'The best example of what living constantly with humans leads to'

 I see that the supermarket chain Sainsbury's is doing its bit to cut 'emissions' by removing brown eggs from its shelves in favour of white ones, which, according to its research, have a 12.7 percent lower 'carbon footprint' than their brown cousins. This major contribution to achieving 'net zero' has, of course, nothing to do with the fact that white eggs are cheaper and easier to produce... 
  Anyway, this got me thinking about chickens. The domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus) is the most numerous bird, and the most numerous domestic animal, on the planet, with a population estimated at upward of 26.5 billion (four chickens for every human?). Our debt to them, as producers both of meat and of those natural wonders, eggs, is immense – but are we grateful to them, do we appreciate them? Of course not. Here is the great Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert's tribute to the doughty fowl –

Hen

The hen is the best example of what living constantly with
humans leads to. She has completely lost the lightness and
grace of a bird. Her tail sticks up over her protruding rump
like a too large hat in bad taste. Her rare moments of ecstasy,
when she stands on one leg and glues up her round eyes
with filmy eyelids, are stunningly disgusting. And in addition, that
parody of song, throat-slashed supplications over a thing un-
utterably comic: a round, white, maculated egg.
   The hen brings to mind certain poets.

[translation by Czeslaw Milosz]

Minced Oaths

 An American friend inquires – as well he might – what 'a Herbert Spencer of a cold' might mean. As I told him, I'm probably the only person on the planet who still uses the phrase (to universal bafflement). I came across it years ago in, I think, a novel by H.G. Wells (Love and Mr Lewisham?), where a character says he has had 'a Herbert Spencer of a day'. He means of course a Hell of a day, and it's an example of what is known as a 'minced oath', where an innocuous form of words, with the same initial letter, is substituted for a profanity.  There is no actual connection between Hell and Herbert Spencer, except that neither is a lot of fun. Another example where the name of a famous person is put to this use is 'what the Dickens?', which has nothing to do with the writer, but is simply a way of avoiding saying 'devil'. Similarly the exclamation 'Gordon Bennett' is a way of avoiding naming the deity. The Gordon Bennett thus invoked was the wealthy publisher, sportsman and celebrity (in his day) Gordon Bennett Jr, who, among other things, sponsored Stanley's expedition to Africa to find David Livingstone. And then there's the sad case of 'sweet Fanny Adams' (a way of avoiding the expression 'sweet f*ck-all'). Fanny was an eight-year-old girl whose brutal murder in Alton, Hampshire,  in 1867 caused a national outcry. But that's enough minced oaths. 
   Meanwhile, my own Herbert Spencer of a cold still has me firmly in its grip, so I have entirely missed out on the Devon jaunt I was looking forward to. Hey ho. 

A Cold, A New Month, A Poem

 I spent the weekend with my cousin amid the floriferous glory of Derbyshire at the turn of summer, with sunshine (much of the time) to heighten the beauty. However, along the way I discovered that, annoyingly, I was developing a stinking cold – which is now, on my return to Lichfield, in full dismal swing, a real Herbert Spencer of a cold. Still more annoyingly, I was supposed to be travelling to Exeter tomorrow to join my walking friends for a few days. Now my best hope is to make the journey on Thursday instead, if this tiresome virus has gone into retreat by then. Here's hoping...
   Meanwhile, I notice that May has become June, and today, the 2nd, is the date on which, in 1840, Thomas Hardy, Wessex's Monarch of Mirth, suffered the terrible fate of being born. Did he have something to say about June? Oh yes, he did, but, being Hardy, his thoughts inevitably turned to autumn – 

June Leaves and Autumn

I

Lush summer lit the trees to green;
But in the ditch hard by
Lay dying boughs some hand unseen
Had lopped when first with festal mien
They matched their mates on high.
It seemed a melancholy fate
That leaves but brought to birth so late
Should rust there, red and numb,
In quickened fall, while all their race
Still joyed aloft in pride of place
With store of days to come.

II

At autumn-end I fared that way,
And traced those boughs fore-hewn
Whose leaves, awaiting their decay
In slowly browning shades, still lay
Where they had lain in June
And now, no less embrowned and curst
Than if they had fallen with the first,
Nor known a morning more,
Lay there alongside, dun and sere,
Those that at my last wandering here
Had length of days in store.


[published in Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles, 1925]

'Paradoxes flung up in the air'

G.K. Chesterton was born on this day in 1874. Max Beerbohm first met him in 1902 and described him as 'like a mountain, and a volcanic one – constant stream of talk flowing down – paradoxes flung up into the air – very magnificent.' They became friends, and Beerbohm admired him – within limits: 'I am not nearly as witty as Chesterton for one, but certainly I have not prostituted and cheapened my wit as he has' – harsh words, by Max's standards, but fair enough: the unstoppably prolific Chesterton did turn out plenty of substandard stuff.
  Beerbohm parodied Chesterton in full flow in the great parody collection A Christmas Garland. Chesterton is represented by 'Some Damnable Errors About Christmas', a fine stream of paradoxes which asserts that 'for nearly two thousand years mankind has been more glaringly wrong on the subject of Christmas than on any other subject. If mankind had hated Christmas, he would have understood it from the first.' Among the 'more obvious fallacies' are the idea that 'Christmas should be observed as a time of jubilation' and that it 'comes but once a year'. Spiritually, Chesterton asserts, 'Christmas Day recurs exactly seven times a week. When we have frankly acknowledged this, and acted on this, we shall begin to realise the Day's mystical and terrific beauty. For it is only every-day things that reveal themselves to us in all their wonder and their splendour.' All very Chestertonian, 'very magnificent'.
  Above is one of Beerbohm's caricatures of Chesterton. He was a huge man, standing six feet four inches tall – my own height, as it happens – and tipping the scales at something over twenty stone (which I don't). His girth was famously immense: there was a story that during the Great War a lady asked him why he was 'not out at the front', and he replied, 'Madam, if you go round to the side, you will see that I am.' And Wodehouse described a loud crash as 'a sound like G.K. Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin.' In 1931, the BBC asked him to give a series of talks on the radio, and they were a great success, delivered more or less impromptu, with his wife and secretary in the studio with him. Four years later, Beerbohm began his own series of radio talks, which were also a great success, and were later published in the collection Mainly on the Air, one of his best. 

A Painted Lady Summer?

 So there I was, in the supermarket car park, gazing happily at a tough-looking low-growing shrub covered with tiny white flowers (maybe a Contoneaster of some kind) – and there, drinking their fill of nectar, were three glorious Painted Lady butterflies, all in my field of vision at once. Some years that is as many as I see in a whole season, but this year we seem to be having a Painted Lady Summer – they are everywhere, even in town. Those three came on top of another half dozen or so I'd seen on my short walk to the supermarket, and there have been many more in the garden. I do love these butterflies, and have done since early childhood, when I first registered the extraordinary beauty of their intricately marked underwings, and marvelled at the journey they had made to get here. We now know that they fly not only from the Med but all the way from the desert fringes of North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, making much of the journey at high altitude. And here they are this year, in glorious abundance. 
   Also this morning, just down the road from our house, I spotted a Hummingbird Hawk moth, feeding on red valerian. This little moth, which does give a very good impression of a hummingbird, has thrived wonderfully in recent years, even surviving the winter in many parts. 
  So there we are – at least two reasons to be cheerful. Also, the oppressive heat of the past couple of days has cooled down to a perfect early summer day (even though it's still spring). 

The Bower

 Today is the day of the Lichfield Bower, a curiously named celebration dating back to the reign of Henry II. Originally it was a muster or array, a way of finding out how many men could be called upon to fight if needed. All those capable of bearing arms would parade through the streets, accompanied by dancers and garlanded effigies of saints, and be handsomely rewarded at the end of the day with beef and wine at a specially erected 'bower house' decorated with laurel and lilac. When gunpowder became available, musketeers would join the procession, firing volleys outside the houses of leading townspeople, who were expected to respond by bringing out offerings of cakes and ale. While other towns abandoned such events, Lichfield continued to stage its Bower every Whit Monday, with a street parade that nowadays features local schools, bands and community organisations, with marching soldiers to represent the military. There are floats and lorries, a funfair, musical performances, the crowning of a Bower Queen (Ruskin would have approved), and of course – this being Lichfield – ample opportunities to eat and drink. I usually miss most of it, and that is perhaps just as well, as such spectacles stir up a strange brew of emotions in my breast – I don't know why – and I have been known to well up embarrassingly. 
  Philip Larkin seems to have been similarly, obscurely affected by such sights, to judge by his poem 'The March Past' (a villanelle of sorts), written on this day in 1951...

The march interrupted the light afternoon.
Cars stopped dead, children began to run,
As out of the street-shadow into the sun

Discipline strode, music bullying aside
The credulous, prettily-coloured crowd,
Evoking an over-confident, over-loud

Holiday where the flags lisped and beckoned,
And all was focused, larger than we reckoned,
Into a consequence of thirty seconds.

The stamp and dash of surface sound cut short
Memory, intention, thought;
The vague heart sharpened to a candid court

Where exercised a sudden flock of visions:
Honeycombs of heroic separations,
Pure marchings, pure apparitions,

Until the crowd closed in behind.
Then music drooped. And what came back to mind
Was not its previous habit, but a blind

Astonishing remorse for things now ended
That of themselves were also rich and splendid
(But unsupported broke, and were not mended) –

Astonishing, for such things should be deep,
Rarely exhumable: not in a sleep
So light they can wake and occupy
An absent mind when any march goes by.

A Bee

Aggrade. 
There's a word we're all familiar with, I'm sure... No? Me neither.
It means to build up or raise the level of a land surface by depositing sediment, and I mention it because it was the word that knocked my 11-year-old grandson out of the Canadian national spelling bee junior finals last night. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we were able to watch this event live as it went out, and Ethan (for it is he) sailed into the final five, tackling words such as 'dystopian' and 'spelunking', before 'aggrade' came up and shattered his young dreams – well, actually he wasn't too bothered, and was pleased enough with his performance. But 'aggrade'... really. It was the only word in the competition I didn't know, though I might have had some difficulty as a result of the question master's wayward pronunciation (worst example, 'plaited' pronounced 'plated') and bizarre habit of announcing 'there are two different pronunciations for this word', then saying it exactly the same way twice. 
   I had never seen a spelling bee before – we don't have them over here (perhaps because so few people can spell) – and I was struck by how joylessly the contest was conducted, though my daughter assures me there was plenty of joy in the room (as well as a few tears). I guess you had to be there. 
  The picture below is Norman Rockwell's 'Cousin Reginald Spells Peloponnesus' – a word that happily didn't come up last night (and cousin Reginald could hardly be less like our Ethan).