WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

Nicola Anderson A soft rain falls in Dudley Road. The children on the silver climbing frames and the vertigo-inducing, green-painted roundabout run to their homes for shelter as their mums call them to come in out of the rain. For me there is no call. My mother works with my dad in their hairdressing business and I am a latchkey kid. At five years old, I am left to roam where I please over the fields to Fen Ditton and the River Cam where the University boat crews practise. In a vegetated backwater, a mouldering houseboat serves out its final days, the rank odours of damp wood, decaying water weeds and the malodorous rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulphide emanate from the anaerobic sludge, competing for ascendency in my nostrils. Paint peeling and wood crumbling, as the saprophytic bugs and fungi ravage the skeleton of this structure of a past, where, perhaps in the 1930s, the elite   held their cocktail parties, cheering on their favourite boat crew, while the less well-off looked...

  Illustration Barbara Grafton I am skilled with colour. I can hold a colour in my mind’s eye and locate it on a paint chart; or see a colour and mix it precisely in paint. The landscapes that formed my perception of the world, my preferences, began with colour. This is almost certainly a false memory, as I would have been well under two years old, but I recall staring up at intense blue skies and wisps of white clouds while lying swaddled in the Silver Cross pram that carried me and, in their turn, my three younger siblings. I can even remember the dark edge of the hood, and the broderie anglaise border on the blanket. My mother would park the pram outside in all seasons, so fledgling’s down, summer pollen, strands of airborne spider silk, and the last autumnal leaves and even feathery flakes of snow would drift across me. Before I could crawl, I was drawn to the scent, colour and texture of grass and flower borders, to stone and moss, bark and brick. My landscape was a world ...

  I lay in my room listening, excitement fizzing like popping candy in my veins. My parents had won £300,000 on the pools. Thoughts of new clothes, exotic holidays, indeed any holiday, ran through my mind as I strained my ears to listen to my mother's urgent words. 'We can get out of this flat Doug, give Sadie a good start in life. She's developing early, eleven years old and the boys are already sniffing around. I don't want her to end up like Maureen's girl, up the duff at thirteen.' 'Sadie's a good girl. I was going to give up work,' replied my Dad. 'Give up work? What would you do all day? No. Maybe Sadie is a good girl now, but I can see she is changing. We need to do something. We can afford to move to a good area. One with nice kids and respectable, well-brought-up boys. A place in the country. She's always wanted a dog we could get her one as a sweetener.' So, six months later in the summer holidays, instead of lazing on...

  Autumn Equinox. Apparently. Yesterday the phrase kept being spouted on the radio, on the television and smiling journalists seemed to think it was laden with special meaning for everyone. Magical. Mystical. A mystery, certainly, why they kept repeating it over and over. I’ve felt the light lowering and clawing back its golds and ambers to throw somewhere else needing warmth and hope. As it pulls back, the elements around me seem to be reaching for just one more moment of comfort; the bricks in the garden walls glow and mottled charcoal shadows of leaves and branches paint themselves on the mosaic canvas of reds, browns and creams. A ring-collar dove lands with a flap and a flutter and dances along the top of this terracotta stage. A little fawn two-note Fred Astaire with his eye on the acid-red berries of the rowan tree that is showing off its fruit in the early morning glow. Will Fred never learn a third note? I’m standing still, locked down by the stillness of the air. No...

  Photo credit: Yuri Fadeev I’m six or seven, climbing trees in my garden with my best friend. We’re spoilt for choice, with apple trees, plum, cooking apple, and pear. The tied cottage that comes with my father’s farming job is nothing short of idyllic and belies the material poverty we live in. We are not nature poor, but I’m often reminded that money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s a hot day; we both wear shorts and t-shirts. The difficulty of rating each tree is varied and each of us has differing climbing capabilities. I am the youngest of three, and when I’m with my elder siblings I can only lay claim to climb the cooking apple tree. Why? According to them, they are more adept than me. Plus, with its low, wide branches, in some places it’s even easier to climb than a ladder . I’m not allowed to attempt their trees. The pear trees require much more skill, with the first branches at head height. This requires grasping a branch with both hands, followed by some fancy leg swin...

' Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are  currants   in  the  cake  and here is one of them .'  Nancy   Mitford   Part-way down our garden lies a mass burial of eight cattle and six horses - adult, immature, neonatal and unborn - mostly arranged nose-to-tail. They were discovered in a ditch during the archaeological dig prior to the building of our house on the “high lands” of the Fen. They have been radiocarbon-dated to 40 to 230 AD, the very Late Iron Age to mid-Roman period. It is speculated that their burial represents a significant event in the lives of the ancient Fenland people, possibly as a votive offering or sacrifice, but no close parallels have been discovered anywhere else in the country. The burial site and its mysteries are shrouded once more in clay. Maybe from the air we could detect the line of the ditch, but from ground-level there are no signs. To reach the burial site, I pass beds of shrubs, roses, honeysuckle...

  It’s a warm afternoon for November.   Dad and I have motored in his black Austin 10 close to the river at Alwalton. We lock the car and slide down a muddy path to a backwater on the Nene near a broken lock gate.   A grey heron, which we hadn’t seen, surprises us as it springs from its fishing spot – it lets out its call which sounds like ‘Frank’ as its long, wide wings take it down river to a new place to stand and wait with pointed, stabbing bill. Underfoot at the river’s edge are trampled reeds which give a little at each step as the mud beneath moves.   Dad thinks this is a good spot to test out the new spinning tackle I got for my 12 th birthday. Pike will be lurking under the overhanging reeds, he says, waiting for small fish to pass then lunge with sharp-toothed jaws for their feed. The smell of the reeds and river fills my nostrils – I can smell the fish. Dad helps me assemble the rod and attach the reel and line. The reel smells of the oil I’ve used to m...