Roger Deakin (1943–2006)

Just one snippet from this book can make your day. Take this one about brambles: ‘I have been cat-scratched so many times by brambles that I ought to hate them, but instead I love them’. You can agree or disagree but that's not the point. The writing and the feeling it evokes is the point. It provokes you into your own writing and experiences. I haven’t much experience of cat scratches but I do know that brambles hurt. Coincidentally, for the first time in years I saw a cat in our back show more garden earlier today. It looked shifty. I wonder if it was this black cat that kicked an apple off the wall that separates house number 62 from house number 60. As a further distraction, as I am writing this at 1725 on this most beautiful day I have become aware of a robin creeping up behind me. It was more like a stealthy hop then a creep, a robin just making sure that I knew it was there. Grass now covers a flowerbed that last year was a brambles zone. Into the plants I would push my ungloved hands to snip off some growth. On withdrawal there would be multiple scratches just above my wrist together with blood and a bramble refusing to let go. I disagree with Roger Deakin. I do not love brambles. Right now on my right arm I have wounds healing from cutting back undergrowth infiltrated by brambles. They’ve been there a week or more. I was very careful about the act of cutting and the removal of the spiky tentacles. The retaliation came later. As I was forcing all the cut twigs, branches and foliage into a bin bag, the brambles came to life again, grabbing hold of my flesh and cutting it to ribbons. Brambles are spiteful creatures and get no sympathy from me. This urge to respond or add arises so many times in the reading of this book. show less

A delightful, but slow and sometimes aimless book. It's an odd form - entries from 6 years' worth of journals, compiled by the late author's partner into one composite year. That made for somewhat disjointed reading, in that every time I put the book down it took me a while to get back into its rhythm. On the other hand, that format combined with Deakin's lovely evocations of place and mood builds up a gorgeous and very alive portrait of where he lived and the passage of the seasons.

What a unique and beautifully written book! I love Roger Deakin's style - part travelogue, part cultural memoir, part poetic nature narrative. It made me want to don a wetsuit instantly and leap into the nearest waves. This is such a rich book, steeped in so much beauty and wisdom that it'll remain (if only a bit water damaged!) on my shelf for years to come and I'm sure I'll be delving into it for inspiration for my creative writing and swimming regularly.

I'll confess up front: the sections set in the Australian outback nearly lost me because the place is so foreign to my experience that I had little interest in Deakin's explorations there. But all the rest of the book made up for it, especially his stories of the walnut-growing regions of Central Asia.
As I reached the end of the book, I was feeling particularly aware of Deakin's untimely death and how sad it is that the world will not have lots more of his wonderful prose in years to come.