Three Seasonal Things #6

Christmassy London; the starling tree; the Pointillist stage of autumn

With a bit of luck, you know the drill by now, but if not, these posts are about three things I have noticed this week, that feel particularly of this moment, of now, to make me stop and notice how time and the season is passing. I love it when you tell me yours too, and you can do so in the comments below.

So, your week last week, from the comments: FROSTS! In North Wales, Nottinghamshire, Edinburgh and, well…Connecticut, how wonderful; rusty orange chrysanthemums still flowering; several noisy robins; torrential rain; clear crisp nights and Orion high in the sky; a blackbird tugging at crab apples; little droplets of rain sparkling on the garden door against the blackness outside; 5ft high mounds of glossy brown seaweed churned up from the seabed and deposited on the sand by a winter storm; Christmas pudding making; kicking through a big pile of oak leaves; black silhouettes of trees against sky; the scent of woodsmoke in cold air; ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ sung by a choir at a Christmas market; a murmuration of starlings at the end of Blackpool pier.

Poetry!

Here’s mine.

Christmassy London

I absolutely love London at Christmas. I used to come quite a bit as a kid, and the shops at Christmas were just ridiculously magical. I want to be wearing an outfit like this woman who strolled into shot just as I was snapping, walking dark shining streets, passing glittering shop windows and food halls groaning with fancy boxes of Turkish delight, stacks of panettone and bottles of champagne. Jumping into taxis with piles of boxes like in an old film. Kicking off my heels when I get in and collapsing onto a plush sofa.

Reality rarely meets imagination…but…but…I was there for the Garden Media Guild Awards at the Savoy which was of course gorgeous in itself, and I also met with some friends at The Delaunay beforehand, which, the blurb says, is ‘inspired by the grand cafes of Mittel Europe’. Honestly, I don’t even know exactly what that means but ugh, I love it, all beautiful tiles, dark wood, old mirrors, and - ok - scrambled eggs on toast, but done just so. And then after the awards we went to the Beaufort Bar in the Savoy - all dark, glossy and glittering - and had champagne. Just ridiculous ways to behave. Gorgeous, decadent and once-in-a-blue-moon Christmassy London, and yes, very like an old film, right up to the bit where I had to run for the Bakerloo line to Paddington.

The starling tree

The person who lives in the house in the picture feeds the starlings, and it is not unusual to see it being besieged by them at feeding time. And so this tree has become the starlings’ hang out spot. Now that the leaves are fallen you can see that there is a kind of thicket at the centre and walking past this morning I could hear them all in there, making their crazy whizzes, pops, whistles and trills (if you follow me on instagram you can hear them in my post there). I wonder if they built this inner defence or if they just like the tree because of it.

I have seen the flock take a swirl around the park and I wonder, if this householder keeps it up, if we might get our own little murmuration one of these days.

The Pointillist stage of autumn

Can we still call it autumn now that it’s December? Until a few days ago I would have said so as it still felt like it. It has been so slow, and so mild this year and there are still plenty of leaves here in Bristol at least. We have no frost yet but the last few days the temperature has dropped and it has felt like winter is finally upon us.

Anyway, I was walking in my local woods and looking at the airiness of the trees now. I reckon each branch now holds about 10% of its original leaves, and they have been lost really evenly, almost like someone has thinned them out with a very pointed little pair of scissors in the way you do with a growing bunch of grapes, snipping them out here and there to leave space for the rest to grow. The trees are still holding their bough-like shapes now while at the same time being totally translucent. They reminded me of when we had to study the Pointillists at school, little splodges of paint suggesting something more solid.

A little bit of housekeeping: you may notice that I have now turned on a ‘paid’ option on this newsletter. Substack allows its writers to put some or all of their work behind a paywall for paid subscribers, as a way of generating an income for the work put in. I am not intending on doing this, at least for now, but if you would like to take out a paid subscription, well, that would be very lovely of you. Of course you can also support me by buying my book The Almanac 2023! A magic Christmas gift, so I’ve been told.

But much more importantly, please do let me know what you’ve been noticing and doing this week. I love to hear.