survival! Very best wishes!

For lapwing lovers- update on the recent Gloucestershire birds mentioned in my poem! Since I saw them in Lincs in the '60s, lapwings have declined by 55%, partly due to winter crops- too tall for nests. Remedies are being tried. I'm told there are still lapwings near my sighting!
#lapwings

I'll post a few of my poems this year. As @carcanet.bsky.social published my 1st collection 45 years ago - in spring! - time for some old friends. (I do have MANY new poems, but I'm finishing those after 5 years on my prose book, 'Village'!) Here's 'Lapwings' from 'Gallop', my Carcanet 'Selected!

Thank you! Beautifully read, with the endless opening of that last line...

I believe it is still made there, in a stone house by the Abbey! The swans live in the newly re-opened Prinknash Bird & Deer Park, on land nearby which I think the order has sold - together with the (open) plant-crammed Monastery Garden, & its great curving crumbling wall, also being restored!

If you are suffering from Sunday stiffness, the black swans of Prinknash recommend synchronised neck stretches! Very best wishes!

The eyes have it!
(With a few wideawake bird cries from Prinknash Bird and Deer Park, sorry!)

Keats edition of In Our Time,Radio 4, with Misha Glenny,places John Keats very movingly in his own time: devoted to family; rich enough to be educated, not high-class enough to escape sneers; tougher under criticism than Tennyson, who revered & followed his music!
SEARCH BBC SOUNDS FOR
IN OUR TIME.

Catching up with 'The Verb' @imcmillan.bsky.social . This fine edition includes Sarah Howe's beautifully lucid appreciation of 'The art of losing' @frankcottrellboyce.bsky.social remembers John Carey, whose joyful insights into the rewards of books I recall, gratefully.
SEARCH BBC SOUNDS FOR VERB!

The clouds are lifting, here in Gloucestershire... I send fair weather wishes, wherever you are!

Yes, large but not grotesque...They are obviously happy with you! The ones in my photo are in a very damp garden!