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| Overlooking the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, Folkestone. Honeysuckle twines around the fence. |
Near Folkestone, English south coast, on the day the clocks advance.
Sunday at Arpinge. A meanly pinched day, deprived of an hour, even time it seems is subjugated, under the pressure of authority, under the thumb of – oh no, time is in our minds, not out there in the world. The badger, running along the road’s verge at night, caught in the headlights – we slow down, wait for it to cross the road and disappear into the field – the badger is unburdened by the concept of time, the skylarks, in the wind-blown fields above the cliff edge, unobsessed with time. Only when you look over the cliff edge, into the scarred valley, with its lines and lacework, train tracks and lorry lanes at the entrance to the Tunnel under the sea, only then, do you feel the deprivation, that adherence to clock time, which human tyrannies and obsessions can bring.
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| buds and barbs |
The wind hurtles off the cliff top and plunges into the scored valley, with its high fences and razor wire, and the lorry lanes, and the train tracks laid onto and into the ground. There are few lorries today, hardly any, the wind skitters and lolls against the entrance sheds. Few people it seems are heading for France today. The trains are immobile, no matter how much the winds push and taunt them.
The earth, the grasses, are flattened by the wind. The hedges, clipped into their bristling tidy outfits, have been trimmed and spruced into readiness for spring. As if stiffly waiting for some royalty, the ceremony of it, the starched and scrubbed, the primped and proper look. Buds decline to push and shine, the promised warmth, sun splendour, is delayed. The pomp and ceremony. Meanwhile horses rub their heads against their legs, or toss them, jingling the metal of their bits and bridles or sawing their heads up and down, moving one foot up and down, and then another. Oh the boredom, waiting for the arrival of the king and queen, the sovereigns in tasselled jackets, boots with spurs, and crop handles woven in among the reins wound round their fingers.
The North Downs are bare of horses, riders, carriages, no living creatures except for birds piping in the hedges. The entrances to badger burrows, the badger paths that lead to them and from them, in and out, and there’s just the whistling wind, falling headlong from the cliff top. Entrances to badger burrows underground, entrances to Channel Tunnel undersea, and the grey sky scored with pebble-coloured clouds and a gleam of pink and turquoise just beyond, like a sash tied round the topmost mast of some approaching fleet.
Folkestone chalk horse, seen from the side
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