A DAY IN TALLINN
In the Recent Past
The pre-booked vehicles had already rolled through the bow gangway door and onto the lower deck of the Tallinn to Stockholm ferry. Drivers were joining foot passengers on the upper decks to drink in the bars and settle into a meal at the self-serve cafes. There was nothing to suggest the boarding was anything but the usual well-oiled routine.
Electrical winches lowered the hydraulics on the large ferry bow door. The last of the drivers left the lower vehicle deck and the passenger doors were secured. With the weather clear but a rough sea and a wind speed of 30 knots, conditions were described as ‘normal-bad’ for a night-time crossing on the Baltic Sea. At about midnight the ferry begun to slowly roll from side to side. Banging at the bow door was heard, investigated but no action taken. Regulars and crew hardly noticed. A gentle roll was the way things were on a typical crossing. Then the rolling intensified with violent shudders. Within a few minutes the vessel was listing to 90 degrees, all stability was lost and she slipped under the waves to end the lives of 852 passengers and crew. Only 130 survived. Most of the dead were from Sweden and Estonia. The bow door had not been securely locked, nobody had noticed and the sea had flowed in, flooding the lower vehicle deck, destabilising the vessel until it rolled on its side and silently slipped under the waves as many were trapped in their cabins.
The Day of the Visit
Today, at the Tallinn harbour entrance to the old town stand two steal girders rising from the ground and turning to face each other. Both spans have stood long enough now to have an oxidized rusty surface. The spans never meet leaving the sculpture disconnected over the pathway that takes day visitors towards the ancient town. This monument to that tragic night symbolises a journey never completed, a connection lost and is a permanent reminder of those who were entombed in the capsized vessel in the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Conspiracy theories abound about that fatal night but it seems that the loss of life was, in the end, the result of a failed safety procedure.
Estonians had had little time to govern themselves when this tragedy happened in 1994. Occupied by Germany during the Second World War, the country then came under Russian control for a second time until gaining independence with the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Prolonged economic incompetence during the Russian occupation had fortuitously led to the old city remaining largely intact and as it had been for centuries. The result is a fine example of a northern European town from half a millennium ago and so today a UNESCO world heritage site.
The lack of traffic makes walking the streets comfortable. Cobbled roadways, some narrow, some opening out to market squares, climb up and over a small hill. Cafes abound nicely weaved into the original streetscape. There is even a McDonalds with a 17th century facade. It’s a sort of theme park without an entrance fee. In places the original fortress walls still stand, today with market stall traders beside the archers’ slit windows. Ever pragmatic, the Lutheran Churches, which had once been Catholic, became Russian Orthodox and them with independence some converted back again with the changing of the political tide. Older Russian widows, who had migrated to Estonia during the occupation, stand outside the few remaining orthodox churches begging for alms as is the custom.
The place is convenient for a day excursion. The drainage is no longer a sluice down the centre of a cobbled stone street and the sewage is collected underground. The air is sweet not foul. There are no artisans, cobblers, milking cows, carpenters, blacksmiths or fishmongers and the walkways are disinfected and machine swept at night. The market places sell standard fair – Russian dolls and false fur hats. In a few places local artists, sculptors and weavers and potters and jewellery makers eek out a living and talented music students play orchestral instruments on pavements during their summer vacation. One street with a high stone wall has local painters displaying their works held up on strings attached to the facade. I purchased a painting by Ashot Jegikjan of a mystical grand piano that weaved its way into a distant horizon. Its minimalist qualities was his unique style he assured me, but I was left wondering if sparing the paint meant he could produce more for the summer tourist trade. Still, he handed me an impressive CV of exhibitions throughout Estonia for my reassurance.
Escaping this picture book world we descended the hill towards the modern day city and at the cusp of old and new entered the small but wonderful museum of immigration.
At the entrance stand suitcases made from heavy concrete with steal handles. You can take these as you will - The weight of migration, the baggage of the refugee, the few possessions allowed for such a journey, the collection of memories from a country of birth brought to a new safe place. The inside consists of two floors. On the lower floor is a photographic exhibition celebrating new arrivals from the war torn Middle East. Yasmin stands facing the camera wearing her hijab. “I wear this because I choose to” reads the caption. Yasmin explains that she is not repressed by her faith and is an independent young woman looking to succeed in her new country. The photo was taken during Ramadan. She is fasting for thirty days. It makes her feel at peace, she says.
On the upper floor stands a small open wooden fishing boat. When Russia annexed Estonia in 1945, twenty thousand Estonians took to boats to seek refugee status in Nordic countries across the Baltic Sea. Many drowned along the way, but many also made it. They were seen as heroes not as dangerous liabilities in their host counties. They were helped not turned back and they were provided with resources to integrate into their new counties. How different it is today.
There is a reminder here that it may not be the ancient bricks and mortar that matter but rather the endurance of people that come and go that gives a place its history. Not one of comfortable familiarity but rather one of unplanned and sometimes sudden change in life’s circumstance.
The Englishness of It All
The Journey to Oxford
“A poor life it is if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”- W. H. Davies
Mavis and Dorothy, wearing coats, sit behind the driver and bicker. It has not been a good day for them. They always wear coats when they go shopping in Swindon and today it is hot, dry and dusty in the soulless drab shopping centre, all pebble and concrete wash. They mumble as well so the cause of complaint between them is unclear from three rows back where I sit, the only other passenger on the 3.45 community bus to Lechlade, a village in the Cotswold Hills. We twist our way through the inner city one way system to the industrial estates, the car component factories and semi-detached dwellings showing signs of DIY adaptations and so on to the countryside and shortly the small town of Highworth.
“See you in two weeks, PERHAPS!” says Mavis.
She alights through a bustle of school children and makes her way up the street clutching a bag of groceries without looking back. Dorothy shuffles in her seat, checks her bags and straightens her back, looking forward all the while. The community bus is filled with children’s chatter as we dip down onto the Thames flood plain by way of a dead straight Roman road bound for the edge of the Cotswold Hills and the village of Lechlade. Here Dorothy alights and children disperse. The bus pulls off and all is silent in the market square. I stand alone by the coach archway of the Swan Inn.
The muffled sound of hooves and coach wheels on the muddy Gloscester to Swindon highway gives way to the clatter of hooves and grinding steel rimed wheels on cobble as she pulls through the arch into the yard beside the stables at the back of the Inn. Passengers alight, stretching to ease their stiff joints and head for the inn’s back door, the warmth, ale and mutton pie. Blacksmith apprentices unleash the horses all oozing sweet and steam and lead them to stables for fresh tossed hay. There are calls for luggage handlers and exchanges of coin; the sweet smell of horse manure in the air. The coach is turned, the master apprentice shouting orders and a team of rested thoroughbreds is bridled up waiting; the village a place of working souls.
But not so now. A picture post card mostly where richer folk settle into renovated workers’ cottages on return from offices in Swindon, Cheltenham and Gloucester. There, to sip gin and tonics, selecting their evening’s viewing from a copy of the Radio Times surrounded by the dry air of under-floor ducted heating.
Back down the road by Halfpenny Bridge I take a pint of ale at a local by the river before my journey on foot beside the Thames to London. Under the late afternoon sun I watch teenage boys dare each other to jump from the bridge into the Thames, laughing and shouting and running up again to the bridge parapets to dare again. It’s been the same for generations, that first summer at 14 when you dared enough to make it. Then I’m up across Halfpenny Bridge, passed the disused toll office built of stone onto the side of the bridge, dropping down onto the towpath, under a dry arch, through a kissing gate and onto the wide open meadow beyond. This is Constable Country where there is an artist with easel at every hedgerow diligently copying onto canvas the quintessential Englishness of it all. The Common with Friesian cows grazing, a narrow boat roped to a grassy bank set off by the steeple of St Lawrence’s in the distance.
Lechlade is the highest navigational point on the River Thames. From here Cotswold stone went by barge to build the Colleges of Oxford, 70 kilometers down stream and even further to London for the foundations of St Paul’s Cathedral. One mile or so on and the manual lock of St Johns is being managed by the young assistant lock keeper from Rusby. He puts his back to the long wooden leavers to open the gates letting pleasure craft upstream. He is here because of a tragedy. Last week the St John’s lock keeper suffered a stroke and died just a few weeks before his retirement. The family must now vacate the keeper’s cottage, the dreams of retirement beyond reach.
Betty Abrahams sits by the lock holding a Frisbee and talking to her Jack Russell. She looks up.
“That’s a heavy pack I’ll bet, where you off to then?”
“London down the Thames” I say, deciding to sit with her for a while.
“I’m from London originally born in Bow, but I’ve spent more time here than there now.”
“So you’re a real cockney, being born within sound of the bells of Bow.”
“That’s right, where you from then?”
“Australia.”
“I’ve got a daughter in Australia near Perth, she’s got children now.”
“You must go and visit.”
Betty is quiet for a while, strokes the frizzbee, her eyes water up. There is a family rift and she knows she will never see them.
“Actually I live in Brunei at the moment, near Singapore.”
“Oh, I’ve been there, Singapore that is, in the 60’s. My husband was in the Airforce, he did his full 38 years, started as a boy soldier when he was sixteen. We lived in a …. what was it called …. a kampong place, we had a Rotwheeler for protection but people were quite friendly. I used to take the children swimming in the afternoon. People thought that was a bit odd. They didn’t go to the seaside much out there, too hot I suppose. When we came back Jack got posted to Breeze Norton near here and we settled in Highworth. I never moved again.”
Betty declined my offer of a drink at the nearby Trout Inn but gave advice on prices at the corner store. I left her with her Frizzbee and Jack Russell, climbed up the steps onto the Lechlade to Farringdon Road and passed over the long stone bridge to the Trout Inn; where, for five pounds, the publican let me pitch a tent in the back field and promised to keep the outside gents unlocked through the night and the light on.
“A poor life it is if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”- W. H. Davies
Mavis and Dorothy, wearing coats, sit behind the driver and bicker. It has not been a good day for them. They always wear coats when they go shopping in Swindon and today it is hot, dry and dusty in the soulless drab shopping centre, all pebble and concrete wash. They mumble as well so the cause of complaint between them is unclear from three rows back where I sit, the only other passenger on the 3.45 community bus to Lechlade, a village in the Cotswold Hills. We twist our way through the inner city one way system to the industrial estates, the car component factories and semi-detached dwellings showing signs of DIY adaptations and so on to the countryside and shortly the small town of Highworth.
“See you in two weeks, PERHAPS!” says Mavis.
She alights through a bustle of school children and makes her way up the street clutching a bag of groceries without looking back. Dorothy shuffles in her seat, checks her bags and straightens her back, looking forward all the while. The community bus is filled with children’s chatter as we dip down onto the Thames flood plain by way of a dead straight Roman road bound for the edge of the Cotswold Hills and the village of Lechlade. Here Dorothy alights and children disperse. The bus pulls off and all is silent in the market square. I stand alone by the coach archway of the Swan Inn.
The muffled sound of hooves and coach wheels on the muddy Gloscester to Swindon highway gives way to the clatter of hooves and grinding steel rimed wheels on cobble as she pulls through the arch into the yard beside the stables at the back of the Inn. Passengers alight, stretching to ease their stiff joints and head for the inn’s back door, the warmth, ale and mutton pie. Blacksmith apprentices unleash the horses all oozing sweet and steam and lead them to stables for fresh tossed hay. There are calls for luggage handlers and exchanges of coin; the sweet smell of horse manure in the air. The coach is turned, the master apprentice shouting orders and a team of rested thoroughbreds is bridled up waiting; the village a place of working souls.
But not so now. A picture post card mostly where richer folk settle into renovated workers’ cottages on return from offices in Swindon, Cheltenham and Gloucester. There, to sip gin and tonics, selecting their evening’s viewing from a copy of the Radio Times surrounded by the dry air of under-floor ducted heating.
Back down the road by Halfpenny Bridge I take a pint of ale at a local by the river before my journey on foot beside the Thames to London. Under the late afternoon sun I watch teenage boys dare each other to jump from the bridge into the Thames, laughing and shouting and running up again to the bridge parapets to dare again. It’s been the same for generations, that first summer at 14 when you dared enough to make it. Then I’m up across Halfpenny Bridge, passed the disused toll office built of stone onto the side of the bridge, dropping down onto the towpath, under a dry arch, through a kissing gate and onto the wide open meadow beyond. This is Constable Country where there is an artist with easel at every hedgerow diligently copying onto canvas the quintessential Englishness of it all. The Common with Friesian cows grazing, a narrow boat roped to a grassy bank set off by the steeple of St Lawrence’s in the distance.
Lechlade is the highest navigational point on the River Thames. From here Cotswold stone went by barge to build the Colleges of Oxford, 70 kilometers down stream and even further to London for the foundations of St Paul’s Cathedral. One mile or so on and the manual lock of St Johns is being managed by the young assistant lock keeper from Rusby. He puts his back to the long wooden leavers to open the gates letting pleasure craft upstream. He is here because of a tragedy. Last week the St John’s lock keeper suffered a stroke and died just a few weeks before his retirement. The family must now vacate the keeper’s cottage, the dreams of retirement beyond reach.
Betty Abrahams sits by the lock holding a Frisbee and talking to her Jack Russell. She looks up.
“That’s a heavy pack I’ll bet, where you off to then?”
“London down the Thames” I say, deciding to sit with her for a while.
“I’m from London originally born in Bow, but I’ve spent more time here than there now.”
“So you’re a real cockney, being born within sound of the bells of Bow.”
“That’s right, where you from then?”
“Australia.”
“I’ve got a daughter in Australia near Perth, she’s got children now.”
“You must go and visit.”
Betty is quiet for a while, strokes the frizzbee, her eyes water up. There is a family rift and she knows she will never see them.
“Actually I live in Brunei at the moment, near Singapore.”
“Oh, I’ve been there, Singapore that is, in the 60’s. My husband was in the Airforce, he did his full 38 years, started as a boy soldier when he was sixteen. We lived in a …. what was it called …. a kampong place, we had a Rotwheeler for protection but people were quite friendly. I used to take the children swimming in the afternoon. People thought that was a bit odd. They didn’t go to the seaside much out there, too hot I suppose. When we came back Jack got posted to Breeze Norton near here and we settled in Highworth. I never moved again.”
Betty declined my offer of a drink at the nearby Trout Inn but gave advice on prices at the corner store. I left her with her Frizzbee and Jack Russell, climbed up the steps onto the Lechlade to Farringdon Road and passed over the long stone bridge to the Trout Inn; where, for five pounds, the publican let me pitch a tent in the back field and promised to keep the outside gents unlocked through the night and the light on.
War in The Meadows - The Thames path between Lechlade and Radcot
The route east from here begins on country lanes, then down by a line of young tall Poplars to the river’s edge. The narrow Thames endlessly twists and turns at this point making it difficult for long Narrow Boats to pass up stream. Walkers can’t cut corners either for the local farmer has erected an electrical fence to keep his cattle in or is it, I wonder, to keep the public out? The Thames Path has been an unwelcome intrusion in some parts of the countryside. Farmers, environmentalists and ramblers have dug their trenches to do battle over access.
In the cloudless sky the dull roar of engines is endless throughout the day. From RAF Breeze Norton military transport planes bound for war-ravaged Iraq climb and head east. On the ground, silent monuments of a more conventional war stand strategically along the banks in these parts. Concrete gun emplacements now covered in hawthorn and bramble mark the changing direction of the river, their ark of fire reaching south across the Thames. Built in 1940 as a last line of defence for the industrial Midlands, these concrete block emplacements and the watery Thames combined to prevent the advance of Hitler’s invasion that in the end never came.
But not all wars are so obviously intrusive to the senses. The cutting down of hedgerows to create large agri-plots is common practice here, yet who notices the loss of cover for small animals seeking refuge from preying Kestrels and Buzzards? Crop rotation that once put nitrogen into the soil to help bio-diversity is now replaced by chemical agents to enhance the productive capacity of enlarged agri-business promulgation acreage (EAPA), yet this is invisible to the naked eye. Today, Waders no longer come for winter feeding on the seasonal marshes alongside these parts of the river, but you will have to have lived long by these banks to carry such memories.
Grassland slashing for silage happens in early summer during peak breeding time for Snipe, Curlew and Lapwing. The loss of the grass habitat in May and June means their numbers have greatly reduced. And bio-chemical run-off kills crustations in the rivers and streams that form the foundation of a vital food chain that all others depend upon; yet, the water looks delightfully crystal clear. Indeed, all is a deceptively radiant green beside the Thames on this warm summer’s morning. Until that is, I climb over a wooden style and walk onto a small dyke to stand and stare at a different place.
Yellow, red, blue and purple cover the acres to a distant woodland. Buttercups, Wood Cranesbill, Salad Burnett, the Green Winged Orchid, Cuckooflower and Cowslip with a poppy or two. And also, Adders Tongue Fern in wetter parts, Meadow Saxifrage and everywhere Ragged Robin. Marble White Butterflies and an Orange Tip Butterfly or two gently move above this quilt of color. There is a rustle in the long grasses as a pair of Field Voles move to their nest by the dyke. Quick and deadly silent a shadow crosses the grasses towards them as they scuttle along. A Barn Owl, fat from a nights hunting, passes by and glides on to rest in an Oak, soon to close its eyes.
I walk on beside the meadow passing ancient drainage ditches adjoining the river just above its usual water line. When the river floods water spills down the lines and over the meadows to form temporary wetlands, making the muddy surface soft. Then the Redshank will arrive ready to extend its long bill into soft mud searching for crustations and worms. These are the traditional grazing meadows kept free of intensive farming practices by the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust. Less than 10,000ha are left across the British Isles. Robert Herrick who lived near here foretold the fate of the other meadows some 500 years ago.
THE MEADOWS
Robert Herrick
Ye have fresh and green
Ye have been fill’d with flowers,
And ye the walks have spent their hours.
You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away
The richer cowslips home.
You’ve heard them sweetly sing
And seen them in the round:
Each Virgin like a spring
With honeysuckles crown’d.
But now we see none here
Whose silv’ry feet did tread
And with dishevell’d hair
Adorn’d this smoother mead.
Like unthrifts, having spent
Your stock and needy grown
You’re left here to lament
Your poor estates, alone.
Robert Herrick
Ye have fresh and green
Ye have been fill’d with flowers,
And ye the walks have spent their hours.
You have beheld how they
With wicker arks did come
To kiss and bear away
The richer cowslips home.
You’ve heard them sweetly sing
And seen them in the round:
Each Virgin like a spring
With honeysuckles crown’d.
But now we see none here
Whose silv’ry feet did tread
And with dishevell’d hair
Adorn’d this smoother mead.
Like unthrifts, having spent
Your stock and needy grown
You’re left here to lament
Your poor estates, alone.
And so on through the late morning by the north bank past woods around Grafton Lock and then straight to Radcot where the river divides into two streams for a short while. Old Radcot Bridge, built in the 12th century, straddles the two arms by three gothic arches, one with a small bare nondescript parapet.
On an autumn night long ago a band of Elizabeth’s loyal followers pass over Radcot Bridge and set up camp. The light of a full moon sends grey silver ripples across the black waters, under the gothic arches and on to dance across a statue of the Virgin Mary. Thomas Paxton, Her Majesty’s loyal servant and a protestant, walks onto the bridge and with a single blow of his cleaver sends Mary from the parapet to lie forever in soft deep clay at the bottom of the river.
On an autumn night long ago a band of Elizabeth’s loyal followers pass over Radcot Bridge and set up camp. The light of a full moon sends grey silver ripples across the black waters, under the gothic arches and on to dance across a statue of the Virgin Mary. Thomas Paxton, Her Majesty’s loyal servant and a protestant, walks onto the bridge and with a single blow of his cleaver sends Mary from the parapet to lie forever in soft deep clay at the bottom of the river.
Photo by Bill Nichols
A Latte and a Croissant at the Oxford Railway Station
I am standing with latte in one hand and croissant in the other amidst aluminum chairs and tables at the centre of the shopping court in Oxford railway station.
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I was beginning to. Gregory sipped his latté and let his tongue roll over his lips to catch the creamy froth.
“Where you from then?” he inquires as he raises his paper cup to his neat lips again. Australia…I live in….. “Been there, done that!” Says Gregory as quick as a flash, giving a little chuckle. “My sister lives in Murray Bridge IF you know where that is.” “East of Adelaide by the Murray-Darling River.” I say licking the pastry flakes off my fingers, recognizing the game and playing along. “That’s correct, collect 50 pounds and pass go,” chuckles Gregory, “and a fine town it is too. I’ve been several times. Once thought of settling there but my home is here so to speak. Mind you, I support the Murray Bridge Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade. Help out with the fund raising wheel whenever I’m out there.” “A fine organization,” I say. “Indeed,” says Gregory. And so Gregory has found his connection with the stranger and talks on about the ins and outs of fire fighting as he understands it all; the volume of water per hose diameter per minute given a certain level of pressure and the velocity of a fire spread given a level of dry atmosphere and a breeze of ten knots and so on until I notice the time, thank him for his exacting companionship and hurry to the platform barrier. “Sit two carriages from the front, it’s a short platform at Culham and number two stops by the exit gate.” “Thanks Gregory.” I look back to acknowledge his advice but Gregory has already seconded the next waiting passenger to his table. [During the summer holidays, some years ago, I walked beside the River Thames from its source in the Cotswold Hills to the City of London. I met the 'man in the tartan tie' while waiting for the train to the outskirts of Oxford thus avoiding the walk through town. Gregory is not is real name and I have change some details to respect his privacy] [Uploaded February 2013 based on an early version from 2006] |
Bellargio beside the lake
Beside Lake Como in northern Italy, Bellargio has been the place for lovers since the tern of the century before last [uploaded February 2013]
Paris in September
Capturing the mood of Paris in late September after the summer tourists have departed and the City belongs to its residents again for a few short warm weeks before the chill of autumn sets in [uploaded February 2013]