COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
In the shade by the Leo Hotel on Vafe Street in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Patrick Comerford
Summer is gone, autumn has arrived, and we are heading to winter.
According to the way meteorologists measure out the seasons, summer ends on 31 August and autumn begins on 1 September.
For many, this has been a long hot summer. There have been strong summer fires throughout Greece, including fires that have threatened many parts of Athens and Crete that I know.
The Season of Creation, initiated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate 35 years ago, begins on 1 September, which is also the first day in the new church year in the Orthodox Calendar. Those summer fires in Greece this year are a sharp reminder of the consequences of climate change for all of us. and the need not merely for remedial action but for radical decision-making.
But, before summer becomes a distant memory, I am looking back on some memories of Greece this year, happy to have been was back in Crete shortly before summer began, after an absence of over two years.
It was a long absence, forced mainly by the stroke I had early in 2022 and the medical treatment I received for months after.
It was all too short a visit, but I stayed in Rethymnon, which I have known since the mid 1980s, and I visited friends and places I know in Platanias, Tsesmes, Panormos, Iraklion, Piskopianó and Koutouloufári.
Over almost 40 years, Rethymnon has become like a second home to me in Greece. I have grown accustomed to its side streets, its sounds and its smells, the sea and the sand, and the ways of its people.
During the Covid lockdown, I put together a number of thematic ‘virtual tours’ of places I had visited in the past and hoped to return to.
Now, this afternoon, as I look back on memories of that short visit this year, I have selected some of my memories of the colourful narrow streets in Rethymnon and look forward to another visit once winter has passed.
In a narrow street off Plateía Mikrasiaton or Asia Minor Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
In narrow Emmanoil Vernardou street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
A playful but fading overhanging sign (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Night time and shadows on Souliou Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
An archway leads from Tsouderoun Street into Kornarou Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Summer colours on Tsouderoun Street, where I stayed two years in a row (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Colourful steps off Chimaras street, beside the Fortezza (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Summer shading on Xanthoudidou street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
A glimpse of Souliou Street from Arkadiou Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Summer colours in the narrow passageway filled with restaurants facing Eleftheríou Venizélou and the seafront in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Nikiforou Foka is a long and narrow street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Kalliophs Gioulounta beside Myli Restaurant leads to Pavlos Beach at Platanias, east of Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
A bend on the street named after Patriarch Gregory who was martyred in Constantinople on Easter Day 1821 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Aghiou Georgíou (Saint George) is a narrow street off Patriarch Gregory street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
A glimpse of the minaret of the Nerantze mosque through narrow Trikoupi street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
The Hotel Byzantine, one of the oldest hotels in Rethymnon, is close to the Porta Guora or old Venetian gate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Narrow Vosporou street takes its name from the Bosphorus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
A glimpse of Rethymnon Cathedral through Kapsali street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
On the corner of Xanthoudidou street and Radamathios street in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
The door closes on another summer in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024; click on images for full screen viewing)
Autumn colours in the fields beside the Rectory Garden in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018; click on image for full-screen view)
Patrick Comerford
The Autumn colours are to be seen all around me this week.
The green and golden field beside the Rectory in Askeaton show the signs of a second cutting of grass this autumn, the blackberries are ripening in clusters on the brambles against the walls behind the Rectory garden, and there is a last burst of red autumn roses outside the rectory kitchen.
There was a time when I felt morose about autumn, the loss of summer sunshine and the impending arrival of winter, with its late mornings, early evenings, the cold, the frost and the snow.
I need direct sunlight, and often work at the kitchen or dining room table, looking out onto the rectory garden, and for these past few days the rectory garden has been filled with the hues of autumn leaves, so that I know now that the colours of autumn have their own beauty.
The song ‘Autumn Leaves’ was originally written in 1945 as the French song ‘Les Feuilles mortes’ (‘The Dead Leaves’), with music by the Hungarian-French composer Joseph Kosma and lyrics by the French poet Jacques Prévert that evoke images of the dead leaves falling in autumn.
The Italian-born French singer Yves Montand introduced the song ‘Les Feuilles Mortes,’ with its heart-breaking lyrics in Marcel Carné’s film Les Portes De La Nuit (1946), a gloomy urban drama set in Paris in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
The film was a commercial failure, but it was one of the many films that inspired French ‘poetic realism,’ a genre that in turn inspired the American film noir movement.
The American songwriter Johnny Mercer wrote English lyrics for the tune in 1949, changing the original French title to ‘Autumn Leaves.’ Mercer’s words are not a translation of Prévert’s poem, but he uses a similar image of dead leaves to describe memories of love.
This song was first recorded by Jo Stafford, and Édith Piaf sang ‘Les Feuilles Mortes’ with an English verse in 1950 on The Big Show. Later versions were recorded by Bing Crosby, Artie Shaw and Paul Weston.
Mercer’s song became a hit for Nat King Cole in 1956, and inspired the title of the film Autumn Leaves (1956), starring Joan Crawford and Cliff Robertson. The film tells the story of a woman who marries a younger man with psychiatric problems brought on by his former wife’s affair with his father.
However, the title Autumn Leaves has no apparent connection with the storyline, other than sharing a vague melancholic tone. The film’s original title was The Way We Are, but this was changed to Autumn Leaves to capitalise on the success of the song ‘Autumn Leaves,’ which Nat King Cole sings over the film’s title sequence.
The song ‘Feuilles Mortes’ was also referred to by Ian Fleming that year in his James Bond novel Diamonds are Forever (1956).
Autumn roses and leaves in the Rectory Garden in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
The song has been a favourite among jazz musicians, including Miles Davis, and has been recorded by many artists, including Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and – most poignantly, shortly before her death – Eva Cassidy.
The lyrics by Prévert (‘the north wind takes them / into the cold night of oblivion’) and Mercer (and ‘soon I’ll hear old winter’s song’) stoically accept the end of love, the end of autumn, and the end of life.
But, while Autumn may turn to Winter in the weeks to come, winter brings its own beauty and blessings, and it is followed by the sunshine of spring and summer.
The blackberries ripening against the wall of the Rectory Garden in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
I went for a walk through the fields beside the rectory to take in those autumn colours yesterday. Meanwhile, the blackberries are ripening along the garden wall and must be picked before Saturday, Saint Michael’s Day [29 September], according to Irish tradition.
The red leaves are already beginning to fall from the autumn roses, meaning the dead heads need to be trimmed soon so the spring roses can grow fully.
The falling leaves drift by my window
The falling leaves of red and gold
I see your lips the summer kisses
The sunburned hands I used to hold
Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
Since you went away the days grow long
And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall
I miss you most of all my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall.
Autumn colours in the Rectory Garden in Askeaton this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Patrick Comerford
As I go for my afternoon walks around Askeaton or in the fields behind the rectory gardens, I notice since the heavy rain last weekend that the trees are now turning to autumn colours, the skies are grey for a considerable part of the day, and already the evenings are beginning to close in.
Earlier today, at lunchtime, I heard Ronan Collins on RTÉ play ‘Autumn Almanac’ and although this was a hit for the Kinks back in 1967, it seemed so appropriate on an autumn afternoon.
There are some songs remain with me despite the passing of the decades, and even half a century later I found myself singing along to the lyrics of ‘Autumn Almanac,’ remembering all the words, and associating it with so many places I knew in the years immediately after this was a hit.
For people of my generation, the 1960s are still recalled with more than a twinkle. For me, 1969 was the year I finished school, and if 1968 was the year of revolution, then 1967 gave us ‘the Summer of Love.’
I can recall how much fun I got from the songs of the Kinks in my late teens in the late 1960s, at school, and then as I set out on the road to become a journalist, making freelance contributions to the Lichfield Mercury and using Lichfield as a base as I hitch-hiked across England before joining the staff of the Wexford People.
Morning lights on a stroll along Beacon Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
‘Autumn Almanac’ still sounds so English that this afternoon it instantly brought back all those memories.
The song was written by Ray Davies and recorded by the Kinks in 1967. Some writers have placed this and other songs by Davies in the pastoral-Romantic tradition of the poetry of Wordsworth, among others.
The years 1964-1967 marked the most successful period for the Kinks. Ray Davies became something of a social commentator, with his observations on Swinging London in ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion,’ the urban environment in ‘Waterloo Sunset,’ the impact of Harold Wilson’s taxation policies on the rich in ‘Sunny Afternoon,’ and his description of traditional working-class lifestyles in ‘Autumn Almanac.’
His songs from that period are so English, that Ray Davies performed ‘Waterloo Station’ at the closing ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics, describing it as his love letter to the city.
Ray Davies later said Autumn Almanac’ was inspired by a local hunchbacked gardener in Muswell Hill, where he grew up in North London. It was a big success in the UK, reaching No 3 on the singles chart, but in the US it failed to reach the Billboard Hot 100.
‘Autumn Almanac’ captures perfectly working-class English life in the autumn in the late 1960s: tending the garden, never moving away too far from where you grew up, holidays in Blackpool, meeting your friends in the pub on a rainy Friday evening, enjoying football on a Saturday afternoon, roast beef on Sundays, tea and toasted buttered currant buns … and bemoaning the fact that we never had a proper summer this year.
As I heard those words, ‘This is my street, and I’m never going to leave it,’ I instantly found myself transported back to Beacon Street, my favourite street in Lichfield. But I moved on, and I think the singer is saying that everyone who hears his song needs to move on too.
And this evening, as I remember my holidays in Greece this summer, I also know that ‘tea and toasted, buttered currant buns can’t compensate for lack of sun.’
From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar
When the dawn begins to crack,
It’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yellow
So I sweep them in my sack,
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
Friday evenings, people get together
Hiding from the weather,
Tea and toasted buttered currant buns,
Can’t compensate for lack of sun
Because the summer’s all gone
La la la la, oh my poor rheumatic back
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
I like my football on a Saturday
Roast beef on Sundays, all right
I go to Blackpool for my holidays
Sit in the open sunlight
This is my street and I’m never gonna to leave it
And I’m always gonna to stay here if I live to be ninety-nine
’Cause all the people I meet,
Seem to come from my street
And I can’t get away because it’s calling me, come on home
Hear it calling me, come on home
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa
Autumn colours in the fields behind the Rectory in Askeaton this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)
Ripening blackberries above the rectory garden walls in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
The blackberries are ripening in the fields in the glebe land behind and beside the Rectory in Askeaton.
Sunday afternoon [17 September 2017] was almost like a summer’s day, with warm, bright sunshine and blue skies. After two church services – in Saint Mary’s, Askeaton, and Saint Brendan’s, Kilnaughtin – two of us went picking blackberries in the warm autumn sunshine.
They are growing high on the other sides of the walls of the rectory garden, and many of them are now in full fruit, plump, juicy and ready for eating.
I was surprised earlier this summer when I was at High Leigh in Hoddesdon for the USPG conference, and noticed during my walks in the countryside that the blackberries were already ripening at that early stage on the laneways and by the roadside in East Anglia.
But as we were picking the blackberries yesterday, I was reminded of childhood days at this time of the year in the 1950s or the 1960s, picking blackberries in the laneways and narrow roads close to my grandmother’s farm outside Cappoquin, Co Waterford, and the childhood joys that stayed with me as an adult in more recent years picking blackberrries before Michaelmas and the end of the blackberry-picking season in Kilcoole or Greystones in Co Wicklow, or along Cross in Hand Lane in Lichfield.
I was reminded too of the poem ‘Blackberry-Picking’, written in the 1960s by the late Seamus Heaney for Philip Hobsbaum.
Blackberry-Picking, by Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.
Source: Death of a Naturalist (1966)
Soon it will be Michaelmas, when blackberry-picking ceases (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
A misty morning ushers in the month of September and the beginning of autumn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
September arrived as a misty morning, and the sun took some time to break through the haze that covered the Rectory gardens until mid-morning.
The rain was so heavy yesterday that the Desmond Rowing Club cancelled rowing on the River Deel in the evening. There is no doubt that summer is over and that autumn has arrived.
It has been a fresh autumn day, with bright sunshine. Hopefully the sun stays for the weekend, and the Askeaton Regatta, which has already been postponed once, can go ahead on Sunday afternoon [3 September 2017].
But there is a noticeable change in temperature. The T-shirts have gone back into the wardrobe, probably to stay there until I head back to Greece in April.
I was writing this morning about how I had returned from Athens last week with a box-set of four CDs, 40 χρόνια Μαρία Φαραντούρη, subtitled The Very Best of Maria Farantouri, that includes a collection of 80 songs recorded by Maria Farantouri, many of them from her close work with the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis.
But one of the songs missing from this collection is Τον Σεπτέμβριο θυμάμαι (Ton Septémvrio Thimámai, ‘I remember in September’), which she recorded to a setting by Theodorakis, first written for a translation by the Greek writer and poet Vasilis Rotas of Brendan Behan’s poem, ‘The Captains and the Kings.’
Τον Σεπτέμβριο θυμάμαι Στίχοι, Brendan Behan και Βασίλης Ρώτας; μουσική, Μίκης Θεοδωράκης
Το Σεπτέμβριο θυμάμαι όταν άδειαζαν οι πάγκοι
κι έπαψ’ ή βουή του κόσμου, πήγαν τα παιδιά για τσάι.
Άσε μας θεέ ψηλά, να θυμόμαστε τ’ απλά
τώρα που έχουν πια πεθάνει
όλοι που μας αγαπάνε, λοχαγοί και βασιλιάδες.
Πέρα στην παλιά μας Κύπρο και στην Κένυα την καημένη
όλοι εκεί βασανισμένοι μαύροι κι άσπροι από τους άσπρους.
Και στα ξωτικά τα μέρη κι όπου ρίξουμε το μάτι
το κουδούνι του σχολείου στο μισό Μπέλφαστ σημαίνει
κι αχ, ή Αγγλία μας ή καημένη, λοχαγοί και βασιλιάδες.
Σκόνταψα σ’ ένα βραχνά μου και στο πάρκο κει του Ουΐνδσορ,
τι θαρρείτε κει πώς ηύρα, περπατώντας στο σκοτάδι;
Μισοδαγκωμένο μήλο και το πιο αστείο απ’ όλα
χαραγμένα πέντε δόντια
πέντε δόντια από παιδάκι, λοχαγοί και βασιλιάδες.
The translation is part of the translation by Vassilis Rotas of Brendan Behan’s play, The Hostage, which was staged in Athens 55 years ago, in late 1962. Immediately after that staging, four songs were released by Dora Giannakopoulou.
By the songs attracted the wrath of the Greek censors. Theodorakis decided to bypass the censors and to make the songs available to a wider audience and to release the words through the newspaper Avgi, inviting to readers to bring along a blank tape.
Later, Alekos Patsifas recorded the first album with full orchestra with the composer. An album was recorded with Maria Farantouri in 1966, but because of the colonels’ junta it took another seven years before it was released.
The song tells of a young English soldier is being held hostage in a Dublin brothel in reprisal for an IRA prisoner who is to be hanged in a Belfast prison. The hostage falls in love with an Irish maid servant, but his death will put an end to love and to life.
Vassilis Rotas presents the militant progressive spirit as a challenge to nationalist insanity and religious fanaticism that demand the sacrifice of an innocent victim.
Διονύσης Σαββόπουλος - Τον Σεπτέμβριο θυμάμαι
The song has become a regular part of the repertoire of Greek singers and performers on stage and on television, such as Dionysis Savvopoulos a popular singer-songwriter from Thessaloniki.
Savvopoulos has been politically active throughout his career in music, and he was briefly imprisoned by the colonels and beaten in 1967 for his political convictions.
A bilingual version of ‘I remember in September’ by Alexia and Dimitris Tsopanellis
A bilingual version of ‘I remember in September,’ has been recorded in English and Greek by Alexia and Dimitris Tsopanellis.
An English language version, set to the music by Mikis Theodorakis, was recorded by Julie Dennis with other Theodorakis composition in Munich in 1995.
The Captains and the Kings, by Brendan Behan
I remember in September, when the final stumps were drawn,
And the shouts of crowds now silent, and the boys to tea have gone
Let us, oh Lord above us, still remember simple things
When all are dead who love us, oh the Captains and the Kings
When all are dead who love us, oh the Captains and the Kings.
We have many goods for export, Christian ethics and old port,
But our greatest boast is that the Anglo-Saxon is a sport
When the darts game is finished, and the boys their game of rings
And the draughts and chess relinquished, oh the Captains and the Kings
And the draughts and chess relinquished, oh the Captains and the Kings.
Far away in dear old Cyprus, or in Kenya’s dusty land
Where we bear the white man’s burden in many a strange land
As we look across our shoulder, in West Belfast the school bell rings
And we sigh for dear old England, and the Captains and the Kings
And we sigh for dear old England, and the Captains and the Kings.
In our dreams we see old Harrow, and we hear the crow’s loud caw
At the flower show our big marrow takes the prize from Evelyn Waugh
Cups of tea and some dry sherry, vintage cars, these simple things
So let’s drink up and be merry, oh the Captains and the Kings
So let’s drink up and be merry, oh the Captains and the Kings.
I stumbled in a nightmare all around Great Windsor Park
And what do you think I found there as I wandered in the dark?
’Twas an apple half-bitten, and sweetest of all things
Five baby teeth had written of the Captains and the Kings
Five baby teeth had written of the Captains and the Kings.
By the moon that shines above us in the misty morn and night
Let us cease to run ourselves down, and praise God that we are white
And better still are English, tea and toast and muffin rings
Old ladies with stern faces, and the Captains and the Kings
Old ladies with stern faces, and the Captains and the Kings.
A November sunset yesterday evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
The unseasonable, summer-like weather on Sunday had vanished in a thick blanket of fog by Monday morning, but the bright blue skies returned later in the day [2 November 2015], so that the sunset gave summer-like qualities to the evening.
Sunday was the hottest November day ever recorded in Ireland, with temperatures reaching 20.1 degrees in Dooks, Co Kerry. As sunset approached yesterday, I was putting my finish touches to notes on TS Eliot in preparation for a tutorial group next Saturday [7 November 2015] as a group of part-time MTh students begin to look at Anglican poets, poetry and spirituality.
Yesterday was All Souls’ Day, and as I worked on these notes I was reminded of some lines by Eliot in ‘East Coker’:
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
But as I continued working, the confusion of the seasons also reminded me of other lines in ‘East Coker’:
What is the late November doing
With the disturbance of the spring
And creatures of the summer heat,
And snowdrops writhing under feet
And hollyhocks that aim too high
Red into grey and tumble down
Late roses filled with early snow?
‘East Coker’ (1940) has been described as a poem of late summer, earth, and faith. According to Eliot, the poetic aspects of the poem are grounded in the tradition of John Cleveland, Edward Benlowes, William Blake, and the early work of William Butler Yeats.
In this poem, Eliot writes about time and disorder within nature that is caused by humanity following only science and not the divine. The only way for humanity to find salvation is through pursuing the divine by looking inwards and realising that humanity is interconnected. Only then can we understand the universe.
I am looking forward to a long awaited, two-volume, annotated critical edition of TS Eliot’s poems which is being published later this week, on Thursday [5 November].
This authoritative edition of The Poems of TS Eliot is edited by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue. It provides, for the first time, a fully scrutinised text of Eliot’s poems, carefully restoring accidental omissions and removing textual errors that have crept in over the full century in which Eliot has been so frequently printed and reprinted.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of TS Eliot’s death in 1965, and this new edition also presents many poems from his youth that were published only decades later, as well as others that saw only private circulation in his lifetime, of which dozens are collected for the first time.
The edition is in two volumes. Volume I – Collected and Uncollected Poems – respects Eliot’s decisions by opening with his Collected Poems 1909-1962 in the form in which he issued it, shortly before his death 50 years ago.
This first volume then follows with the uncollected poems from his youth that he had chosen to publish, along with other poems that were considered suitable for publication.
Volume II – Practical Cats & Further Verses – opens with the two books of poems of other kinds that he issued, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats and his translation of Perse’s Anabase, moving then to verses privately circulated as informal or improper or clubmanlike. Each of these sections is accompanied by its respective commentary, and then there is a comprehensive textual history recording variants in both the manuscript and the published forms.
To accompany Eliot’s poems, Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue have provided a commentary that illuminates the creative activity that came to constitute each poem, calling upon drafts, correspondence and other original materials to provide a vivid account of the poet’s working processes, his reading, his influences and his revisions.
Volume I is 1344 pages, Volume II is 688 pages, and each has a cover price of £40. They are due to be published by Faber on Thursday [5 November 2015]. I have ordered both volumes, although I doubt they will arrive in the post before next Saturday’s tutorial meeting.
Meanwhile, an adaptation of Eliot’s classic verse drama Murder in the Cathedral was released last month [October 2015] for the first time on Blu-ray and DVD in a strictly limited dual format edition.
Unseasonable weather on the beach at Malahide on Sunday ... it was more like spring or summer than November (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Autumn lights in the late evening at the Café Garden in Mount Usher, Ashford, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
Since the clocks went back last weekend, the evenings are closing in much more quickly, and it is almost dark before the working day has finished.
The evening canticles, such as Hail Gladdening Light and Nunc Dimittis seem more appropriate at Evensong on these darkening evenings, and yesterday we also sang Henry Francis Lyte’s hymn about the evening of life, Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.
This afternoon, before evening lights began to fade, two of us left work early and drove down through the Glen o’ the Downs to Ashford for a late lunch in the Garden Café at Mount Usher Gardens.
As we drove through this part of Co Wicklow, the trees were a burnished mixture of green, gold, yellow and brown, as if the autumn leaves are holding onto the branches even though November is only a few days away.
A cheerful, cheeky robin on one of the tables at the Café Garden in Mount Usher this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
The tables in the garden were virtually deserted – one person was sitting alone, working on her laptop as she sipped on her cappuccino; one other table was occupied by a cheerful, cheeky robin, as he hopped from chair to table and on to another table, obviously used to be being given sweet morsels by people throughout the day.
Inside, we were given a table by the large window looking out on the gardens with its autumn trees and flowers.
By the time we were leaving, darkness had fallen, and there was a warm glow around some of the tables that were lit.
On the way back home, a few early Hallowe’en bonfires were burning, though with little sense of enthusiasm.
Soon the leaves are going to fade and fall faster, and this seems to be an appropriate time of the year to consider the natural cycle of life and death and new life, to celebrate All Saints and to remember All Souls:
Change and decay in all around I see;
O thou who changest not,
abide with me.
Some colour remains on some of the trees at Mount Usher (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
‘When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold’ … in the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
– William Shakespeare (Sonnet 73)
Autumn reflection in the Botanic Gardens this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
The ode To Autumn by John Keats is the most anthologised English poem.
In his poem, Keats recalls the Greek myth of Persephone, Demeter, and Hades, in which Demeter, the goddess of the earth, casts the land into a permanent winter when her daughter, Persephone, is kidnapped by Hades.
Persephone is eventually able to return from the underworld, but only for half the year. In celebration, Demeter brings Spring and Summer to the land. But when her daughter must return to the world of the dead, Demeter brings death to the earth in the form of Autumn and Winter.
In this poem, Keats offers an acceptance of this cycle of life and death. In the final stanza, the speaker addresses a personified Autumn, asking:
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too …
But the speaker then realises that the approach of death brought by Autumn can be just as beautiful as the promise of life found in the Spring.
Autumn colours in the Botanic Gardens this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
The late stages of Autumn arrived in Ireland not gently but almost with ferocity this morning.
After a gentle autumn that was almost like an Indian Summer, this morning brought in heavy rain storms and strong gusts that moved quickly across the land.
It was a damp squid for the beginning of the most unusual bank holiday that exists in any European country.
When the October bank holiday on the last Monday in October was announced almost 40 years ago in February 1977 by the then Minister for Labour, Michael O’Leary, it came as a surprise to his cabinet colleagues and to employers.
After O’Leary did his “solo run,” the Minister for Finance, Richie Ryan, tried to have the decision reversed by the cabinet a month later. He accused O’Leary of “making the announcement contrary to the government’s decision” and said it was “entirely unnecessary and inappropriate.”
O’Leary’s surprise announcement also angered the Irish Employers’ Confederation (IEC), which wrote to the Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, complaining there had been no prior consultation.
However, O’Leary held firm and he signed regulations in June to sanction the new public holiday.
His solo run has since meant the last Monday in October has become the traditional day for the running the Dublin Marathon.
The last of the summer roses in the Botanic Gardens this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Traffic was going to be snarled up throughout the city Dublin as the marathon straggled on for hours, and two us drove around the city on the M50 rather than trying to go through it, and went for a walk in National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin to see the autumn leaves falling.
There was still a hint of that “Indian Summer” in the Rose Garden, with some roses still in bloom. But the Pumpkin Painting competition and displays left us with no doubt that Autumn is about to turn to Winter.
An empty beach at the South Strand in Skerries this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
We then decided to experience today’s blustering storm, and continued on further north to Skerries, where we had lunch in Da Vino before going for a walk on the beach and around the Harbour.
The tide was out and the South Strand was deserted, and but for one or two other strollers we had it all to ourselves.
By the time we reached the Harbour, the storm winds were whistling through the riggings at Skerries Sailing Club.
It was time to buy some newspapers, return home and wrap up warmly for the evening.
Autumn colours in the Harbour in Skerries this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
‘To Autumn’ (John Keats)
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinéd flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barréd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Sunshine on Bray Head and the sea off the Promenade in Bray this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
Despite all the predictions and the expectations, the bright autumn weather has continued for most of this week.
When he was managing the Hedgehog in Lichfield, Ron Brazier told me he knew when summer had arrived, because people naturally start to drift outdoors once the temperature had reached 16. It was as though they have a natural thermostat that makes them take their drinks out into the garden.
For the last few days the temperature in Dublin has managed to hover around 16, and although the mornings are getting darker and the evenings are beginning to close in much earlier, there have been warm, glowing – even dramatic – sunrises these mornings.
The temperature managed to rise above 17 in Bray, Co Wicklow, today when – ahead of a busy working weekend – I skipped out for a walk on the beach and around the harbour late this morning ahead of an early lunch in Carpe Diem.
The low but warm sun cast Bray Head into stark relief, with sparkling waters in the sea between Bray Head and Bray Harbour.
On the short sandy shore at the harbour, up to 20 swans were enjoying the mid-day sun, resting, preening themselves and sleeping. Two lone anglers were fishing off the north pier. But because it was a working day the harbour was quiet and no-one was sailing.
Abandoned red shoes on the pebbles in Bray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Back on the beach, a newly-married couple were posing for their wedding photographs. She had slipped off her red shoes and abandoned them on the pebbles. It was almost as though they had wished for a summer wedding.
In Cape Diem, lunch was fine Italian fare, along with one glass of Tuscan Vernaccia and two double espressos.
A glass of Vernaccia di San Gimignano with lunch in Carpe Diem, Bray, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Vernaccia is a white wine most commonly associated with Vernaccia di San Gimignano from Tuscany. Wine historians argue about whether the grape’s origins are Eastern European, Greek or Roman.
The earliest recorded mention of the wine appears in the archives of record of San Gimignano from 1276. In the Middle Ages, a Vernaccia wine known as Vernage was popular in London.
Vernaccia di San Gimignano is a crisp wine with good acidity and citrus fruit. It was the first Italian wine to be awarded Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) status in 1966, and in 1993 it was upgraded to Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG).
It was good to head back to this working weekend with the warmth of sunshine and a taste of summer in Tuscany and Greece.
A typical sunrise one morning this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Autumn sunshine on the River Liffey on Sunday afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Patrick Comerford
The bright, sunny autumn weather continued on Sunday [27 September 2015], with blues skies and warm sunshine in Dublin for the last of this year’s ordinations in Christ Church Cathedral.
Four priests were ordained this afternoon: the Revd Alan Breen (Greystones), the Revd Cathy Hallissey (Taney), the Revd Ruth O’Kelly (Rathfarnham) and the Revd Abigail Sines (Christ Church Cathedral Group of Parishes).
I am working on the final stages of a chapter on preaching and the Eucharist, and it was heartening to be reminded throughout the afternoon that as priests we are ordained to a ministry of both word and sacrament:
Bishop: In your ministry will you expound the Scriptures and teach that doctrine?
Answer: I will.
And then, soon after:
Bishop: Will you encourage God’s people to be good stewards of their gifts …?
Answer: I will.
I was robed and in my stall in the cathedral as a member of the chapter, and it is very moving to come down during the singing of Veni, creator Spiritus to join the archbishop and the other priests present in laying hands on all the candidates.
After laying hands on the new priests, the bishop then continues:
“Give to these your servants grace and power to fulfil the ministry to which they are called, to proclaim the gospel of your salvation; to minister the sacraments of the new covenant; to watch over and care for your people; to pronounce absolution; and to bless them in your name.
Later, the bishop clearly links that word “steward” with the ministry of sacrament in the words of the Post-Communion Prayer:
Bishop: Almighty God,
you have chosen and ordained these your servants
to be ministers and stewards of your word and sacrament …
In the south ambulatory in Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)
Earlier in the morning, I was also in the chapter stalls for the Cathedral Eucharist, sung by the Cathedral Choir to Judith Bingham’s Missa Brevis (Awake My Soul).
This setting was commissioned for the fiftieth anniversary of the consecration of Bromley Parish Church, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in 1957 after it had been razed by the force of one German high explosive bomb in 1941.
“I wanted the dramatic progression of the Mass to be about rebuilding,” she said later. Her Kyrie, she said, evokes “walking amid the ruins of the church, desolation, despair.” Echoing TS Eliot, she headed this Kyrie: “A wasteland: the ruins of a sacred building.”
The Gloria unfolds from the “decision to rebuild – a sense of renewed hope.” Her heading is: “The rebuilding begins.”
Her Sanctus enshrines the solemnity of the new church’s consecration, and is headed: “The consecration of the house.”
Her Agnus Dei, she says, turns to “the forgiveness of enemies,” a process led by the rebuilding of trust and the recognition of humanity’s mutual interdependence. The heading reads: “As we forgive them.”
Two of us went to lunch in Wallace’s Taverna on the north bank of the River Liffey, and as we crossed the river back to Temple Bar, the waters of the Liffey were sparkling the afternoon autumn sunshine.<,br />
I strolled through the second-hand book barrows in Temple Bar before returning to the cathedral, where Judith Bingham’s reflections on her setting echoed through my mind again and again as I listened to the questions put to the four new priests before their ordination:
Bishop: Will you be faithful in visiting the sick, in caring for the poor and needy, and in helping the oppressed?
Answer: I will.
Bishop: Will you p[romote unity, peace and love ….?
These are charges that are not confined to parish ministry, and all priests need to be reminded constantly of those sacred promises.
Blackberries in the brambles on the side of Sea Road in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
Patrick Comerford
The holidays are over, the students are back, schools have reopened, and this afternoon it seemed summer had come to an end as the rain poured down in Greystones, Co Wicklow.
After a busy week that came immediately after a busy working weekend, two of us took the opportunity late this afternoon to have a late lunch in the Happy Pear in Greystones.
Despite the over-hanging grey clouds, the tables on the pavement outside still seemed inviting and we wondered whether this would be our end-of-season to eat al fresco.
When does summer end? Some say summer ends on the last day of August, but it feels summer has stretched into these first few weeks of September, with warm sunny days.
Others say the day of the autumn equinox is the last day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun’s illusionary path in the sky is right over the equator. That day varies from year to year: last year it fell on Sunday, 12 September. This year, in Ireland and England, the autumn equinox is at 03:29 on Tuesday, 23 September.
Perhaps this is stretching our definition of summer, for that would extend the three months on autumn to 23 December, only two days before Christmas, which must surely be “in the bleak mid-winter.”
But certainly, summer ends long before the clocks go back in Europe when summer time ends this year on Sunday 26 October 2014.
Summer’s end? … rain and empty tables at the Happy Pear in Greystones this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
And it certainly felt like summer had come to a dramatic end this afternoon when those over-hanging grey clouds opened and poured down as we were beginning our double espressos.
We quickly moved tables, and sat under the awning outside the Happy Pear as people fumbled for coats and umbrellas, and pulled rain covers over small children in buggies. The teeming rain soon slowed down traffic and then brought it to a halt. Within minutes we were the only people sitting at a table outside the restaurant.
How long would the rain last for? Was this the end of summer? Should we go ahead with our plans to pick blackberries on the road leading down to the beach at Kilcoole?
The ruins of Saint Mary’s or Old Kilcoole Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
After sitting watching the rain for 10 or 15 minutes, we finally decided to continue on 3 km south to Kilcoole, in the hope that the rain would ease during the short journey.
For the first time, we stopped to see the ruins of the Church of Comhghall or Cill Chomhghaill that gives its name to Kilcoole.
Old Kilcoole Church was probably built in the 12th century and was dedicated to Saint Mary. It stands in a small graveyard that has a number of early 18th century gravestones.
This is a 12th century church, with a nave and chancel, vaulted ceilings and a heavily pitched stone roof, now gone. There may have been a small attic roof over the chancel. The nave has a square Baptismal font, a cross slab and a small round-headed window in the south wall.
The western portion of the church was added later as a two-storey living quarters that may have been a priest’s house.
The keys to the site are kept by the O'Sullivan family next door, but access to the inner part of the church ruins is blocked by heavy railings on the doors and the open roof.
A walk on the beach in Kilcoole this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
From there, we continued down Sea Road, parked the car, and crossed the train line for a short walk on the beach, before strolling back to pick blackberries on both sides of Sea Road.
As children, we always thought that picking blackberries bridged the time between summer and autumn. And we were told never to pick blackberries after Michaelmas Day, 29 September.
There were other sayings associated with summer folklore:
Ash before oak
the summer is all a soak,
oak before ash
the summer is but a splash.
Red sky at night,
shepherd’s delight.
Red sky at morning,
Shepherd’s warning.
Saint Swithun’s Day if thou dost rain,
for forty days it will remain:
Saint Swithun’s day if thou be fair,
for forty days ’twill rain nae mare.
But the saying about blackberries was actually about Old Michaelmas Day, which falls on 10 October. It was said that on Old Michaelmas Day the Devil puts his foot on blackberries.
Michaelmas commemorates the Archangel Michael’s defeat of Lucifer. Folklore said that on his expulsion from heaven, Lucifer landed in a thorny blackberry bush, and he cursed and spat on it.
Is there any scientific truth behind the saying? Well, blackberries have a high concentration of bitter tasting tannins and over time these build up in the berries. Old Michaelmas Day – whether you date it at 29 September or 10 October – falls late in the blackberry season, and so berries picked that late are very bitter indeed.
To make matters worse, as autumn arrives the weather becomes wetter still, so the fruit soon contains more fungus spores.
However, there are still ten more days to Michaelmas. We picked a bowl-full, and then some more … before the rains came again.
Tall sunflowers without the sunshine near the beach in Kilcoole this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)
