Went for a windy walk before work. The canal has changed since I was last here, when it was still early summer and the brambles were full of fat ripe blackberries. Now the few berries left are mostly shriveled, but there are still a few pink flowers of Himalayan balsam tangled on the banks. I don’t know how to describe their scent, so sweet it’s almost sickly. Burnt marshmallows is my best description, but it’s not quite right.
I pass the moored boats, checking under the overhanging branches where the heron used to hide, but he’s not there today. I see two moorhens and a baby, big as his parents now, but still fluffy, his black feathers grey spiked, like wire on a brush. I go past the lock, the bottom gates open so a steady rush of water trickles out. On the other bank there are tall willows, and as I stop to watch the wind ruffle them three swans round the corner, two parents, a cygnet fully grown but still grey. They start to flap, noisy, honking, wings beating the water, feet trailing just above it as they take off. Their white wings are so powerful, so loud. They take flight, disappearing down the river, but the cygnet hasn’t got the hang of it yet, doesn’t quite manage to take off. They are gone and he stays, alone, swimming along the black canal corridor calling for his family.
To my left there is a grassy area stretching toward a lake, and I cross it to stand on the bank. The clouds are dark and dramatic and a skein of geese flap across the sky, landing on the wind ruffled water. I turn back, toward the car, toward work. Everything rustles around me and I notice, before I drive away, that the underside of the leaves on a sycamore maple are tinted purple, bruised lilac, as they ripple in the wind.
Bonnie Radcliffe 