Section:GDN 1J PaGe:7 Edition Date:190808 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 7/8/2019 17:51 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
Thursday 8 August 2019 The Guardian •
7
At dusk, the campsite owner popped
his head into the washing-up hut to
ask me to come outside. He wanted
me to see swooping dots in the sky, a
fl ight of swallows, maybe a hundred
strong, preparing to roost. There
had been more than 2,000 swallows
here a couple of years ago; he
attributed their decline to Chinese
mist nets around the Mediterranean,
particularly in north Africa, where
millions of migrant birds have been
trapped to be eaten.
I thought of Sir Philip Sidney’s
1590 poem The Countess of
Pembroke’s Arcadia when he talks
about man’s cruelty to animals :
“Worst fell to smallest birds [...] At
length for glutton taste he did kill
them; / At last for sport their silly
lives did spill.” Hundreds of years
later, the situation is even more
desperate for migrating birds.
Chaucer (in The Parliament
of Fowls) called the swallow a
murderer of “the fowles small that
maken hony of fl owres fresshe of
hewe ”, ie bees , and there were both
swallows and bees fl ying over the
coastal footpath the following day- but not as many as there should be.
Rounding on to the headland
revealed a patch of fl owers: lilac
thistle, pink bramble and purple
knapweed, supporting a circus of
fl ying butterfl ies: an embarkation
of painted ladies, a creaking of
gatekeepers, a mowing of meadow-
browns. I haven’t seen a gathering
of so many butterfl ies in one place
for decades and, although it couldn’t
counteract the horror story of
migrating birds caught in nets, it was
a joyous fl utter of the heart.
That evening as darkness fell into
Traeth Lligwy (Lligwy Bay), so the
swallows dropped in clans into the
reeds of the Afon Lligwy estuary.
Before sleep – if that’s what they
do, do they dream? – the swallows
fi lled the quietly spoken reedbeds
with a hushed twittering that, far
from expressing “silly lives”, held a
language of community wisdom, the
swallow story in which each voice
spoke as one, and each one was
known to the other.
Now Lammas has passed the
birds were talking themselves out
of here, making plans for navigation
in convoys, the lodestones in their
heads swinging south, towards
Africa, towards the mist nets.
Paul Evans - It was a spokesman for the Canal
& River Trust who expressed a
view on the possible timing of
reconstruction work on a damaged
Derbyshire dam, not the Environment
Agency as we said ( Whaley Bridge
residents are told dam could take
years to fi x as they start to return
home , 7 August, page 9).
Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
[email protected] or The readers’ editor,
Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU; alternatively
call 020 3353 4736 from 10am to 1pm Monday to FridayLike Jane Nielsen ( Jacket required ,
G2, 6 August), I fi rst encountered
Spudulike in Edinburgh. But she
missed out on a very Scottish fi lling- haggis and neeps , the perfect
combination.
Cherry Weston
Wolverhampton - I live at Saltburn-by-the-Sea on the
Yorkshire coast, south of Newbiggin,
and witness spectacular sunrises and
sunsets, obviously not in exactly the
same position but nevertheless over
the sea ( Letters , 6 August).
Jane Burke
Saltburn-by-the-Sea, North Yorkshire - Our addition to Edward Helmore’s
list of points on the Rolling Stones
timeline that “it would be great to be
transported back to” ( S tones give ever
more satisfaction , 7 August): Eel Pie
Island, Twickenham, 1963, where the
Rolling Stones played and we met.
Just as Mick, Keith and Charlie are still
together, so are we.
Jeane and David Lepper
Brighton - Surely tucking your socks over
long trousers and gaiters as “belt
and braces ” is one anti-tick tactic
that has not been ticked off yet
( Letters , 5 August)?
Elaine Steane
Oxford - I agree with Geoff Lavender
( Letters , 5 August) that My Funny
Valentine merits a place in the list of
Miles Davis’s 10 greatest albums. I
was equally surprised by the omission
of Davis’s sublime improvised
soundtrack to Louis Malle’s fi lm
Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud (1958).
Mike Pender
Cardiff - I fi nd a glass of milk far more
eff ective ( The trouble with antacids ,
5 August).
Doug Vangen
West Malling, Kent - Beautiful front page (Toni Morrison
1931 -2019, 7 August). Thank you.
Anne Chalmers
Erith, Kent
Every year the National Eisteddfod
of Wales is held in the fi rst week of
August. Every year the “national ”
newspapers are oblivious to its
existence. This is the largest
and oldest cultural festival in
Europe, with very high standards
in choral, instrumental and
singing performances. The literary
competitions in poetry and drama,
and the visual arts and science
exhibitions, are among the best in
the “United” Kingdom, yet there is
never any mention of any of this.
Highly talented young people
take part in the Eisteddfod, but their
abilities are ignored – and all because
it is in Welsh and in Wales. There
is no comparison between these
high standards and the standards
at Glastonbury, for example, and
yet it is the latter that is given all of
the publicity.
James Griffi ths
Bangor, GwyneddEstablished 1906Country diary
Traeth Lligwy,
Anglesey
Strategies for nuclear
weapons and waste
A special Scottish
baked potato recipe
Eisteddfod leaves
Glasto in the shade
As we mark the 74th anniversary of
the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, the world is at a
dangerous juncture ( Editorial , 2
August). Abandonment of the INF
treaty alongside President Trump’s
reckless withdrawal of the US from
the Iran nuclear deal only increases
the likelihood of a devastating nuclear
arms race. It suggests nothing has
been learned from the horror of those
attacks 74 years ago, the hundreds
of thousands of lives lost and many
more blighted.
Whil e nuclear bombs exist there is
always the risk of another Hiroshima
or another Nagasaki. It is essential
that Europe does not become the
arena for a build-up of nuclear
weapons and that the UK government
refuses to host intermediate range
missiles. Our goal must be a world
free of nuclear weapons.
Catherine West MP
Hornsey & Wood Green
- John Vidal off ers an answer to the
question in your headline ( What
should we do with radioactive nuclear
waste? , theguardian.com, 1 August)
that propagates, unchallenged,
the myth that indefi nite storage of
radioactive wastes is justifi able,
perchance that better options than
geological disposal may materialise.
To do so would be to pass on to the
next generation the burden and cost
of indefi nitely securing, monitoring
and re packaging these wastes,
which is profoundly unethical and
unsustainable. Siting a UK geological
disposal facility will, rightly,
progress at the pace comfortable for
potential host communities, which
may take decades. Nevertheless,
work will continue apace in our
universities, industries, regulators
and government to develop the
evidence that will assure the safety
of geological disposal. I t is surely
time to bury the Micawber principle
that an alternative will simply turn
up if we wait long enough.
Professor Neil Hyatt
Department of materials science and
engineering, University of Sheffi eld
[email protected]
@guardianlettersTwitter: @gdncountrydiary
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