Michael MORPURGO
On Dawnwn Chorus Day, Michael chael Morpurgo go reveals how birdsds have helped him through the darkest kest hours of the pandemic andemic
Iam too young to remember the war. But if there has been n a Dunkirk moment in my life, it t has been during the past year. . Keeping calm and carrying on n was no longer just some nostalgic historical slogan. It was what I was trying rying to do, we were all trying to do.
Instinctively I knew I had ad to keep to a strict daily routine. So among other things, I became responsible ponsible for doing the breakfast in my home, which was why I was out in n the vegetable garden one morning, ning, in my wellies and pyjamas, picking ng kale.
I had been told by a dear r friend that a kale smoothie at breakfast akfast is very good for you. So is hope, pe, I was about to discover. And so is s song.
That morning I heard a song, one that has helped to lift my spirits pirits ever since: a blackbird perched d on a branch high in an ash tree, , singing his heart out.
I stood there and listened, ed, his song reminding me that it is a wonderful world, despite everything, , and telling me that I was part of it, as he was, and not to be sad. Sing, g, he was telling me, and you won’t be sad.
So I sang back to my blackbird, echoing his tune. Back and forth our song went, neither of us wanting to stop singing. He was there the next morning on his branch. We sang together morning after morning. I always knew he was waiting for me, and he knew I was longing to see him again, to sing with him again. Today is International Dawn Chorus Day and like many of us I have never valued birdsong more than over the past year.
In the early months of the pandemic, I was slow to realise the implications of what was happening. I tried to convince myself that the disease was far away in China, that it would never reach us, and that somehow we were immune from such a catastrophe. Even when it overwhelmed towns in Northern Italy, I still refused to believe it could e ever affect us in this country, and even if it did, that we’d be safe in Devon.
Then we heard that Denis Bater, who used to run the fish and chip shop for years in our local town of Hatherleigh, had died of it. At his funeral the people came out onto the pavements all the way up the High Street to send him on his way. A dear cousin in Sheffield fell sick and was on a ventilator in hospital – she recovered but for some time we feared the worst. My best friend at university, godmother to one of our children, died in her nursing home, and they said it was probably
Covid. The tentacles of this pandemic did of course reach down our little country lane where my wife and I live. Anxiety and fear crept remorselessly into all our lives, haunted our everyday.
Hope was all we had to cling to then, and I found it in that blackbird’s song.
So it was that I sat down after breakfast one day and wrote my Song of Gladness, a story-song-poem that is passed on, one to the other, by every living thing on the planet, from blackbird’s garden and my garden, all around the world over oceans and desert sands, in rainforests and mountains, and back again to the blackbird in his ash tree.
Making books, writing my stories, has kept me hopeful all through the pandemic. I’ve had ups and downs like most of us, but throughout I’ve held fast to the memory of my blackbird’s song, to my longing and determination nation to see family and friends again, and to my firm conviction that out of this we will come, and that when we do, we must grow closer to one another and that we will never take our planet, nor one another for granted again.
When I wrote this story, it was during the early months of the pandemic. I sensed that if I let go of hope, I could so easily fall into a dark pool of sadness and fear and grieving that would drag me down into depression.
Every morning, I would notice the world about me more; my blackbird was singing to me, and the swallows were there, and the farming life was going on in the countryside all around us. Hope sprung, my spirits rose.
But of course it was not just a blackbird and a song that brought hope. It was the community, too. We were finding a new kindness all
around us, we were cocooned in it.
Neighbours we hardly knew were taking us under their wings. They called in, they shopped for us, fetched medicine for us, became friends. Everyone who came by, the postie, the refuse collectors, the delivery men, had time to stop and talk, distantly, masked.
We lived in real hope now that we would see our children and grandchildren again, soon even maybe. That soon we would see the city children out on the farm again (which for the past 45 years we have run as the charity Farms for City Children) feeding the sheep, and hear again their laughter in the wind.
How important a lesson is that to learn for when this is over and we can reclaim our lives again. We have seen the kindness in the eyes of our neighbours, witnessed the dedication of those who care for us, in hospitals and care homes, in our schools and homes. We have rediscovered that we do belong to one another, that there is great kindness in this world, often right next door.
This morning, just about a year on, I was out in my wellies in the garden, and picking kale, when I heard my blackbird singing again, high in his ash tree. He was reminding me that his song is my song, my song is his song, that his world is our world.
I sensed that if I let go of hope, I could so easily fall into a dark pool of sadness