SPRING REFLECTIONS FROM HAWKEDON

A few days ago I came back from visiting Southern Spain where we got more rain than here but in solid useful bursts and mostly at night. They seem to be able to control these things better. There the roses were in what we would think of as late June fullness, the Iris are over and the hills were covered in the brightest of Spanish Broom.  The air was fully scented and the nightingales were singing during the daytime as well as giving full throated night time concerts.  What could be nicer?

However, let us not make odious comparisons; the journey back from Stansted via Cambridge gave just as many delights. The Cambridge line to Bury can always be a travellers pleasure. True the landscape is most very flat but this gives us magnificent skies. I have been known take many photographs of these East Anglian skies with their different clouds on my mobile phone.

The journey showed the countryside as it edges from Spring to early Summer. The rails ran close to banks of foaming Cow’s Parsley (Sheep’s Parsley often locally here) billowing out in great white waves. This has always been a humble plant of comment and delight, for it is also known as Queen Anne’s Lace in honour of the fabric that must have cheered up the sight that huge, po-faced looking monarch. In The Netherlands it is called Flauterkraut, meaning flute plant. One can imagine small Dutch children cutting lengths between the joint in the stems and trying to make music with them. As a boy my friends and I, scrambling through Surrey woodlands, would cut similar lengths of dried vine from Old Man’s Beard and try very hard to smoke them. These bits we called Whiffy Wood, but I digress.

Along the tracks we saw the early Marguerite daisies, buttercups, lilac, and the creamy candle flowers of the first chestnut flowers. Maybe this can be thought of as unremarkable, and my unimpressed companions in the carriage were a young lady who chatted all the way on her mobile phone, a lady engrossed in her game of Solitaire on her tablet and a man fast asleep. None of them would have guessed at the joy the simple country things were giving to somebody who had been away a few short weeks. There is so much to see and delight in if we will only take a look.

In our garden things are similarly behind what I was seeing in Spain. The Iris are full with promise, the tulips have been good and some are still flowering, there is abundant blossom on the Medlar and the Quince trees and some deep dark roses have already been in flower a week or two. No sign of Mole though. Maybe he is courting far underground or busy making his own version of CrossRail so he can provide more easily for an expected family.

On a different point, I cannot help thinking just how strange and ironic the world is becoming. Suffolk voted in the main for Brexit. This might have been because of the fear of our way of life being changed and damaged by an influx of people from economically deprived or from dangerous regions. “This country is too small!” had been the cry. Now France has a new President who is on record that he is going to abandon the treaty by which France held back the flow of people to this country. So whether we like it or not we are likely to be having to welcome thousands of people from war torn areas and hunger zones. People who have been displaced.

We were able to rise to the challenge here some years ago when Vietnamese “Boat People” came to Suffolk and were accommodated in buildings in old war time aerodromes and the like. These refugees needed food, bedding, utensils, language training and to learn life skills in this very different climate, and jobs. So too will the people from the other countries who will surely be coming here. Is this not the time when we, here, in this small corner of the country consider what we will best be able to do to help in what is going to be a very real crisis? Is it not our human responsibility to offer help and a hand of friendship? In Benefice terms is it not our "Christian Duty” so to do?

Might I suggest this is a subject that is put on the agendas of each Parish Council, each PCC and addressed at Benefice level as well. Better to be prepared than overwhelmed.

Before we all enjoy the summer let’s have home real RAIN!