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Notes from the North News

The Last Note from the North 15 Aug 2024 A farewell to Eynsham, a game of football, and a poem.

In a few days’ time, we are moving house from West Oxfordshire to West Cambridgeshire, for a number of reasons that only just outweigh reasons to stay. We have loved living in Eynsham parish, meeting all the people we have come to know and appreciate, enjoying the countryside and wildlife.

I thought I would sign off with another poem, which was written back in 2019, because we knew then that we would probably have to move before too long. The first and last lines deliberately echo Edward Thomas’s famous short poem ‘Adlestrop’, written in 1915.

Nearly 50 years ago, I lived in Eynsham for a couple of years when I was studying English Literature, and played football for Eynsham Reserves, managed then by Bernard ‘Smudger’ Smith. In November 1975, we played Adlestrop away. The village did not have a ground of its own; so we played the match at nearby Oddington, whose pitch was itself on a pronounced slope. Having won the toss, the Adlestropians made full use of their local knowledge and played downhill. We were 5-0 down by half time. Although we drew the second half 1-1, the damage had long been done.

Anyway, here is the poem, recently re-titled ‘Nine Springs, Nine Summers’. I hope it adequately reflects the deep fondness I feel for Eynsham - and its people - and the enjoyment I have derived from writing these Notes from the North:

Yes, I remember 1 City Farm, the barn

where we stopped a few years almost like stewards

on a short-term contract. Although traffic could

intrude aurally, few people passed nearby

and skylarks were audible from the garden.

Listed stone barns - sheepfold and lambing pen, cow

shed, pigsty and hayloft - had roots in gently

sloping fields where farmers had farmed for decades

on variable soil sparingly so that

butterflies and moths exploded from grasses

and wildflowers in the oat field in summer,

and finches and yellowhammers burst in spring

from hedgerows like solar flares. Swallows nested

in ashwood rafters and our birdfeeders seemed

to feed all the small birds of West Oxfordshire.

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