Dispatches | Editor’s Note | May 1st 2020

Dear Reader, 

All-sorts of things are becoming more noticeable. There’s an old nest, a kind of squat crook, where a knot of young Sparrow’s have been living for a while now. If I could record time properly, then I’d dare to say it has been at least two weeks. I watch from the far end of the garden, a simple spot, a stoop perhaps, a depression in the grass, where the sun traps. Bird-watching is, indeed, British and not at all my usual sport. Yet every morning I watch as mother takes flight. She returns, sometimes with a feather, a sprig of wood, some padding for her nesting. When she returns with supper, the little choir of Sparrows is quite remarkable. It reminds me of last year, and the one before. I have heard it all before, but I never the miss the moment to listen again to this private, happy ritual. 

I’ve been sitting in the garden (when the weather permits) and it’s where I get a lot of work, reading, thinking, and writing done. Incidentally, I noticed, on my last visit to the end of the garden, how an “office” is feeling somehow old-fashioned. I think, for some, the placeholder “office” captures an inward energy about labour, perhaps even a mood, or a trance, a discipline. 

It’s oddly zen-like, trading stories on work and thinking about future days. 

That quarrel of Sparrows interrupt. Another lyrical spray of pretty birdsong. The wild garlic from the riverside whips up in the breeze, dragged out of the woods, and holds in the garden’s jumbled perfume. The damp spice of the woodsy backyard is exciting. A pleasant distraction, I think. 

This week it’s not feeling odd, any bit out of the ordinary, that I find moments of stillness like this in my garden in-between projects. The world moves more slowly, if hesitantly, these days. It’s a moment of pain for many, and one about change for all. Yet, what makes it feel so extraordinary? 

History has often felt like an invisible narrator, or a judge of character, offering us a story long after it’s happened. Yet, history feels more present than ever. 

So, trying for time-wise, I’m holed up in the garden once again. I gain more, methinks, than self-wrecking in this long pause of sorts, or the change it creates, or even the off-centeredness of the moment. It’s a busy period inasmuch as writing and marketing projects are meaningful outlets at the moment. I can’t say much more, not for now. But I’m hoping others out there are finding creative ways to breeze through the time, even if only for a pleasant distraction. If not, try bird-watching. 

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