Stone Clearing With Richard Herring - Chapter 32

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

Stone Clearing Chapter 32 (partial) Rust and Dust - It's an evening do walk on 27th August 2019 and Rich is trying to remember how to stone clear, but also wondering how the field and cairns will have changed in the four weeks he's been away. It turns out it's a lot. But also the effort required in landing a huge stone clinging to the stocean with all its might causes something to go terribly wrong and for this to become another legendary podcast beset by technical difficulties, which will make Herring question what he is even doing here.

Stone Clearing, with Richard Herring. Who will be? Who will be? Come here. Who will be? Come here. Who will be? Come here. Who will be? Well, hello there. It's Tuesday the 27th of August, 1852 p.m. I mean, don't need to say that. It's 1852. And I'm going on my first Stone Clearing for quite some time, my fan friends.

I wanted to capture this one. It might have been a very long episode. Just doing a little evening dog walk. Just got Wolfie back from my in-laws today. And beautiful hot day, bit of rain, but basically global warming, destroying the planet. And sorry about that, everyone, but the stones will survive. I wanted just to capture me arriving at the field. I've no idea what's happened in the last five, six weeks, since the last year. The crops may have been taken in. They may still be there.

Someone may have cleared all the stones. So I might put all the stones back. So I'm walking out of the path towards the field now. Wolfie's just in a wee. Real excitement. Will I see a field shorn of its wheat? Or will the crops still be high? Some crops have been taken in. I noticed around the place. And, oh, yeah, I think there may have been some harvest.

I mean, there's still a, how wonderful, yeah, there's still some stubble across the field. It hasn't been yet plowed, which is obviously the exciting time. The ground is hard as a rock and covered in, I mean, it may be almost impossible to get any stones. It's covered in shorn wheat stems. I literally cannot see, even on this path, I can't see. What I can see is hay on the other side of the field, stubble. And, yeah, and just no sign of any stones just here in the field. Looking around to see if I'm being observed.

In the path, I found a little anchor, so I can at least get a few stones out of the path. Yeah, well, it's going to, we are approaching that exciting time when this, the remainder of the stubble is taken away and the earth will be churned up. And we will see what delights have been lurking beneath the soil. And I feel I haven't really got as much of the field done as I'd hoped before this eventuality. Oops, got some sunglasses. Ending there with a few loose stones off the path. It's kicking that one away and we'll be excited to play the game. But it's a scene of some desolation, some few years of wheat.

And then the edge of the field has survived the cull. We'll just take a photo of this. Just to get an image of what we're dealing with. It's still running. Yeah, we're still going. Well, it's weird to think that that time I've been away, Wolfie just did a big poo. I have to clear this one up. There being no hiding place any longer.

No good burying over there. There's pooed over here. No good kicking up the leaves over there, mate. At least the straw provides a blanket of poo cover. Taking a couple more stones I've seen out the path. I've seen just one because this one's deep under, doesn't want to come up yet. So just a few stray bits of stone that I can see where the straw has been kicked away. If I can get beneath there, that's quite a nice little, I mean these are all in the small spectrum. That one's small, small, medium probably. Maybe not quite that small.

Wolfie's glad to be back on this field, she's pissing and shitting her little bottom out, her dog bottom. I mean, I'm not sure that's where the weed comes from. I don't know the biologist. I'm not interested in that. Yes, I feel a bit like a newbie in a new world. I've forgotten more than I remember about this job. Rusty, confused by the environment, the terrain. Brambles. Oh, nicely growing here on the edge, we might have to come out and pick some brambles. There are some nice ones there.

I didn't want to fancy having to dip in myself right now. Gorging till my face is blood red. The juice has the humble blackberry. Of course, it's not really ending to stop me going out onto the field now, I don't think I want to mind. But it is almost impossible to see anything of any worth here. And yeah, it's just that ground so hard, so baked hard. I mean, I'm very much looking forward to the next stage whenever that shall be. We are trying to plan a filmed version of stone clearing, which is one of your Kickstarter rewards if you took part in that Kickstarter.

And my fear is we'll come on a day when the farmers here doing loads of stuff and they'll question us. On a day like today, when actually stone clearing is practically impossible. A little bit of soil poking around here for some reason. So I can take out a few, a nice egg, or round one more sphere and a globular, tiny globular one. A few extra ones, these can go. They're small, but they can all go on to my can in this corner of the field, which again remains visible with so many covered. I mean, it's more just a scree now rather than a can. I have tried to spread it out. It's a scree of stones on the edge, but I don't know what it is.

The sun on its journey down past the horizon, as I understand it, the sun is the one that's moving. We get on the flat plate, which the sun revolves around. That's what the stone clearers of old believe. I see no reason not to assume that is the truth. And if you go on the internet, you can find plenty of evidence to support that theory. And if we're going around the sun, why is the sun moving? Why is the sun going down, not us going up? It's simple, it's simple. And the sun, of course, just a giant ball of burning stone.

One day I'll get my hands on it. That will be a great day in the history of stone clearing. I'll be on some of it to try and pull it down a bit, just to help me move it around to where it needs to be. Keep moving wolves. Come on. I know you're excited. It does look like the aftermath of some kind of terrible disaster, a nuclear attack on wheat. It's a little bit mowing down to the same level. Probably it's crunching under my feet. The dog's after a bird. The bird's sensing the approaching wolf. It flies a little bit further away. The dog can't be bothered to go that far.

And the chase is done. So we're going to cut across the field. The path is still here. I know that this organic material will disappear soon enough, but it's frustrating right now. Just a couple of stones there poking above. I'm near enough to the edge to just toss them all. One hasn't really gone that far once safely into the edge. The other one has to be cleared another day because I am, like that bird, too lazy to go too far. Oh, there's another nice bit. So a few stones have found their way already above. A bump in wheat and those three have all at least progressed towards the edge of the field. Sun now. I'm in about 11 o'clock from the way I'm headed back across the field.

And yes, slightly less in the way of vegetation actually out here. But we're a bit too far next to it. I just threw a stone. A small one. Back towards the edge of the field. No dog walkers out here. Perhaps they stood down thinking my absence means I've given in. There's often a good tactic if you suspect you're being observed and pursued by people, robots. Judy Murray, who I actually saw in Edinburgh, I think I did. She passed me on George Street. I mean, that seems a coincidence that I was talking about her following me around here on the field. And then there she is again. Maybe just checking that I generally wasn't on the field.

I mean, I know it was definitely Judy Murray this time she wasn't in the distance. I saw her face where last time it was just someone who looks like it might be Judy Murray. But I think it would be a brave man or woman who suggested that that coincidence was just a coincidence. I mean, I just called it a coincidence, but I'm not saying it is a coincidence. I'm saying you would call it a coincidence, but it is not a coincidence because I'm actually saying the opposite by calling it a coincidence. Two little stones I've got on my way across here that I'm carrying towards the main camp. I mean, they will not make any difference. But two stones like this every day, 365 days a year.

We're talking about a significant amount of stones or just stepped on something there. Yeah, it is a stone as I suspected from the way it fell, but it is quite nice or quite heavily in the ground. Some things approaching. Just going to watch out. I may have a few weeks here without them realising what's going on. This baby is really not wanting to give up its position. I'll give it another minute to try. No, it's deep in. It's a big one.

This baby might be the one that got away. Oh, he was struggling. I found a little stone I can take out for kids shouting distance. Oh, no, this baby is too far under. This is one. I mean, if I don't get it though, the prowl comes this one. They go under and be lost. Fucking hell. I think we might have found the mother stone.

Don't usually persist this longing for fear of someone catching me. And of course, I have no cover now. There is someone there in the distance. It's a fucking huge baby. Just splatting myself right in the face with loads of soil. It is slightly moving. Luckily, my sunglasses are done. I'm going to break my towel. I mean, can I give up on this thing?

It's moving. It's shifting. I've got it. I've got the fucker. Oh, well, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did. Sadly, at this point in the recording, my phone turned itself off. I don't know if it was the excitement of extracting that. What was actually quite a big stone, as I said later, as I was wondering if you were actually talking to myself, which I didn't realise at the time, which just makes me ridiculous.

I called myself and it wasn't recorded. That's just nuts. It was about as big as any of the other stones I put together that I got today. It was not a great haul. You missed a few bits and pieces, nothing much. There was a woman with pink trousers who I'd worried to see me get that big stone out. It took a while to get it out. I don't know what it was that made it. I'm not crying.

I ate a blackberry on the way back and it's, let's see, got caught in my throat. So it's a truncated podcast. I don't want to try and recreate what happened. I've chucked a couple of stones in the dish that stopped Brexit. There's presumably a dish that's for Brexit going on, but also the weeks away have probably helped Brexit a bit. So I apologise for that. And a couple of emails from Harold Blackberry, who was upset that there weren't many.

I mean, it should be, I just read his email out, but I must have deleted it as well. Apart from memories where there hasn't been any podcasts out for a while, and he doesn't pay his licence fee for this, and he won't pay his licence fee until there are some more. And then there was also Trevor Bustimetable, who was glad there weren't any more podcasts, because he doesn't listen to podcasts,

and he's glad that he can double or not listen to them if they're not happening. But as I said, how does he know he's emailing in? I came back into the house and my wife was cooking, and I had to close the podcast surreptitiously without finding out. But as it turned out, I wasn't recording. I was just a man walking around a field, removing stones, not doing a podcast and talking to myself. Some cyclists went past.

I took the piss at them because they were talking about running. There are middle-aged men trying to elongate their lives, not realising that there's no point in trying to get a few more years of fitness. Your body will decay. And the only way to ensure that you live forever is by putting stones together. But my main care has really collapsed and fallen down. I don't know if someone's been kicking it, or if that's just nature fighting back against me.

But if four weeks away can do that to a care, what's four millennia going to do to it? I'm starting to wonder whether my work is even worthwhile. Anyway, especially if it just goes wrong. But anyway, you missed out on that. This is a truncated partial chapter. And in a way, is that norm not more artistic, in a way? Anyway, we'll be back with a proper one next week.

I'm sorry, it wasn't a great one. I'm not going to pretend it was. But it was exciting getting that stone up, wasn't it? But that was the moment that God said, no, enough, no more. See you next time on StoneCleanRigitarian. StoneCleanRigitarian started me rich chain with Wolfie the Dog doing poos and wheeze,

or her heart's content. There was also an old lady in the distance wearing pink trousers with white hair, but we didn't get on to her because the tape broke down. And it was a tape. Thank you to The Voice of the Photons, Michael Faheen, and thank you to Michael Cosgrave for doing this music. Bye.

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