The Virtual Rambler

Number seventeen: 3^rd October 2011

Night Walks

Sleep , that grudged interruption for the carpe diembrigade , proves a sovereign friend to a troubled mind. Its snug animal warmth , detached from obligations and stress , its dreaming adventures in surreal landscapes. I�ve long been envious of chimps and gorillas , who sleep for ten and twelve hours a night respectively , of reptiles whose bouts of activity are infrequent interruptions to an otherwise somnolent mode of life , not to mention those hibernators with the good sense to see out their winters in the deepest of sleeps. Lately , however , osteo-arthiritis has foisted itself upon your author , reducing him to the slow gait of the Living Dead , although fuelled internally by medication more appropriate to the Grateful Dead. For those in too much discomfort for prolonged sleep , night-times start looming like sundown for a tourist in Transylvania. After an hour or two of tossing and turning , I sometimes get up and dressed for a stroll , to the delight of my border collie , Harry , and the pair of us take the nocturnal air. While the city sleeps , the solitary stroller is a prince of all he surveys.

The initial path we follow bisects a plot of allotments on one side and fenced yards on the other , whose inhabitants � horses , geese and chickens - are all fast asleep in their coops and stables. Not so the wild creatures of the night ; from the far side of the allotments comes that curious , high-pitched lament of foxes and among the trees ahead sounds an owl�s melancholy refrain. Now the path turns past a vandalised clubhouse overlooking an overgrown cricket pitch. The clouds racing across a half-moon , urged across the sky by strong Autumn winds , seem as restless as an invalid in a tangled bed. It puts me in mind of the Larkin poem in which the narrator�s glance up at the moon �Is a reminder of the strength and pain / Of being young; that it can�t come again / But is for others undiminished somewhere." We turn into parkland where the rippling beck by our side reflects snatches of moonlight as it passes along a sequence of weirs. These are remnants of the water-powered industry that once inhabited this valley. There were tanneries , paper-making and corn mills. Thence into the steep-sloped woods that have grown over a complex of nineteenth century quarries. Their gritstone was used to build the proximate cottages and the factories whose occasional foundations now line the riverbanks. There is some scuttling in the undergrowth , which prompts Harry to race off in hunting mode.

He re-joins me later as I limp out of the park , heading towards the site of a mediaeval corn-mill. It was rebuilt by Samuel Smith (father of the Tadcaster brewer) in 1857 and then became known as the Old Tannery. Having opened for work when Dickens had just completed Little Dorrit , it was for many years the main employer of local labour. The allotments and yards , the cricket pitch and much of the older housing on its perimeters were the bequest of its paternalistic owners to those who worked for them. It became a fellmongers in the twentieth century and went out of business in 1994. The place was eventually converted into a complex of ‘Executive Flats’. Here’s an echo of the transition from an industrial to a financial economy. Formerly it housed the business of separating sheepskin and wool from hides still dripping with blood in an atmosphere clouded with chemicals and steam. Now a single light shines from a third-floor window. Some go-getting young heir of Mr. Merdle(1) perhaps , monitoring tomorrow’s financial markets as he conjures with his portfolio of futures , options and derivatives ? Economic cycles are inherently transitory. The earlier output of tangible commodities such as corn for bread , leather for clothing and footwear , stone and wood for building materials and paper , has given way to a nebulous world of service providers and service users , although we continue to require food , warmth and shelter and , in the morning , our daily ration of tabloid tosh. The last lap takes us past the fish-stocked lodge whose waters once supplied the mill’s steam-engine. A satellite traverses the heavenly orbs as we head back home , Harry with a nose to the ground and his owner musing upon all that has been and gone hereabouts. Is there a more fleeting figure than a night-walker pondering local transience ?

Wig.

⁽¹⁾ The dodgy financier in Little Dorrit , whose mysterious wheelings and dealings in the stock market end in the sort of economic �crash� and subsequent distress we are all too familiar with.

The Virtual Rambler

Number seventeen: 3rd October 2011

Night Walks

Archive

Number seventeen: 3^rd October 2011