annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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Singing in the woods

The woodland singing group is a thing of beauty. It's run by a woman, R,  who's been teaching singing for decades; she carries a tuner in the pocket of her jeans and a couple of times each session she brings it out to check that she's where she wants to be. We meet once a month in a clearing off Mousehole Lane,  leading to Nightingale Lane. We're all oldish women, mostly kitted out in proper walking boots and expensive jackets, apart from me in my homemade fleece dress and secondhand Uggs. We chat and wait for stragglers (Connie's always late - we set off without her but she caught up later), and R leads us into a quick song before we set off. It's an African round - the words escape me now - very easy to pick up. There are twelve of us today so R divides us into first two groups of six, then three of four, to sing in rounds. It's exhilarating, fantastic. A couple sitting on a bench give a cheer and a round of applause when we finish. I've brought Shirley and today there's a new woman who's brought her dog, Eric, a Jack Russell. As we move up Nightingale Lane we let them off their leads and they scamper around, tails wagging, covering probably four times as much ground as the rest of us.


We pass through a gap in a hedge and start to ascend onto the South Downs, along the edge of a field which has been harvested of its beets since our last meeting. It's not really that steep, but it's long and I gradually fall behind. This always happens. I'd meant to bring my stick but forgot. I told R before we started that I'm living with fatigue, that I'll get there in the end. She has those Norwegian walking sticks and lends me one, which does help. We stop halfway up the field for another song. It's cold here, exposed, the wind blowing across the fields, but the view is great, across the faded fields, over bare trees, up onto the distant green hills, under a bright blue sky. We sing a song that's half based on a poem by Edward Thomas and half by a quote from Charles Dickens. "Now I know that spring will come again perhaps tomorrow/ However late I've patience after this night following on such a day./ The sun/ shines hot/ and the wind/ blows cold on March days. It's summer/ in the light/ and winter in the shade on March days."


The dogs get over-excited and have to be put separated and put back on the leads while we sing, then let off as we go higher and higher up into the hills. Again I fall behind, but plod on as I know this is the last of the hard sections. On the edge of the woods we sing a great old local song that we did last time, this time with the words printed out, about mud, with lots of old Sussex words for mud, "lamentable stodgy, mortacious stodgy,... gubber gawm, filly ghilly... thick pug, thin stug, call it what you will, I've still got to get it off the bottom of my boots!" It's quite a tongue twister and quite exhilarating. 


Now we're into the woods and I was wrong, this is the last uphill stretch, past the remains of an ancient flint wall and lots of fallen trees from last week's storms. Right at the top, in amongst the trees, surrounded by high banks, four huge logs have been placed round a fire pit and at last we can sit down. Here we sing a song about lords and ladies, the plant, also known as cuckoo-pint, and there they are, just poking their green heads through the crispy brown fallen leaves. Kids come up here and camp - I would have loved that when I was young. This is peak joy - perfect combination of place and song. From here it's a short clamber and we're at the top of a steep narrow valley with a small herd of black cows who turn out to be more scared of us than we are of them and scarper away to the other side of the valley. 


One last song at the bottom, then into more woods where we have a pause for a massive fallen tree blocking our path. The trunk was probably four foot high and I am proud to say I did manage to get myself over it, backwards, most inelegantly, but without help. 


And that was my afternoon of woodland singing. Fucking ace. The others went to the pub but I needed to be on my own after all that company, so went for a coffee then home to get ready for Sunday yoga in front of the fire, dinner, and the semi-final of the pottery throw-down. My money's on AJ for the win next week.

12:34 a.m. - 28.02.22

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