Section:GDN 1J PaGe:7 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 18:59 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Guardian •
7
The sun had barely risen above the
roof tops and already the fl owers on
the common limes beside Waskerley
beck fi lled the air with a fragrance
that hinted of lily of the valley. I
heard a low-pitched hum, the sound
of countless bees, wasps, fl ies and
hoverfl ies feeding on their nectar.
In late July, when in full bloom, lime
trees, also known as lindens, can
be identifi ed with eyes closed: just
take a deep breath and listen. It’s not
only insects that fi nd lime blossom
palatable. In his journal entry for 25
July 1790 the parson-naturalist Gilbert
White, learning that the French found
lime blossom tea soothing for coughs,
hoarseness and fever, described
making his own brew and fi nding
it “soft, well fl avoured, pleasant,
saccharine julep, in taste much
resembling the juice of liquorice”.
Only the appearance of
common lime, Tilia x europaea, a
hybrid between large-leaved and
small-leaved limes, is a sensory
disappointment. Ugly burrs on the
lower trunk produce an unruly
shrubbery of sprouts and suckers
that need to be hacked back annually.
These cuttings root so easily that vast
numbers of the hybrid, rather than its
better-looking parent species, have
been propagated for urban roadside
planting, destined to be butchered
and eventually pollarded when their
fast-growing, upright limbs outgrow
their urban confi nement.
Five minutes’ walk from the
Waskerley beck’s hybrid limes,
beside the parish church of
St Mary and St Stephen, there is
a magnifi cent, ancient specimen
of the parental small-leaved lime
dominating the churchyard.
Tilia cordata is a rare native tree in
Durham, at the limit of its natural
climate range, setting viable seed
only in the hottest summers. Today
it was fl owering to perfection, tassels
of fl owers held above the foliage,
giving its domed crown a golden
glow. Here, among the tombstones,
it has had time and space to live life
to the full, to realise its natural size
and shape, protected from browsing
animals so that the tips of its arching
limbs almost touch the ground. Few
trees are so fortunate. The perfect
place to sit, in fragrant, cool shade,
while bees worked in its canopy
overhead, on what turned out to
be the hottest July day on record.
Phil Gates- A headline and picture credit
named the wrong gallery as
the recipient of Richard Parkes
Bonington’s View on the River
Seine – Morning. As the story itself
made clear, the painting has entered
the National Gallery’s collection
( National Portrait Gallery acquires
rare landscape by Bonington ,
6 August, page 13).
Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
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excluding public holidays. The Guardian’s policy is to correct
signifi cant errors as soon as possible. For more information
on the readers’ editor’s offi ce and the Guardian editorial
code, see gu.com/readers-editor. Find contacts for other
Guardian departments and staff at gu.com/help/contact-usWe very much agree with Elaine
Herbert ( Retired and blamed for
all society’s ills , Letters, 2 August).
At 76 and 73 we are still caring for our
adopted children with special needs:
three with Down’s syndrome, cerebal
palsy and emanu el syndrome; the
other two also with complex health
needs. Over the years we have saved
the country millions of pounds
in residential care and we are not
alone in doing this. Sorry, we will
accept no blame for the ills of society
infl icted by recent governments.
Lindsey and Dave Wharam
Cromer, Norfolk- It is remotely conceivable that
even I might vote for Boris Johns on
if he can work out a way to get Steve
Smith out ( Ashes turmoil , 6 August).
Chris Entwistle
Tiptree, Essex - As a resident of Whaley Bridge, I
have taken particular interest in the
quantity of water being pumped out
of the reservoir. ITN reported the
number of litres; the BBC reported
in gallons. Has Jacob Rees-Mogg got
at our national broadcaster?
Bernard Brownsword
Whaley Bridge, Derbyshire - Overheard on the local fi ve-a-side
football area as a group of small
children organised their kickabout:
“I’ll be goalie”; “OK, I’ll be VAR”.
Michael Smethers
Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire - I can’t be the only Guardian
reader thinking that Dominic
Cummings is the very spit of Gary
Trudeau’s Duke. Just a little less
principled, perhaps?
Martin Brayne
High Peak, Derbyshire - Whitby in June, you can see
the sunrise and sunset over the
North Sea ( Letters , 5 August).
Philip Jepson
Yo rk
I take issue with the statement by
Mike Hopwood, who claims that
visitors found the Sutton Hoo
experience underwhelming ( Lumps
in a grassy fi eld transformed into
‘immersive’ tour of riches dug up at
Sutton Hoo , 5 August).
When the site opened in 2002, I
was the education offi cer, and such
were the numbers that visitors
had to be turned away. The air of
excitement as visitors were able to
look down into a replica of the boat,
its burial chamber and contents was
palpable. The Sutton Hoo Society
provided excellent tours of the
burial mounds and painted vivid
word pictures of the discovery of
the ship. The many school groups
who paid return visits to Sutton Hoo
year on year would certainly not
have done so had they found the
site underwhelming.
Furthermore, Annie Tranmer
donated the site to the National
Trust in 1998, not 1968 as your
report said. So Mike Hopwood’s
“subsequent decades” boils down
to less than two decades.
Nan Waterfall
Woodbridge, Suff olkEstablished 1906Country diary
Wol sin gham ,
County Durham
Getting it so wrong
over the right to die
Rees-Mogg and the
valley of the dammed
Who says Sutton
Hoo site was dull?
As a terminally ill person facing a
very distressing death even with
good palliative care, I take the
greatest exception to Professor
Keown’s letter ( No need to change
assisted dying laws , 5 August).
His excessive use of inverted
commas renders the tone of his
letter so patronising that it verges
on insulting. “Terminally ill” and
“incurable” are not matters of
opinion, but simple medical fact.
He poses a number of questions
about a possible extension of
assisted dying to other categories
of suff ering, to which the answer
surely must be : why not? Provided
strict legal safeguards are in place
and carefully adhered to, assisted
dying is such an obvious solution
that it must surely come into law
sooner or later. For myself, the
sooner the better.
Dr Brigid Purcell
Norwich
- Professor Keown makes valid
points about the illogicality of
stating that choosing how we die
is a fundamental right, but then
restricting it to a small group of the
terminally ill/incurably suff ering.
He asks why those suff ering but
unable to ask for death should be
excluded, as well as other groups
who feel their lives are unbearable.
I found myself agreeing until I
reached the end of his letter and
found that he believed that this
inconsistency was a reason for
refusing assisted dying to anyone.
I struggle to understand why we
are comfortable with anyone dying,
or indeed living, in unendurable
pain, mental or physical, when
we could assist them to end it.
If Professor Keown is right that the
safeguards in place are not as robust
as they need to be, is that not where
we should direct our attention,
rather than simply abandoning
these people to their suff ering,
including those who are loudly and
desperately pleading for our help?
Jill Wallis
Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire
[email protected]
@guardianlettersTwitter: @gdncountrydiary
ILLUSTRATION: CLIFFORD HARPERCorrections and
clarifi cationsIn your article ( Prince says
‘unconscious bias’ aff ects attitudes
towards race , 31 July), Jane Goodall
is quoted as saying: “Especially if
you get little kids together, there’ s
no diff erence. They don’t notice,
‘My skin’s white, mine’s black’, until
somebody tells them.” Evidence over
50 years shows that children by the
age of three can recognise diff erent
skin colours in the same way they
can distinguish between red and
yellow balls. But diff erences in skin
colours (or red and yellow balls) may
not necessarily be something to be
commented on so it may appear that
they are not “noticed”. But not being
“noticed” and not “recognising” are
diff erent concepts. So it is not about
somebody telling children that they
recognise diff erent skin colours.
They recognise them like everyone
else does. It is only when the attitudes
surrounding children place negative
values on some skin colours that
children may really “notice” them.
Where these values impinge on their
own developing attitudes they may
refl ect them and begin the process of
learning to be racially prejudiced. If we
as a society, however unwittingly, do
not understand this we may fail to take
the action necessary to enable young
children to learn positive attitudes
to diff erences, before any negative
attitudes become entrenched. Taking
no action makes it possible for racism
to continue to be part of the system.
Jane Lane
Reading, BerkshireToddlers recognise
skin colours too
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