File:Storm Force 8 (2981394116).jpg

People who visit Scilly in the summer have little idea of how the sea turns rabid in the winter. I used to find these days very exilharating, but at times the wind was so strong that the raindrops would pierce the skin like needles. This is a view from inside a World War II observation post on the Garrison, St Mary's, where I had taken shelter. I risked taking the camera out for a few seconds in order to get this shot, but as you can see from the blurring on the lens, it got thoroughly soaked, and I had to pack it in silica gel sachets to get it dry. The island in the distance is St Agnes.

The poem below was written on a much sunnier day, but once you have experienced a spectacle like this, you don't forget it!

STONECHATS

Isles of granite and pale white quartz, Barely covered by tenuous thrift And stonecrops with crystalled flowers Cannot move me in this mood.

I have been by stone row and tomb Of unhewn stone, by standing stone And cottage built of stone, and seen Nothing solid. Nothing that will not pass,

In a thousand years. Nothing That will not go underwater, under That sea that cleaves me from St. Agnes, And fades in wafting rain

Among the Western Isles. Nothing Moves me. Save, perhaps, This flint-chipping furze chitter Who flits above me, and scolds,

With toes crooked under him, More crooked than an eagle’s toes, And wings more winglike Than a kestrel’s. He and I

Are preserved in time, this instant, Like the flints held in a dead man’s Hand, and washed up, aeons beyond On some spume-eroded shore.

Source material: Furze chitter is the Cornish name for the stonechat, a small, passerine bird whose voice sounds identical to two flints being struck together. This poem was inspired by stonechats on the Garrison, St. Mary’s, defending their nests on a summer’s day, with rain threatening, and a restless sea. The Isles of Scilly, once one island, are destined to disappear beneath the sea in a millennium or two, or perhaps less, if the threats of climatologists are to be believed.