High Flight

click photo to enlarge

Ask people to name a poem of the First World War and they are very likely to come up with something by Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas or "In Flanders Field" by John McCrae. It's a task that many people would have little difficulty in accomplishing, particularly those of a certain age who studied what were called, "The War Poets", at school. However, if the focus switched to the poets and poems of the Second World War then most people without a particular interest in poetry might struggle. I'd immediately think of my favourite, Henry Reed's "Lessons of the War: I. Naming of Parts", and perhaps its sequel, "Lessons of the War: II. Judging Distances, fine poems that speak obliquely about the experience of war. I'd also offer up "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee, a work about the awe of piloting a single-seat fighter aircraft high above the earth, that has become a favourite of aviators across the world, and possibly the best known poem to come out of the experience of that conflict.

On a recent few days spent in central Lincolnshire we stopped at Scopwick Cemetery and looked at the war graves there. Many commemorate British and Canadian airmen who died in training at RAF Digby or were otherwise killed in the line of duty. There are also memorials to German airmen shot down in the vicinity. We moved on to our destination after taking a couple of photographs. However, the following day we read that J.G. Magee, the author of "High Flight" was among the dead at Scopwick, so we called in again on our journey home. We both knew his poem and recognised the first and last lines that are carved at the base of his memorial. This discovery on our part prompted me to find out more about Magee.

He was born to a U.S. father and British mother, both missionaries, in China. His education began at an American school in Nanking, but from 1931 to 1939, when the family moved to England, he was educated in English schools including Rugby School. In 1938 he won that institution's poetry prize. He was an admirer of another Rugby pupil, Rupert Brooke, the poet of the First World War, who had also won the school's poetry prize in 1904. In 1939 Magee went to the United States and the following year he earned a scholarship to Yale University, but instead chose to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1941 he transferred to Wales to train on the Spitfire aircraft. It was here that he wrote "High Flight". Shortly afterwards he went to RAF Digby and No. 412 (Fighter) Squadron, RCAF. On 11th December 1941, Magee's aircraft and a training aircraft collided in cloud at 1400 feet, resulting in his tragic death at the age of 19.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 58mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Jack Frost

click photo to enlarge
"Look out, look out,
Jack Frost is about,
He's after our fingers and toes,
And all through the night
The gay little sprite
Is working where nobody knows.

He’ll climb each tree,
So nimble is he,
His silvery powder he’ll shake.
To windows he’ll creep
And while we’re asleep
Such wonderful pictures he’ll make.

Across the grass
He’ll merrily pass,
And change all its greenness to white.
Then home he will go
And laugh ho, ho ho!
What fun I have had in the night."
children's poem by C. E. Pike

On more than one occasion recently, when talking to friends of my sort of age, the subject of ice on windows has cropped up. Most people who grew up in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, and even the 1960s, unless they were very well-off or raised in modern houses, remember waking up on cold winter mornings to find ice on the inside of their single-glazed bedroom windows. It's something that my children find barely credible, and yet we thought nothing of it: that's just the way it was, and we appeared to be none the worse for it. Of course, it's not something I'd like to return to, and it's a phenomenon that these days I rarely see anywhere. But I did the other morning.

As I stood at the kitchen window watching the birds eating the seed and scraps that I'd put out for them I noticed my unheated greenhouse (glasshouse) was iced up. At a distance it looked like the ice had formed the sort of feathery patterns that I remember from my childhood. So, I grabbed the LX3 and went to investigate. There were patterns, and they were best seen from inside the greenhouse. Those on the roof were the most elaborate and, remarkably, each pane of roof glass had a quite different pattern. Some were more foliage-like, in a very William Morris chintz way, others resembled feathers that were either very fluffy or quite sparse. I took a few shots then I found one feathery pane with good contrast and light that displayed the patterns in a way that the camera could better record - see above.

The other thing I remember from these cold childhood mornings is my mother reciting the first few lines of the "Jack Frost" poem (above) as she pointed out the frost patterns. I know some schools still teach these verses to young children, but do parents? Perhaps there is less cause now that central heating and cars have all but banished the "wonderful pictures" and the need to experience cold from our lives.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A November landscape

click photo to enlarge
A Victorian writer who knew him, says of the English poet and humourist, Thomas Hood (1799-1845), that "his existence was a long disease rather than a life", plagued as he was by ill health from childhood. However, by the time of his early death at the age of 46 Hood had endeared himself to the British public through his satirical observations on contemporary life published in "Punch" and "Comic Annual". His novels, such as the romance, "Lamia", were bought in respectable numbers, as were his volumes of poetry. Some individual poems such as his "Song of the Shirt", a piece of social commentary about the working conditions of shirt-makers, were highly acclaimed, being translated for European audiences as well as finding wide readership in Britain.

Today Hood is recognised by many but revered by few, his work slipping back into the second tier of Victorian writers. Nonetheless, as I cycled through the Lincolnshire Fens late in the afternoon of an overcast day it was his poem about the month of November that came to mind. I heard it as a schoolboy and enjoyed its simple structure. Back in those days we hadn't heard of SAD (seasonal affective disorder), but as I re-read the poem for the first time in decades I did wonder if it was one of the afflictions that poor Thomas Hood bore along with his other illnesses! But no, it was probably just his reaction to drab, damp, smog-wreathed London in the year's penultimate month.

No!

No sun—no moon!
No morn—no noon!

No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day—
No sky—no earthly view—
No distance looking blue—
No road—no street—no “t'other side this way”—
No end to any Row—
No indications where the Crescents go—
No top to any steeple—
No recognitions of familiar people—
No courtesies for showing 'em—
No knowing 'em!
No travelling at all—no locomotion—
No inkling of the way—no notion—
“No go” by land or ocean—
No mail—no post—
No news from any foreign coast—
No Park, no Ring, no afternoon gentility—
No company—no nobility—
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member—
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds—
November!

I was propelling my bicycle homewards, through the winding lanes of the flat landscape, when the sun made a brief appearance over the the village of Gosberton, and I stopped to compose this landscape using the spire of St Peter & St Paul to balance the illuminated clouds.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On