Homework

It is early. Dark outside. An hour and a half before first light. Behind the darkened windows the rain is driving against the glass. I am sitting in a pool of desk light in front of my computer screen; blue light spilling over a cup of tea ready to drink. I am trying to write something.
I have just checked; I haven’t written a blog since May. Since I lambed. Five months ago. I have started lots of them, I have a notebook full of scribblings, mostly illegible now. There is a long one for June when I escaped to Wales for an amazing week of peace and quiet but it remains, a spider’s web of crossing outs, arrows, asterisks, a desperate search for the right words to describe an experience. It never made it onto the computer.


Why? Good question. I could argue to myself it is because I just have not had time. Since that break in June, this year has been totally flat out. I never have caught up, been on top of anything, on the smallholding, in my garden, in my life. The summer accelerated, long, very hot and very exhausting, and this autumn has been wet and frustrating as I have tried to get that one step ahead on next year.


But there is nothing new there. Since I began four years ago doing the ‘good life’ bit, (is that a misnomer?) I have been one step behind. I have never quite managed to get everything sown when it should be, planted out on time, weeded before it became overgrown, cut before it was knee high and somehow it has been fine. There is always food on the plate from the garden, and if the beans are later than my neighbours they have lasted longer.

So why no blogs? I could have found time. I need to write; it is part of what I do as a person, something in one form or another that I have always done. And writing about the other part of me, the need to grow things, to be outside, to feel in contact with the world around me, the world that flies and crawls and grows and provides an amazing side show to our own interwoven existence, is very important. If you enjoy standing on a hillside surrounded by sheep in the rain and wind, you have to share it.


So why can’t I find the words?
I don’t have to search very deep to know the answer to this question. But I do have to struggle to face up to it. 


For the last couple of years, the black spectre perched on the top of the hill looking down on what I am doing has grown. It has drifted down the valley and settled on my shoulder. And it has changed my world. Something I have known about for a long time has become a reality for me and it has made everything I do and write about irrelevant and indulgent. 


So, what is this spectre, this dark cloud? 


It is what is happening to our planet, to our world. It is what is driving our young people out onto the streets to protest in frustration about the lack of response by those they feel should be sorting things out for their future. It is what is bringing together people from all sorts of different backgrounds, compelling them to form groups committed to peaceful disruption that can bring city centres to a standstill with a tube of glue.  It is Climate Change with capital letters.


A few years ago, I would have revelled in a summer like the last two we have had. I would have got an adrenaline kick out of braving a storm like the one that ripped through the south east three days ago. I would have written about them.


No more; I spent this summer trying to keep the lid on a growing sense of foreboding about the future, as I watched the grass in the sheep field turn yellow with the lack of rain, watered struggling vegetables and kept a watchful eye open for the growing problem of fly strike on the sheep. On Saturday, the roar of the wind carried an echo of worse to come in the future.


For me this shadow, this spectre of a warming world has touched everything. It has air brushed the way I look at things around me. It has led to feelings of frustration at the lack of response by those in authority, anger that most of the world carries on blind and deaf to what is happening, guilt that I am not doing more or that I am doing the wrong things, resentfulness that it is happening now when I should be enjoying my retirement and doing what I have always wanted to do, fear for my children and my grandchild, and sorrow for all the things we share this planet with.
More than that it has made what I do, feel self-indulgent and trivial. What does it matter if I sow seeds, and keep sheep and write a blog about it? There is so much going on that is far, far more important than anything I am doing with my life. 
So, should I just give up? Forget the light hearted blogs about things that are never going to solve the planet’s problems. Maybe.
The other question is; do I buy a tube of glue?
It has suddenly become light; outside is a rain-washed grey sky, dark brown soil, rust coloured autumn trees. Another day and it could be beautiful.