Each week I send out a short, fresh reflection from the road – photographs, sketches, and observations from old places that still have something to teach us. What follows is a moment from those travels.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Thomas Hardy - The Darkling Thrush
The Magpie
It’s a grey winter’s day and I’m stood in one of the unholiest of places: the tram stop at Whitefield in Greater Manchester. The light is flat and monotone and the clouds are scrubbing the tops of the high-rise flats. There’s a bitter wind from the east. We all stand huddled, waiting. I observe those around me. Most find comfort in their devices. The blue cast of the screens lights their faces. The minutes are ticking down on the information board: four minutes until the tram arrives. I can feel my spirits sinking.
And then I see it out of the corner of my eye: an unexpected movement. A magpie hops onto the platform, shakes its head, and alights onto the track with a cackle. Looking one way and then the next, it ambles along the ballast and flits onto a sleeper. After two measured steps to one side it drops in-between the Bury bound sleepers.
I look up at the crowd around me - wan faces, caught in the time between - then I look back at the magpie. Its movements are more incremental now, focused on a small space around the ballast. The bird and I are in the starkest of places on the starkest of days.
'You’re not going to find anything there, my friend', I think to myself, until the bird comes to rest, arches its back, looks down, and picks up a large chunk of stone. It places the stone to one side and then pokes its beak into the recess and pulls out a grape as fresh as the day it was harvested.
The one for sorrow has brought me joy.
I look up at the information board - there’s just a minute left until the tram is here. I can see it in the distance: a jaundiced spec of yellow in the gloom. Just before the tram arrives, I take one last look at the people around me - they’re putting their devices away - intent on bagging the best spot on the tram.
I think to myself: “I shall hold the glow of the magpie and the grape for as long as I can remember, it’s a shame that nobody saw it’, until a woman across the platform catches my eye - she looks towards the ballast and then straight at me and mouths the word ‘Wow’.
How holy this unholy place has become.
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