Lasting

The summer has made a last-gasp effort, a last hurrah, last rites, last trump, with a handful of hot and sunny days – just as a lot of people were beginning to eye up the thermostat on their heating system or at least hunt out the blankets. Hurrahs have been thin on the ground these past few weeks, at least in the wider world, given the retreat from, and betrayal of, Afghanistan; and then the latest phase in the war against women, perpetrated in Texas and ratified by a Supreme Court stacked with anti-choice zealots.

In the (slightly) smaller world of Ford Madox Ford studies, research moves on with the huge task of editing his letters, generally inch by inch through dense thickets, a process punctuated by occasional short sprints over unexpectedly open ground. And the new issue of Last Post, the Ford journal, has emerged, looking very good and ecologically sound, and now sent out to all subscribing members.

In that other world, of varying size, sometimes circumscribed, sometime dizzyingly limitless, a world of bodies, minds, cats, dreams, food, wine, books and walks—that is, home life in the twenty-first century—the blackberry season has come and (almost) gone. We found several excellent sites very close to us: parks, verges, pathways have been cut back much less this year and plant life—including the blackberries—has flourished, helped too by the odd weather that has dominated so much of our summer, rain and sun locked in an endless dance, a close embrace, taking turns to dominate a dozen times in a day.

A lot of supermarket shelves are currently empty and more emptiness is apparently on the way—largely courtesy of Brexit, less the gift that keeps on giving than the rift that keeps on riving—so I find I have no objection whatsoever to free food, literally growing on trees (or bushes), fruit to be served up hot in pies and crumbles or bagged up in the freezer for later rainy days.

As for the Ford letters project, I only have a few dozen books to reread, a few hundred letters to transcribe and a few thousand annotations to make. When you retire from full-time work, you need something to fill the days.