11:39 i'm surprised to see a cluster of daffodil shoots, and several clusters of snowdrops, already sprouting between the roots of large trees... some of the snowdrops are beginning to bloom.. and i can see a pale yellow sunset all along northwestern horizon beyond the garden suburb of what i like to think of as New London...
...on Sandy Heath i pause to read a notice explaining that an area of undergrowth has been enclosed in order to protect the growth of Lillies of the Valley - which apparently are now rare on the heath... i remember these flowers in our garden when i was a child (they grew well in cold places where other plants did not)... and i wonder again about this and the other enclosures... they substantially reduce public space for walking-in-the-wild in order to save some particular plants (not a species)... i sense, as i have before, that the ecologists are excluding human ecology, not only in this case but generally... and i remember that the fascists of the nineteen-thirties favoured (or even worshipped) nature and biology at the expense of people and liberty... surely this isn't the way to do it!
...at the highest point i noticed two mysterious black tubes about 10 metres high and about 30 cm diameter (together with accompanying black boxes at ground level) that have recently been installed among some trees that partly conceal them... i don't think they were here a few weeks ago... looking more closely i see the name T-Mobile and assume that they contain antennae for cell-phones... again a stealthy process, i think, for changing not only the environment but the nature of human life... and i suppose it's being done 'from above', 'for our own good', by a partly hidden political force and without adequate democratic or philosophic discussion...
16:12 on a seat near two new molehills... the air is still and the forest is quiet, i can hear conversations at about 50 metres though i can't quite hear the words... there are sounds of sawing in the distance and now the interrupted sound of tyres of a bicycle moving fast as the man riding it makes it jump every 20m or so... this stillness is almost uncanny, and very pleasant... and now it's broken by a low-flying helicopter and a boy yelling as he cycles fast down hill... i prefer this writing of physical realities on the heath to writing of imagined things, indoors...
... then, as i continue walking, i remember my pleasure when entries to this diary combined the world as it is with the world as imagined... and i decide to continue that combination as soon as this literary vehicle will allow...
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