This photograph is all about greys and greens and symmetry. I was going to say it was «duochrome» – like monochrome, only two colours – but I’m not sure the word is ever used in this way. When I check, it mostly seems to come up in the context of those red-green eye-test images they have in opticians. In any case I’ve just realised there’s some blue in the photograph.
The ferns are unusual ground cover in a forest. They are found in deciduous woods hereabouts – not just among the conifers. In photo descriptions I use the word «hereabouts» a lot. It seems more economical than «around here». That’s all I can say. I guess I like the sound of it too.
Hereabouts is a place called Green Hill, to the west-northwest of Fernhurst, Sussex. Why must I be so precise about it? Because I did a degree in physics I suppose. I sometimes make a conscious effort to be less precise. For example I thought of saying «2 km WNW» but I resisted and censored that. This is not what an artist does. The artist blurs his mind. Or the real artist doesn’t have to blur her mind because it is already blurred. It’s fake ones like me who have to deliberately unlearn precision.
The internet tells me that Lord Haw-Haw spent his honeymoon in Fernhurst and von Ribbentrop intended to live in Fernhurst when Germany won the war.
And why do I use guillemets instead of quotation marks? I don’t like the latter. They stick up awkwardly and make my page look untidy. I don’t like punctuation. If I was a bit more courageous I’d get rid of all apostrophes for contractions and possessives. I’ve already cut down on commas. I like uncluttered text.
Actually I didn’t use to like forests either.
There were two Green Hills in my childhood. One was near where I lived, and scarcely a hill at all. The ground rose a bit. It was just a slightly higher bit of farmland. I won’t say how many metres it rose to – or look at the map – because that would be the scientist coming out again. As for the other one, we used to sing about it in morning assemblies.
There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.
Even then I didn’t see how it could really be green – being in Palestine. And why «without a city wall»? You wouldn’t expect a green hill to have a city wall, would you? And yes, I do understand what the verse means now – lol.
And they never explained the theology to us. We were in a Church of England primary school but they never explained how Christianity worked. Why did Christ have to die to «save us all». It never made any sense and nobody explained it – not even in religious education lessons. I tell a lie – they did sort-of explain it – but they just came out with hackneyed words that they’d heard somebody else say. The words were in a closed system and didn’t explain anything outside that system.
Why did God set up the universe in such a way that somebody else had to come along later and put it right? Why couldn’t he have set it up better in the first place or just waved a magic wand to put it right, if necessary? Never explained. And it wasn’t just because we were children and wouldn’t have understood. I’ve never heard any churchman explain it satisfactorily in my adult life either. Of course I have my own ideas about who or what Christ was – ones that I’ve worked out for myself – but why should I have to do that work? It wasn’t my idea in the first place. Those who are responsible for the story need to explain it.
So why didn’t I use to like forests? Maybe it’s because I grew up hiking on bare northern hills. I thought the whole point was to be able to see a long way – to get a view, and photograph it. Yet distant views rarely make good photographs anyway. Even in the Alps the valley photos are often better than those taken from the summit of the Klein Matterhorn, or wherever. In the sixties my brother and I used to black out our front room and project our colour slides onto a screen. They were mostly views, and my mother would complain that there weren’t any people in them. Why don’t you take photographs of people? she would say. She was a people person, and that’s what she wanted to see. But the only people we saw were our fellow hikers or complete strangers. Would that have satisfied her need for people?
People. People wrote articles and I read them. They told me that our northern hills used to be wooded and that sheep had denuded and wrecked them. And I took all that on board and to heart, from those people. So now I’m the opposite. I’m not sure I really like bare landscapes – unless they’re meant to be bare, like deserts. I’ve turned 180 degrees. Is that too technical? At least I didn’t say «pi radians», like some nerd trying to be funny on The Big Bang Theory.
Still – conifers – not sure about that. Are they native? Don’t think so. Sucks his teeth. Conifers are great in Scandinavia – but in England, in regimented rows? Nah. They put me in mind of that Edward Hopper painting with the gas station and the fir trees. Terrifyingly un-English, but compelling and surreal.