I would walk down to visit the river early each morning, before breakfast, wearing an extra layer of clothes and carrying my notebook and a pen. The water level in the river had barely changed in a month and a half; there had been no heavy rain nor what could be called a drought. Another bunch of gulls flew over – at first I thought they were ducks. What breeze there was came lightly from the west, from the direction of the sea, pushing gently against the flow of the river and creating little wavelets in the water. To the east the sky was brightening, though low clouds would keep the sunrise obscured. Gulls inland, I remember hearing from somewhere, means stormy weather at sea. Perhaps the storms will arrive on land before long.

The starlings first appear like a wisp of dark curling smoke against the pale grey of the morning sky, over the levels beyond the river; as they come closer, rolling over the fields and trees with a seemingly effortless speed, I stand and watch in awe. They are drawing past, entering into the future in a wild mass that continues whilst more follow, and more and more, a huge long extension of life flowing from somewhere behind, as if from the ground, heading on with gentle determination and with yet more still following, more and more, now not just a column of birds but wider, louder, darkening broadly and spanning the landscape, straddling the river, being overhead with a mighty moving flutter that carries the whole sky forward. A group across the way flies in low, banks aerobatically left and then right, a mischievous swoop that includes hundreds of small feathered lives, hundreds out of these thousands that form the swathe that engrosses the sky, a pattern with no centre, no edges, no apparent rhyme nor any reason though it’s enough to make my heart sing, my senses for these few minutes completely immersed in birdlife.

One starling viewed alone is an ungainly flyer, small wings beating furiously with the effort of keeping its body in the air; a group has more visible cohesion, formation, direction, a sense of local purpose; a murmuration fills the sky with the sound of so many small wings becoming one wave, a tidal conflagration, a beating of hearts without gaps, entranced by their own wonder, separate but all one, a moving airborne landscape that reaches for a short while all the way to the horizon, whirring with motion, passing over on its momentous daily way.

Gradually this is all going, making way for the simple normality of a cloudy sky. The sound recedes and the past appears to be empty; there are more still, but in smaller groups catching up, flying on into the morning. From the rear of this moving event a limited community peels away from the great direction and heads for a tree, or a telegraph wire, and gradually settles into a chirruping discussion, making its decision as a whole that gradually becomes the parts, the individual birds, that then band together again and find their way collectively to their feeding ground for the day. 

John Cartwright and Jaki Whitren, musicians who died within a fortnight of each other during November, were celebrated last night at a special community gathering at the Red Brick Building. John and Jaki had met in the early 1970s, and for much of their lives had split their time between Glastonbury and Clu du Pont in France. This winter solstice event included tributes from musicians, poets, photographers and film makers – and from the community at large, for they had meant so much to many over the years.

​A film recording of a concert from 1988, held in the Universal Hall at Findhorn, was particularly poignant – from the days when they were at the height of their creative power. Jaki's remarkable singing voice was particularly show-cased: https://vimeo.com/41411221

Perhaps most extraordinary, though, was a short film – made five years ago by Sue Palmer of Biggerhouse Productions – of John drumming at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. The exhibition at the time – by Angus Fairhurst – had included a drum kit, which visitors had been invited by the artist to play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5bGmlIGqPs. John is remembered as a pianist and keyboard player; he rarely played the drum kit, certainly not in public. Nevertheless, he was better than most. As so many people had reiterated during the evening, John and Jaki were very special people.

They were, as well as everything else, remarkably humble and self-effacing. As one local commentator remarked back in the 1980s, they 'spent years studiously avoiding the kind of success that their faithful admirers believe is rightfully theirs.' Glastonbury has for years had a vibrant music scene, and quietly, 'all this stood on the shoulders of one particular giant, John Cartwright. In the eighties he took lots of musos over a big hump, got them working together in different combos and got the performance thing really going. John made the musical momentum really ‘quorate', and what happened in the nineties might not have happened without the co-operative element catalysed by John in the eighties.' 

On the morning of November 1st – which is after all Samhain, the Celtic new year – I begin my regular walks down to the river. It is a misty morning, though the mist is rising and it's going to be a bright sunny day. I walk from my home in Chilkwell Street down the steep slope of Cinnamon Lane, along the road outside the children’s playground set in a grassy field, were the local dog walkers are gathering, and on past several small plots of land with sheds and yards full of junk or builders’ materials, small fields with a horse or two or a few sheep, and beyond all that a turning onto an un-named road (according to the map Kennard Moor Drove). This follows a straight line to the river, then turns sharp left and follows it for a short distance before continuing towards Baltonsborough.
 
The road meets the River Brue at a place called Plungen. It’s here that the thirteenth century straightening of the river alongside Glastonbury begins. The Bradley Brook joins the river here, now channeled along a straight ditch of a rhyne, though once it meandered across the moor until it met the river’s original course. Until not many years ago there was a thick hedge between the road and the rhyne, though that’s now gone. Plungen, a friend suggested, is where the river once plunged into the marshes that in days gone by surrounded the Isle of Avalon.
 
I go through a farm gate and walk along beside the rhyne, on its opposite bank from the road. There’s a narrow path worn through the grass; though this isn’t an official footpath it’s a well-used route. There’s a locked metal gate with a style beside it, and then as I approach the river a crowd of noisy starlings erupts from a field ahead and spreads out around, feeding and chirping … some come back, and all but completely fill up a tree with perching on it. On following mornings I set out to get here earlier, a little before sunrise, and the arrival of the starlings is a daily event worth looking forward to.
 
When I reach the riverbank I find myself a spot to sit and I take out my notebook. The river, I note, is low, slow and sluggish, waiting for rain. I surprise a pair of moorhens that have emerged from the weeds just upstream. I jot down thoughts about the crisis that is overtaking the planet’s ecology, and look back on thirty years of activism and protests, thirty years that seem to have done nothing except slow down slightly the tide of destruction. Of course the river here doesn't look like it’s in a state of crisis: for instance I often notice there are fish that suddenly break the surface to snaffle insects; I rarely get to see them, just the concentric rings steadily widening across the water. People do go fishing here so it must be reasonably well stocked – the water looks a little muddy, but otherwise reasonably healthy. Then I remember going swimming, right here, thirty years ago. People never do that any more, not this far downriver, the water’s too polluted with agricultural chemicals.
 
At first I have plenty to write down in my notebook: the damp and foggy November mornings, the thousands of starlings flying in long ‘skeins’ (as Robbie Burns described them), the litter left by people who park just the other side of the rhyne, the changing moods of the river in response to the wind and the density of the sky, the flight of local ducks and swans and occasionally a heron, the sound of the wind and the birds – and not very far beyond them the constant noise of traffic on the nearest roads. These create the little-changing pattern of life along the river. I remember to come with a rubbish bag and clear up the litter. After two or three weeks all this has become a routine, and I seem to be running out of things to write. I walk away from the riverbank feeling sad – then more than that, ancient tears welling up from somewhere deep inside, though they don’t yet succeed in reaching the surface.
 
Last summer I walked the whole length of the Brue; a friend who joined me between Baltonsborough and Glastonbury left me with a little bag of semi-precious stones – she said they’d been specially blessed – for making offerings to the spirit of the river. Not being used to doing such things I’d arrived back home with most of the bagful still with me ... I get up from beside the riverbank and as I move away I notice something bright and fast-moving; was it a woodpecker, pecking at one of the willow trees that grow in the corner of the field? … Now I remember the bag of little stones, and decide to bring it with me and to give some to the river each morning as a way of saying hello and of making more of a connection.
 
I also go to see a play in the town: River Spirit. In this play the river is sick, its spirit split into three separate parts, no longer whole.  The youngest of the three and the spirit of the upper section of the river is called Brooke; in her forlorn state at the lack of nurturing attention from the people living nearby, she has convinced herself that the rubbish, the plastic bottles and bits of polystyrene, are offerings from the people. She collects it all in old boxes and keeps it as if it were treasure. It’s a poignantly sad image.
 
There’s fish in the river, and wildfowl living beside it, though not in great numbers. I wonder how it would change if it were managed by people with indigenous minds and hearts. I’m sure the water would be clearer and cleaner, no chemicals and far less silt; trees would line the riverbanks and there would be more sound, more life. This part of the river was once swampy, deeply wet, at this time of year returning to marshland after the summer; closer to the town than it is now, wider and probably not so deep. Would there have been mosquitoes, and a malarial miasm? For several reasons malaria became endemic only with the introduction of farming, and anyway more prolific birdlife would have kept the mosquito numbers down. In their natural state the Somerset wetlands were not a malarial swamp.
 
Within a few days of starting to make my offerings, remarkably I find myself with plenty more to say. On the morning that I notice the change it is mild and quiet without any wind. The river is flowing steadily, giving the mellifluous impression of being like syrup loaded with gallons of dark green nutrients, and with a surface as smooth as that of a dark scrying mirror. A small cloud of midges has gathered above my head; no wind, no rain, mild weather – at this time of year they don’t often get conditions so much to their liking. The sky is blue and bright, though grey over on the eastern horizon with streaks of sunshine breaking through where the sun has recently risen. I take in a deep breath of gladness and hope: I have begun to feed the spirit of the river, and already I feel that she is feeding me in return.
 
An image is starting to form in my mind – still shadowy and uncertain, but coming into form: a monk, living beside the river a millennium and a half ago, writing down the story of his people. This people had survived enslavement by the Romans but their future was once again uncertain. He has a stock of vellum – rare treasure indeed! – and a little coracle moored beside the riverbank; very little else. His task is to write down this story and then to leave, down the river and into the distance. His place of the resurrection beckons already …
 
On November 27th I am taken into hospital after experiencing a Transient Ischaemic Attack. This is a mild form of stroke, and after a night and a morning under observation and having brain scans and the like I return home the following afternoon, plentifully supplied with medications. By the morning of the 29th I am walking once again down to the river; a cloudy, windy morning with ducks flying by and the river surface choppy with the wind – blowing from the coast, against the flow of the water. I make my little offering and stand by the bank, so grateful to be not just alive but with all my vital functions still intact. The starlings fly over en masse and I cannot stop myself from shedding joyful tears.