It’s all Chinese to me
THE bonfires are burned out, the clocks have gone back and the lawn is covered in fallen leaves. Winter is coming and there’s an allegorical nip in the air. The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness has passed. The branches are gaunt and, to make things worse, the ash trees may not return in spring, breaking a time-old promise of renewal and fresh life. Around here, many of them are slated to be felled this winter, before dieback turns the timber into dust. The copse in the combe will look alien and bleak.
Hunting is the traditional antidote to the winter glooms. Out in the country, the pace of life has quickened with the cold and traditional relationships, disturbed by summer visitors and procreation, begin to reassert themselves. The hawk hovers. The fox eyes the coop. The badger forages for worms. This is when the countryside is animated by the huntsman’s horn and scarlet, exploring hidden places, the dips, brooks and brakes that otherwise only the farmer ever sees. The hunt, as I see it, enacts a shamanistic ritual to edify the land, to bear witness to unseen country—and it certainly perks things up.
If hunting won’t do, a decent alternative is cold-weather swimming, based on the principle of the frog in the pot, in reverse. If I carry on jumping into the sea through autumn into winter, the water never gets dramatically colder. Come January, I’ll still be blowing bubbles and floating on my back. Like hunting, it’s rather dashing: you may not cut quite such a fine figure, running naked over the beach and leaping into the waves, as in handling a mettlesome hunter in scarlet with your hair en chignon, but you may still be admired by the beachcombers wrapped up in their duffels and puffers and mufflers. So what if I have to flail my way through a crust of raw sewage?
If you don’t ride and can’t swim, I recommend the contemplation of human frailty, which tends to put everything into perspective. Here, you might argue, the newspapers furnish plenty of suitable examples, but they are too remote and emblematic to count. Instead, I often think about a man who, many years ago, joined our Chinese evening class.
The teacher began by making us learn simple, introductory sentences. ‘Wo jiào Juliet,’ she said. She went round the class. ‘My name is Juliet,’ she told each student. ‘What is your name?’ ‘Ni jiào shénme míngzì?’ When we duly said our names, she replied: ‘Very good, thank you.’ ‘Hen hao, xiexie.’
Conversation proceeded like this at a merry clip, until we reached the man with a sandy combover and a tense expression. ‘Wo jiào Juliet,’ she said. ‘Ni jiào shénme míngzì?’ ‘Wo jiào Juliet,’ the man repeated. ‘Ni jiào shénme—um.’ Juliet cocked her head. ‘Hmmm, no. My name is Juliet. What is your name?’ ‘My name is Juliet,’ the man tendered, suspiciously. ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘You say, wo jiào, whatever.’
A sullen, brooding look crossed his face. ‘Wo jiào…’ ‘Yes, that’s it!’ ‘..whatever,’ he echoed, uncomprehendingly. I’m afraid we all tittered. Now, I find the exchange ridiculous, but touching and true, remembering that we have faults and limitations and will have been idiots in situations we cannot understand. Another answer is to read more poetry and fewer newspapers. Except for the FT, which must have a special coating, they are good for lighting fires, which are something else to look forward to, but poetry takes you much further than the world news.
Winter is when the countryside is animated by the huntsman’s horn and scarlet
Next week Jonathan Self