Driving to Aberdeen on Thursday through gales and rain and surface water pounded into opaquely fluid airborne spray by anything travelling on tyres, I was listening to Radio 4. That station is an oasis of sanity, a source of solace, a conservator of culture, an always fulfilled promise of intellectual pleasure, and that without which some of us would find the world of airwaves bereft of one of our life's essentials.
I listened to Afternoon Reading: The Poet's Year, read by the Welsh National Poet Gillian Clarke, and adapted from her wonderful book, At The Source. I've just discovered Gillian Clarke's work. The reading was exquisite – from her Journal of the turn of the year, a description of harvesting honey and observing with closely attendant affection and respect for the livingness of the countryside.
In complete contrast to the darkness of a late winter's night, buffeting gales and trillions of driven rain pellets all homing in on my windscreen, I listened to a poet reading the prose poem account of her summer. The description of honey harvest was contemplative, and quietly, trustfully, reverent of the cost in millions of bee-flights to achieve the 36 lbs of amber honey lovingly potted, sealed and stored. Now where else in all the wide world would I have been lifted from the concentrated misery of such a night drive in appalling weather, to that other place of the imagination, than in a car with Radio Four playing? Just going to listen again on IPlayer to all three episodes.
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