Stone Clearing With Richard Herring - Chapter 11

Episode Date: February 2, 2019

Chapter 11: Frozen Stocean. It's February 2nd 2019 and Hertfordshire has been coated in the gametes of the Ice Gods, trying to thwart ye noble Ftone Clearerf for anofer feafon. Richard has some tips on how to stone clear in the snow, but to be honest, this is first proper go and he's just making it up as he goes along. The stone cupboard that is the ground is frozen shut and yet does that not make the discovery of the odd stone all the more valuable? How many stones did you clear today? So dare you judge a man who has cleared more stones than you? Will Richard meet any of the superstitious villagers or will they be scared away by the white blanket that has enveloped the field? Will he find any ammo and manage to hit the sign post? What will become of the world if he can't find a stone to throw into the ditch to calm the angry snow gods? Etc. Picture by Kittie-Wai More stone clearing info at www.richardherring.com/warmingup. Warning! Includes some non-stone material

Stone clearing with Richard Herring And ye snow, for he doth come, and ye stone cleareth, they doth never know. What to do, for who thou put the ethatones on the table. That's an old bit of writing from the past about stone clearing from the problem of winter coming. And very apt here we are on the 2nd of February 2019, it's approaching 9 o'clock. And we're going out to Saturday, we're going out to clear some stones, if we can. The snows she has come, and she has fallen, and the field is actually coming up to it now, and it's not as bad as it was yesterday, but certainly some sprigs of shoots of peas,

plants probably poking through this white blanket, but there are not many stones on show, and there will be some bits of the field less specter than others just in the moment. Some people might think, hey well, day off stone clearing, that as you will not clear a field of stones, you have to come out, and this is a specialist podcast as we of exactly what we have to do to cope with conditions like this. It is actually snowing again a little bit now. I literally cannot see a stone in front of my face, that's how thick the snow is. My face is quite near to the snow. And what do we do? That's the question. This is actually my first proper go at this, so I'll be learning along with you

how we cope with this. Now this little bit of path is, actually the snow has melted here, so for example you can do a bit of housekeeping, I managed to, there's some, I mean these stones on the shore basically, but get a little bit further away from the shore into the headland. Away from, as far away from the field as possible. Yeah, it's going to be a tough day and we're going to be learning together. So I'm trying to kick away some of the snow. That doesn't really work with snow, it kind of impacts the snow further around the ground, you get rid of the top layer of snow. Should I stop and try and warm the snow with my breath and it's melted and see if there are stones beneath? Probably not, that probably would

take too long. I'm going to take my daughter to the little gym in an hour and a half, so I don't really have time for that. It's moving, good girl, hi. Come on darling, good girl. And a man behind the fence that I'd like to throw stones at is just moving some holly out of his garden back into the field, which I would have imagined is illegal. Oh a muffy here, helping me out here doing, weeing onto the snow, having created a little hole, yellow hole in the snow, and there is a stone in there, but you know what, I think that once it's not today's, it's not the day for that stone, I think I'll leave that there to go. This is the kind of point where as a stone clearer you wish you had done a bit more preparatory work

during the year and made a few reasonable sized piles of stones just out in the field a little bit that you could now use as your, if you were a squirrel or something that would be a pile of nuts, it'd be snowy, you would return to those nuts, if you think of it in that way as me as a big squirrel, but instead of nuts and acorns, my fodder, sheebie, stones, and if I'd done that, that would make this a lot more fruitful. I'm sorry, I just started by a bird there, thought it was some shaggy any, even though I'm not actually collecting any stones at all at the moment, still paranoid that I might be seen. So yeah, this is looking further around the field, it does look greener out there, but obviously the danger about hassle-hopping at this point is

there is evidence you cannot cross that ICC without leaving footprints that could be used by a persistent and dedicated stone clearer murderer to find you, match up your boots, say this is the guy, let's kill him in his bed, which you know is the kind of thing that happens almost daily in this religion, that's not even people who see stones that I found, oh this is pretty good, that's a good discovery, oh that's lovely, just the first patch of green I've come to kicked away there, the earth actually quite damp beneath the snow, and I found good fist-sized sort of oval stone and right next to it another good sized stone, so even if nothing else comes out today, that is two stones there, that's a couple like three away earlier, if you are keeping

count, some people will have asked or someone personally emailed in, Holly Tree, Holly Tree, and asked if a robot voice could count the stones, that is not how things work, the stone glows old and not, I mean I have access to a high-powered computer that can with a little calculating can do things like calculating, calculating one, two, it could do that, there it is, it's just counted those two, but that is not technology that would have been anywhere near available to the stone clearers, ye stone clearers, the tone clearer off oldy, with an E on the end, and so I would not use that to count the stones, if you want to count along at home, if you want to go through all the pictures and work out how many stones you think have been

clear, I haven't mentioned them all by name of course, you would have to work out from grunts and picking up and estimate how many that was, today I can tell you that those four stones have come off this field and two of them were basing off the field already, and very tiny, yeah it's a well it's strange that actually coming up here for some reason, the other half of the field as we go up it looks a lot greener, although around the edge as I say almost as if the snow gods have laid a trap to try and catch the stone clearers who would be forced of old when stones were all they had to take the chance to go out, be discovered, be killed, it's just around the edge so it's

we have to be careful, we don't want to be discovered, anything we do that could give away our identities is a danger to us, not only did the stone clearers in the past have to cope with his extreme cold, basically knew to put that heffy and nappy they would wear, they also, this was prime stone clear hunting season really, even if they were seen they could run but they could be tracked, but yet they couldn't take time off that's the thing, they couldn't say oh well we'll give it a break because what were they going to do, and some of my cairns, like literally covered in snow as well, this is depressing to see this mineral stuff coated by whatever ice is, it's not mineral is it, I don't know what it's made of,

it's not good though, wherever it is, it's surely destructive to life, whatever this force is, literally you can't see a stone anywhere, I'm looking right into the horizon, I mean I could risk a little Hasselhoff out but to Hasselhoff to where they, you cannot even see a stone, that is probably of the greatest order, Hasselhoff thing is really about oh I've spotted the stone I'm going to get it, you can't do just an exploratory Hasselhoff, that's what it's always been called, David Hasselhoff was actually named after the technique, rather than the other way around, that is there, because in the ancient days it would have been half or half, and we will be learning Anglo-Saxon English as we go around, of course I had started by just

teaching you the, the main thing you have to know is that s is a pronounced f and written as f, also of course th is generally, I changed it all y, so y is the y, that doth, it becomes doth rather than doi, because doi would be stupid, so it's doth, so that th is a fast sound, and that's pretty much all you need to know about Anglo-Saxon, that's all it is, and I'm going to say I am planning in future to do at least one but maybe all of these podcasts in full Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Saxon all the way through for true believers of the Stoneclown, I don't want to call it a cult as a religion, a cult as a negative, but you do have to have the dedication of a cult member and be prepared to do anything that I say in celebration of the gods, of course,

just lost the thought, I had a really interesting thought to talk about when it's gone, so yes still on a tally of four stones for this long trudge, oh that's what I was going to say, we've had some statistics in 7000 people download this podcast every week, so thank you for doing that, I'm presumable that 7000 Stoneclowns out there, I don't want to know details, I don't want to know who you are just in case I am caught and interrogated, it's better that we don't know who we are, do try if you're caught and interrogated, I mean you know who I am, please don't give up that information, yeah it's difficult to know really what to do here at all, in some ways it might be better just to

say well you know maybe don't stone clear it when there's snow, I'm just going to have an exploratory, I see the ground is so hard under here and I don't want to take it, oh I found a stone but I think it's so embedded in the ground, that's the problem is you find these stones and this pathway I was hoping would be at least some dog walkers would have melted some snow here, oh no it's a leaf, oh no it's a stone, ah there's a stone just that's 5 today if you're catching, if you're calculating, I would set your own computer to count if you find it too complicated, hard to know where to throw the stone because where are the nests and the pens along here, you don't know this is a terrible trick, in the fight they remove

the stones, nature abhors a vacuum but she abhors the stone clear even more and she will do all she can to stop this righteous task, well I have a stone in my hand I don't really know where to put it it's only a small one it looks like a piece of flint that would have been worked into the into the hand of a stonage man, the edge looks like a cutting edge, it could be genuinely a tool from angler taxons for example from stonage times, you could do some good cutting with the edge there so but I don't believe stones should be used for such purposes, stones should just be used to be thrown to the side of the field, not as tools, that's insane, these stones come on grow up either night, that's what I say to a stonage man, get some metal mate, what are you thinking,

I found a little can and it's gone, it's got quite neatly gone on top of there, that's nice five stones down and you might say rich that's not very many stones for the time we're already investing in this, I mean there's been at least 12-13 minutes, that's like I'm gonna stone every two minutes, well it's five stones that were once on the field that are now no longer on the field so I'm shouting going on in the distance but I can't see anyone around, I think the weak people in my village have been scared by this blanket of inexplicable white stuff and afraid to come out here as they are for so many, they fear so much, they're very superstitious, vectless people as we've explained before and Wolfie's off what she found, she's running off into the field like she's

greeting an old friend or there's a rabbit, I see nothing, I think she's gone insane, she's really run a long distance there for literally no reason, now she's stopped, maybe she's spotted a stone, I am hoping to train this dog to collect stones for me, especially my daughters that'll be helpful if they, she'll probably carry six or seven stones in her mouth at any one time, I need to teach her to identify stones, pick them up with a map, keep them in a map and then spit them into chem and so far I have not yet trained her to do the basic job of identifying stones and she's just gone on a crazy run for no reason, so who knows what she's thinking, she's insane, so I'm just approaching the place where the controversial part of this

podcast, the edge of this field where I sometimes transgress all the rules of stone clearing, now there are no rules of stone clearing but really one of the main rules is that you must not transgress another stone clearing field, you must clear your own field before you even consider going to another field but as I think we've debated to some level, well you know the debate is me saying it and you listening and occasionally a couple of you knowing and telling how evil I am, I'm going to use this periphery wall and I think if that's okay because there are no rules to stone clearing even though this I am transgressing one of the major rules and interestingly this field so neglected by whoever should be stone clearing it that they that literally I've just picked up two massive

stones right just on the path by that that were sticking out of the snow so you know what I'm saying is it was worth it wasn't it, so those two stones as I say going on top of the wall that was once there to rebuild that wall possibly they were once a part of that wall I'm only putting in the back where they belong and it's helping me it's helping me if I move on to be the stone clear of that field next it's also helping any stone clearer who was working on that field in a non-aggressive way I don't think I'm transgressing in any serious way in any case this is all about transgression how can you transgress the transgressors that is a good question and now walking up the path I hope this path might be

clear of snow again by people walking across the field but if anything the people who've walked here just compacted the snow on top of the stones just desperately looking for an iceberg above the actual ice this time which is delightful imagery and I found a little ping-pong ball-sized stone and now too far I would say from the edge to throw it to the edge I'm going to carry it all the way to the middle in some distance but it might be my only find of this long walk across the field we'll see it was just sitting atop the snow weirdly it knew it was its time it wanted to go um so we're on six stones I think or eight if you include the two from the other field you might take but that's you which those are a takeaway so down to four if you keep your own score

as I say eight stones that were once in one place and now another place have I wasted my day I don't think I have and how many stones have you moved slightly moved in the snowy field today so before you judge me I would ask you to judge thyself or yay yeah now because we must be still alive and that one is this a stone or is this a dog poo atop the I think it's a stone I'm going to go in could be a dog poo it's a stone it's another stone weirdly somehow on top stuck like an ice cube in a freezer to the ground you just pull it and it zips apart with a little so two stone and they're cold these these stones I'm wearing my stone clothing gloves my new ones and they're not very thick but boy can I feel the cold from these

two stones uh I use the ice cube metaphor but I mean they almost literally are ice cubes apart from being made of stone and you could use them as ice cubes and of course back in the day stone clearers those that lost their vision and their morality would occasionally take these cold stones into the vision sell them as drink cooling devices for the villagers that's wrong of course there are no rules to stone clear but one of the rules is clearly you must not take stones off the field they must stay on the perimeter except in very exceptional circumstances you mustn't bring stones onto the field from somewhere else of course that's even worse of course it was winter none of the villagers would really have wanted cold drinks they wanted to defend in hot drinks

and they would they have no fire in those days so they weren't able to warden themselves at all so the idea of chilling there they would just been drinking ditch water I suppose or be a made out ditch water and the idea of making that colder was an anathema to these people and the people trying to just throw stones into their drinks were often just bludgeoned to death yeah it looked for a distance like there might be because of the green shoots above the snow that there might be more on offer here but really I can see nothing with the very occasional stone having forced its way through the snow to the surface knowing this was a chance to escape to fulfill their destiny of being on a can around Teverett Hill that is their destiny

just those two are here and the others know where to be seen so I know they're under there they're sleeping waiting and the sun is shining on the central can in a beautiful way it's great they're all stones that particularly brown and uh yeah I could take a photo of that I would but I would spoil the recording now I thank you uh to uh believe it's why uh who will have created the image for this podcast is what she imagines I look like as I'm clearing stones from the field she was at the gig in Wolverhampton a bit last night in Bilston and gave me this drawing and it's pretty accurate I have to say how I look she wanted me to take my shirt off at the gig to show her that she had got the physique right but it's not inappropriate um

and but she is right I do look like that so I hope you can do that picture thank you to Way or May no it was way that was why it was why is that right I'm sorry I'm going wrong so anyway do send any pictures we can't return them but uh and I probably will just burn them it's interesting to know what what what pictures you're conjuring up in your mind of what's going on here because it is a very heroic I mean the amazing thing I mean I could start throwing snow off the field that seems pointless and of course in a way the snow is our friend because in a few days it will melt it will soften up the earth and then what bounty we shall find and I mean hopefully not literally bounties but stones which you probably will find and

uh it will make the days to come more much easier so that is the way you have to look at it this has been a disappointing trudge around the field for eight stones I repeat though eight stones that have been moved to the correct places the possible confession of two of those stones depending on your your stone flow morality um and that is not a wasted life that is a life lived to the full it's about your perspectives it's about understanding what's important in the world and what is important I think is clearing the field of stones against the wishes probably of the farmer and it being pretty much impossible to do anyway uh and making a podcast to it and that is what life is about and that is what the the first stone clears understood I'm actually

transgressing across the field now I'm trying to keep the snow up to disguise my footprint so it just looks like someone's skiing across here actually and I don't have skis so that will take the pressure off me I'm talking to one of the posher members of the field so I thought I found a stone under this but it's a piece of wood which is really useless to me we're approaching the uh oh look at this now that's good wow look at that wolfie and that one was just lying there I didn't kick any that's what that's where stone clearing you understand what you're doing and that's where the stone stone praying gods let you know that your work is appreciated all that walk and then just a little unsnowy patch of the earth a huge um I mean this is as big as the money's hand

and I'm going to attempt I'll pick up this is another little one here so I've got a couple attempts at the stone at the uh at the wooden pole that you know I like to throw from a distance too let's see if I can hit it oh just miss wolfie watch out wolfie the big one's coming in surely I can't miss with this and now I didn't and it's left a little mark they're only did it hit it square I hope you cheered it's uh it left a muddy mark which is what we're trying to do isn't it that's what all of us here we're trying to leave a muddy mark on the earth to say I was here I existed and that's part of what this is about and actually this area of the path is what I was hoping the other path would be like very much melted snow damp earth and I've actually picked up four stones here

which is kind of practically half on top of what I've done for the whole rest of the day just in one little bit of kick them when you've probably heard and out they come I'm just looking for a good place to drop them and there's actually no snow down here at all oh there's a lovely big one there again on the path and oh I've got it out that's a lovely one it's coming good you see the stone gods will reward you and that is who you know other people would have given in and other people might have looked at this for example what's the point coming out here um but this is the point this whole bit like it's incredible there's loads of stones now and this is like you know in the desert when they found bread under a tree or something in the bible something like that hadn't

it that this is stones on a path that arguably you know should stay here to keep the path solid and there's a little bit of view of the edge of the field here and yeah just picking up some nice tiddlers little five tiddlers there so you know the numbers are racking up it's now a literally an uncountable number of stones that have been removed from the field stones that are lesser stone clear might not have discovered until another time due to their fear of this mysterious white substance yeah and I picked up a nice another nice one out of the path there oh and some more here just looking around oh there is a dog walking at the heading in the other direction and so they won't

see what I'm doing and yeah nice load again just right on the edge of the field lots of tiddlers which will go on my main can I mean they're not going to make much of an immediate impact there but you know the hundred days of six or seven tiny stones six hundred stones I want the dog walker coming across the field towards me gonna have to quickly dip these down and get Wolfie on the lead before they see I think they've seen Wolfie come here and I'm still annoyed by that that bag of dog shit it's still behind my wall Wolfie come here Wolfie what did I say come here why are you being so naughty come on good enough we're going another time yeah I'm on sweet huh so I'm in full view now uh of another dog walker so too far away from me

to hear that I'm talking to myself uh can't be much I'm just going to kick one of the stones off the path into the edge there that would look surreptitious enough oh there's a nice one there and I just I've just used again a bit on this quite a lot just on the path that wouldn't there's loads down here so that's quite interesting the snow as I said perhaps that's how these stones grow the snow freezes but warms them somehow and lifts them to the surface because there's a lot of stones here that in this traditional area of no fecundity um it's a shame I can't really do much about it because there's someone right behind me looking over at me I could give the game away uh I think we've successfully got around the field

without properly meeting anyone apart from that guy behind the behind the fence he did look at me a bit aggrieved I think he might know I'm the guy checking stones it's fence um but he was never capturing him there's no evidence that it's me so uh like Jack the Ripper I will never be caught I'm not comparing myself in other ways it's just nothing caught a bit uh I'm not going to write letters to the police saying you know that you haven't got me yet I'm not an idiot uh that just helped hit them off you're going to keep when you've done a crime or something that's transgressive in society's rules at least I don't think this is a full-on imprisonment offence uh don't tell people about it or that

or you'll get caught it's just basic and it saddens me uh just the number of idiots you don't understand that right well I'm I'm now at the ditch where I've usually given an offering and now I'm slightly worried I won't be able to because we're now back here the snow that I've actually successfully for the first time managed to kick uh a bit of snow away and find the stone beneath that's again proof of the gods and that goes down to roughly where I think there's other stones are um because the ditch is fairly covered in snow so well I think we've seen today the difficulties inherent in stone clearing uh in winter stone clearing why so many of today's affluent middle-class stone clearers travel abroad during this season to climb it's where the stones uh are more visible

but I even though I am slightly middle-class um I don't uh agree with that at all another one if you're counting another one just kicked off there it's going to try and get this baby out so I can put this on the entrance stone it was two there two quite nice ones again from the path but uh they've worked their way to the top somehow and this is going on my entrance came which just never seems to grow just however many stones I put on it it looks pretty much the same um so that's it well even the field would have a nice little walk around it hasn't taken as long as usual largely due to not having to stop to pick up stones um and a lot of ways it was a lot more enjoyable for that um gulf according to spike milligan was a good walk spoiled uh

so I don't know what the hell stone clearing is but without the stone clearing bit of it it's actually quite enjoyable um that's something to think about and how you could just walk around the field of course you know and it's interesting to survey and some people like to plan so you can do 200 300 walks around your field before you even pick up a single stone if that's the kind of person you are um and oh four feet going for a bird that's how you enjoy today's podcast um it's been an interesting one I think um it's very much I think for expert stone clearers some of you may have more experience of clearing in snow than I have if you're a Scandinavian stone clear please get in touch and let me we know how that goes um Sven a signpost from Scandinavia emailed in to say

yeah it's difficult we were right I think what you said in the next podcast I am guessing about snow there is difficult to do stone clearing the snow but we do it so shut up that's what Sven signpost said so I'm in a bit rude a lot of stone clearers though just because they're they're so used to be having a field on their own they lose a lot of the conventions of society and they're just rude people um which I don't like I think you can still say polite um and you know you should be nice to other people because most of them don't clear stones and don't have your sense of direction and purpose so we're at home now um family might be in the kitchen so we're just going to have to

play a little bit cool trigger a little bit cool play it cool uh and off here so it's fine so we don't have to play it cool we can be uncool I mean but we are cool because we're stone clearers right there's seven thousand of you out there I hope next time we look at the figures there'll be ten thousand then fifteen thousand and then everyone in the world and then every every stone everyone in the world went out and cleared ten stones a day there'd be no more stones the stones would be done we could call this a day and that selfishness probably within a month I mean that's the selfishness that gets to me but until that day one man will do that job and hopefully one other man will see the man doing the job and think I'd like to do that job too I know maybe a woman will go a bit stupid

I'll give it a go not children this is one of the rules of stone appearing as you must be over 16 no children must be allowed to attend this um and you may call me a dreamer but I think one day it's possible that everyone in the world and their dogs if they train them could maybe just go out in one day solve this problem build the walls that can be seen through space we can move on to solving other issues like world hunger and stuff but until that day what's going to happen after Brexit that sort of thing until that day it's just me me and Wolfie you weren't much use Wolfie and now you're looking me like you want some breakfast oh well you know maybe if I only feed you if you gather ten stones a day maybe then you start to gather stones you can let me and rub against

me all your life because if I'm great you listen actually listen to what I'm saying you could be a help here and if you've got all your other dog friends involved we might not even need the people anyway I think the podcast obviously finished a while ago Wolfie I just hope I remember to press stop because it'd be embarrassing if this went out I'm not mad you know I don't actually believe my dog can talk back to me but she can understand so thanks for listening um do come and check out Richard's the square fit podcast it's another podcast I just not as good as this it's um it's a bit of a stupid one where I just talk to people rather than to myself and um that's starting up again from the 4th of February at the square theater and then traveling around

all the countries as I said it was a war happened last night and it was nice it was nice to get out and see some human beings who weren't made of stone talk to them they they actually do talk about it's not just a romantically conversation you have with them in your head it's that naturally talking and you know it's like they're your friends so come and see that and uh listen into that if you like some for some reason it gets more downloads than this but that will change and we'll see you next time on Stone Clearing Richard Herring thanks for thanks for listening you have been listening to Stone Clearing with Richard Herring and Wolfie the dog also featuring the man chucking his cuttings over the fence of his back garden into the field which

I think is illegal I'm glad I chuck stones at his fence now thank you to the British comedy guide thank you to Mike Cosgrave who wrote this beautiful music thank you to Michael Sheen the voice of the Stones I mean who do you think it was John Luke Picard I don't even know him how would I get him you idiots he's not even real