Those of a certain age and inclination will recognise the words from Roy Harper’s classic One Of Those Days In England and as he says, those much younger cannot understand by half. He sings about an England I recognise, one I grew up with in the West Country, surrounded by myths and legends and vanishing hitchhikers and UFOs and ponds, with or without swords. Just about an hour’s drive away, not far in miles or epochs, we had Glastonbury, the old pre-festival one of hills and marshes and our once and future king. We took it seriously to the extent that it wasn’t questioned. Once there was a king. He didn’t die, he slept. He will come again, whoever he was, Roman trying to hold back the Dark Ages, Saxon trying to tie the knots of a dissolving empire together again, Jesus allegory, saviour, myth, nonsense: our king in the west, where the sun goes down over Lyonesse. And his sword in the pond, where he threw it, like the Grail at the bottom of the Chalice Well. See, why’s it called Chalice Well if the Grail isn’t in it? Heh? Answer me that! S’obvious.
There’s a pond near me too, but this one holds no swords I know of. About five weeks ago I rescued three goslings stuck the wrong side of a mesh fence and threw them over the fence, into the grass where their parents were frantic. As I threw the last one over I got a jolt off the electrified top strand of the fence that I hadn’t realised was electric. Then I didn’t see them again. I thought they’d died, either bleeding internally from the fall or their little hearts had just given out from too much excitement; either way, they weren’t there when I looked for them, two or three times a week as I walked the fields.
Then just at the end of last week, out in the middle of the pond, almost exactly where I’d last seen the little family, stopped, staring at me, there they were, exactly in the same formation, three goslings and two adult geese, one in front, one behind. Again, staring at me. I thought they couldn’t be the same ones because they’d grown so much, but when I looked closer one of them still had down on its head. As my friend said wisely, almost as if it had had an electric shock.
That little pond where the railway used to be holds something much more mysterious, more precious, than any immortal sword. Three little lives I saved. Maybe it is the Excaliber pond after all.