Everyman's England Read Online Free

wishes he could rid himself of the weight of the sandwiches in his pocket.
    I started out to climb Scafell from the Langdale side, by way of Rossett Gill and Angle Tarn. A pile of wood in the valley made no appeal to me. I knew Scafell, and I thought, unloyally perhaps, that if King George wanted a bonfire in so inconvenient a spot other people must attend to it. My wan patriotism did not impair my enjoyment of the scramble up Rossett Gill, but at Angle Tarn, lying by the dark waters, I came across a stout length of ash trunk, deserted by some fervent but short-winded wood-carrier. To have carried it so far was an achievement. I decided that it should not lie deserted by the tarnside to rot. It should be taken to the pike and there burn merrily in honour of the King’s Jubilee. On a sudden I was the most patriotic man in the Lake District.
    The story of the carrying of that log is an odyssey. Many times I longed to jettison it; many times I cursed the villain who had left it by the lakeside to tempt me, many times I tripped and cut myself, many times it tripped me and clouted my shins, but in the end it rested up-ended in the pile of wood securely wired to the top of the pike. Two days later I finished a late supper in a Borrowdale cottage and walked out into the balmy dusk of a May evening to watch the beacon blaze to which I had contributed. That was to be my joy, my reward, to know that the new star blazing in the sable heaven owed some of its light to my toil, that I had laboured to help create that burst of orange and gold flame which was to light the rocky slopes of Scafell and signal to the other beacons which stretched across the country from end to end. I never saw the fire. It was a clear night and I stood on my vantage-point, recommended by the cottage wife, but no light suddenly sprang into life in the darkness. I waited until I was cold and I knew that the fire, if it had been lighted, must have burnt out. The next morning I found out that I had mistaken the good lady’s directions and had waited in the wrong place, for between me and Scafell during my vigil had towered a host of fells and crags that hid from me even the glowing of the sky where the beacon blazed away, where my log burned to red ash and then scattered in the wind, grey flakes to be lost among the hills. I never told the cottage wife that I did not see the blaze. I have told this story many times to many people and always I have lied admirably, describing my proud sensations as I watched that flare of flame on Scafell. But now I must tell the truth, for a good lie should die soon to preserve its richness, and it deserves an honest grave.
    The whole stretch of coast is a sanctuary for birds. On the firm islands of sand which lie out beyond the banks of grey shingle and stone, I saw companies of black-and-white oyster catchers, their heads to the wind, looking like a convention of waiters mysteriously isolated. Oyster catchers are very much like waiters in their habits; sometimes they stand wrapt in sombre idleness, eyeing the waste of sand with a weary expression of resignation, and at times they are spurred into a frenzy of activity, rushing here and there, prying with their long bills beneath the stones, turning over seaweed, for all the world as though they were in a City restaurant in the rush hour.
    Wheeling in the breeze above the oyster catchers were clouds of gulls; the dainty black-headed gulls, their black caps at this time of the year changed for a white head-dress that hinted at its spring beauty by a black spot above the eye, the rapacious herring gulls, the swashbucklers of the sea, and here and there were those aloof Vikings, the great black-backed gulls that roam from the Arctic to the Equator with the same nonchalance that a clerk goes by tube from Belsize Park to the Bank. These last are now not so common as they were, and on the Kent and Essex coasts, where they were once common and known as cobs, they are very rare. It is