A Poem for Thursday.

The Outing to Dungeness

Prospect Cottage

Basically it was just a hut
A fisherman’s hut
Along with all the other huts
Now I love a hut
I would like a hut by the sea
Not too much to keep tidy
And the sound and smell of it all…


Basically it was not really a garden
Just the way you collect bits of plants along the beach
And hope that they might take root
And help you to remember that day
By the sea on the beach
In the shingle…

Really it was not sculpture
Not what those earnest artists
Like Andy or the Welsh man would think of as sculpture
More like me when I walked the sands at Ballyferris
And picked up the rubbish that the others had dropped
Well I say the rubbish
I never actually thought of it that way…


Really I wasn’t too sure about the yellow windows
And the writing on the end wall
All about the sun
Though the mist obscured it that day
And the words were a bit small
Now that my eyesight is not what it was…


So what made me cry?
For it was only a fisherman’s hut
It was only the shingle all around it by the road
It was only railway sleepers upended
Standing like a modern Stonehenge
And the perfume of the gorse
And the yellow horned poppies…

No really …there was not much there you know.


[This was the day that we went looking for Derek Jarman's house on the shingle in that magic spot called Dungeness. The brochure say the largest area of shingle in Europe. Full of wild sea flowers, protected by the local authorities....mysteriously beautiful.]

The Story of Ballyferris. The Field

                                           

       Chapter Four

      The Field

*

I had a wonderful conversation this week with the younger son of the farmer who owned the field...Neil Hope...sadly he says no wild flowers are now to be found in the field nor skylarks singing high above the caravans...such is the way of all flesh I think...but we can all do our bit to restore these precious parts of nature in our own little corners of this country.

                                                                            

In the early years our caravan was positioned along the back edge of the field. Behind us was the potato field and beyond that the coast road, leading left to Ballywalter and right toward Millisle. In front, a field of long grass and wild flowers, beyond that the beach and after a rocky foreshore the grey Irish Sea. The field was reached down a narrow lane which led to the beach, and on the right it was bordered by another caravan field . It was the first time that I had ever seen the kind of wild flowers that I had loved in the Flower Fairy books. Heartsease, wild thyme, marguerites, buttercups and lots more to thrill the soul of a dreaming child. Skylarks sang overhead as they soared higher and higher into the air luring us away from their nests hidden in the long grass .The air was sweet and spicey and when the wind dried on your lips they tasted salty and full of the sea. In later years pride of place right in the middle of all this was a flagpole and flying proudly from the top, the British Union Jack. Dad said that the farmer who owned the field, called it the “Flag of Prosperity” -pronounced “persparety” but this may only be a family fable. Caravans of various sizes and shapes were sited all around the perimeter of the field and thus began for me a life totally separate from the routine of home , school , home, in Belfast.

National Trust: Ards Peninsula.
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■sandhoppers, a little shrimp-like crustacean

■seaweed flies, insects which are food for turnstones, starlings and badgers

■sea aster (Aster tripolium) flowering from July to October

■scurvy grass

■thrift (Armeria maritima) flowering from June to August

■sea lavender (Limonium spp) flowering from July to December

■wild thyme (Thymus drucei)

■stonecrops and squills flowering in the summer

■bell heather (Erica cinerea) flowering from June to September

■bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) flowering from April to May

■pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) flowering from June to August

■twayblade orchids (Listera ovata) flowering from May to July

Of course I didn't know the names of any of these wonderful bits of nature, I just reveled in their beauty and in my new found freedom.