I never thought I'd see that day when I would be placing my nose within a few centimetres of a tree and spending up to half an hour in this way examining the lichens and mosses. There is quite a variety when you get to know them.
Trees that fell in the October 1987 storm, oak in particular, have a treasure trove of glories on which to feast the eyes.
My purpose is to help achieve a Site of Special Scientific Interest for 50 acres of ancient woodland here in East Sussex.
It took some persuading for me to agree to give a talk, TED Talk-style, without notes. I was prepared. I did that memory trick of having a journey around the house. I picked seven spaces and had seven themes. This also worked for days of the week.
I practised with mindmaps; if I woke up at night, I would talk my way around the speech until I fell asleep.
It went well.
The talk was on the British West Indies Regiment in the First World War—a bit niche, I know. However, I have always been interested in their experience and that of African Americans in the American Expeditionary Force. The pain and unfair treatment of a person based on the colour of their skin make for interesting history.
My talk came on the day the radio had two big stories: the call for reparations by the ancestors of enslaved people of the British Empire and Israel's strike on Iran, i.e. the Middle East and Palestine. And where does my story reach its climax? An attack over the River Jordan by men from the 1st, then 2nd BWIR in one of their few combat deployments alongside men from New Zealand and West Kent, and a Jewish Battalion while supported by the Punjabi Mounted Artillery. They were led by a New Zealander who, unlike too many of his fellow British Commanders, had no difficulty sending 'coloured men' into battle.
A year later, and in the process of being demobbed, all the BWIR regiments, those who had had military training, 1,2,3 & 4, and those recruited as labour corps 5 to 11, were encamped in Taranto, Italy, under a vile, racist British Commander whose actions incited riot and mutiny. Court Martialled, 47 men were sentenced to between 5 and 20 years of hard labour, the entire BWIR were stripped of guns, and having been returned to Britain, they were shipped back to the Caribbean, missing the July 1919 Victory Parades in London and Paris.
I started my talk pretty much as stated above. My voice was angry. Many black and Asian faces were listening attentively.
I then doubled back and cherry-picked content as it came to mind from the seven stages of the talk:
The British Empire in the early 20th century
The Caribbean in the British Empire as a colony rather than a dominion.
The British Army and its rules
The Outbreak of War
Delays in releasing men from the Caribbean, then recruitment, and travel to Europe
Military Training, first in Seaford, then in Egypt (for BWIR 1&2)
The Military Experience of BWIR 1&2, compared to 3&4
The Labour Corps and Duties in France and Flanders 'King George's Steam Engine'
Demob
Southern Britain again (riots in Winchester)
The Caribbean 1919 to the 1960s with labour movements, political agitation, Pan-Africanism and ultimately, independence
I then took questions. I enjoyed it. I was asked to talk again the next day, asked if I had other local history talks and agreed to give a talk on the billeting of 10,000 men in Lewes in September 1914, and also picking up another subject I have researched and written about ... the winterbourne, its course (and its flora and fauna).
I feel confident that I will prepare in a way that will make many talks possible: nutrition for junior elite athletes, fungi of ancient woodlands, war art and war fiction of the Great War ... cooking with chickpeas! Rewilding your garden, lino cut relief prints, life drawing, coaching age group swimmers. Take your pick. I should be able to talk about teaching online, too. After all, I did an MA in it and have taught online!
I should still be at the Open University. Maybe Ill return as a post-grad, or as an employee (as before). Who knows. Anything goes.
I'm doing a MOOC. (I haven't heard that in a very long time) on FutureLearn. It is work-related. FutureLearn and Coursera have found a pattern for online learning that works. It was a dreamworld in 2001 when I started this course. And not much further advanced in 2010 when I completed it. Or thereabouts. It all seems so obvious now.
Learning has moved on. Knowledged acquisition has moved on. Knowledge application is changing. And then there is AI ... which I suppose is assisting me with writing this in the background given that I subscribe to Grammarly and am trialling Google Gemini.
I try to be analogue as often as I am digital. You don't coach swimmers with an App, I seek out and analyse trees in woods ... not something for Google Earth (yet).
Markstakes Common is an ancient wood in East Sussex. Over the last 30 months, I have made over 200 trips to learn about veteran trees, discover hundreds of fungi, and get to know this exceptional site of diverse, exceptional habitats. I hope to be around to repeat a survey of the same trees each decade to monitor their health and the health of an ancient wood that warrants designation as a site of particular scientific interest.
Veteran Oak (tree 13 in Markstakes Common) Featured on the Woodland Trust's Ancient Tree Inventory
Thirty-four veteran trees were identified in the November/December 2010 to January/February 2011 tree survey and verified by the Woodland Trust. Jonathan’s research has resulted in a further twenty-seven trees being verified as veteran trees - with an additional twenty-six being verified as ‘notable’. These are on the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory. No trees are thought to be ‘ancient’. The definitions notable, veteran and ancient relate to a combination of factors dependent on the maturity phase of a particular species of tree. Yew and oak, for example, reach their final phase of life centuries after Beech and hornbeam, while ash, and certainly birch and hawthorn, can pass through to late maturity in a hundred to 150 years.
Thirty-three have fungi associated with them, with Bracket fungus (Ganoderma applanatum) on five trees (with two of these trees either long since dead and another two fragmented), two with Hoof Fungus (Fomes fomentarius), several with King Alfred’s Cakes (Daldinia concentrica), two with Cinder Fungus (Kretzschmaria deusta), two with oyster mushroom (three if you include a notable tree), others with porcelain or slimy beech fungus (Oudemansiella mucida), two with Split Gill Schizophyllum commune), one with Bitter Oyster (Panelius stripticus) two with Oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus), one with veiled oyster (Pleurotus dryinus) and seventeen trees with the fungus species ‘not yet identified’, usually because whilst there is evidence of a fungus present, the fruiting body hasn’t been seen.
Thirty-four were identified in the survey from November/December 2010 to January/February 2011. Jonathan has added fifty-three trees, of which twenty-seven have been verified as veteran trees, and the remainder ‘notable’. They were added to the Woodland Trust Ancient Tree Inventory between March and September 2024.
Nine veteran trees appear on boundary banks, the most promising places for further discoveries. Two of these trees are Trees of National Special Interest: the magnificent chaliced pollarded veteran hornbeam towards the western boundary with Furzeley Farm Paddock and the long fallen but still living hornbeam on the southern boundary with Starvecrow Wood. This potential for further discoveries should keep us all intrigued and hopeful about the future of our tree survey.
The widest girths go to a Beech (tree 10) with a girth of 6.13m in 2010, a Beech (tree 2) girth of 4.86 in 2010 and now 5.09m in 2024, as well as recently added Ash coppices (5.81, and 5.33) (trees 23b & 33b)
The new additions by species are Downy Birch, Holly, Wild Apple, Purging Buckthorn and Field Maple.
There are more veterans: Ash, Field Maple, Beech, Hornbeam, Holly, and Downy Birch to add. The twenty-six notable trees of Markstakes Common on the Ancient Tree Inventory include Goat Willow, Crack Willow, Beech, Ash, Oak, and Hornbeam. Many other ‘notable’ trees will be added if a complete picture of the tree stock is required. Their presence is a valuable indication that this wood will continue to produce ‘veteran’ stock in the centuries to come.
Maybe I've found something to engage my busy mind. I can have multiple projects on the go, litter the house with sketch pads, cut and uncut blocks, fill 'Really Useful' boxes with materials and feel the satisfaction of completed exercises. When someone asks me to make a print all the better.
If you visit the Ancient Tree Inventory and float over Lewes you will find a lot of trees. Most identified are recognised as 'notable', a few 'veteran' and none 'ancient'.
An 'ancient' tree needs to be old for its species - in the last phase of its life and considerably decayed with lichens, moss and ivy likely, as well as signs of fungi and invertebrates. After the bet part of five months and 300 trees, I found one on a boundary bank between Markstakes Common (an ancient wood) and Starvecrow Wood near South Chailey.
The large root is wrapped around a long-gone trunk, now decayed away. The five stems (one significantly decayed) and the old epicormic shoots that emerged from the trunk as it decayed. This the ancient tree something of a ghost, but the living parts are nonetheless part of its regeneration.
I've had more luck with veteran trees having had a dozen or so verified. These are trees which do not need to be so old but have all the ancient characteristics: hollowing of trunk and branches, dead wood in the crown and on the ground, decay, moss, lichens and signs of invertebrates and fungi.
'Notable' makes up 280 of the trees I've identified and had verified. Depending on the species these can be bold, statement trees, significant in their locale, but in all likelihood mature, strong examples with many seasons left in them.
I've learnt to read trees; I can figure out their story. It's a changing picture.
There's a relevance to learning with the Open University to all of this! I liken it to studying a book. There's an OU 'How to Learn' or 'How to Read' book somewhere which describes the process: you read the book through once to get the gist of it, to become familiar with the 'landscape'; then you read it again, taking notes. On the third read you start to understand the arguments and connections - you see more. It is like this visiting a wood for the first time. I have learnt to go around with now expecations on the first trip. On the second and third trip I start picking out the trees that are significant. Only on the fourth or fifth trip do I raise an eyebrow at some curiosity that somewhere had escaped me until then.
A visit by The Woodland Trust to Markstakes Common confirmed that this ancient wood is exceptional. How the space is protected from us is another matter.
I am now a Woodland Trust 'Lost Woods' trained volunteer looking for ancient, veteran and notable trees in various spots around Sussex. We get 1km squares to 'do' based on where we live and where we visit. I am completing my home patch around the Winterbourne and Houndean Rise in Lewes, and Markstakes Common and surround woods and fields towards South Chailey.
You will find me, hi-vis jacket, tape measure and clipboard walking the woods and fields seeing what I can spot.
I'm giving a talk at the AGM of Friends of Markstakes Common.
I will be talking about how the 34 tress on the National Tree Register have fared since the last survey 13 years ago. A few have died, several have lost limbs, others bits, some appear to have changed very little at all. Its hard to take the long view of ancient trees such as oak, beech, hornbeam, silver birch or ash. Maybe the time to review is every 25 years, or in the case of oak trees, every 50 years? And to keep the process going for several hundred years.
My art and curiosity as a wannabe arborist and environmentalist/woodland manager finds me both drawing and photographing these trees often: across all seasons and in all weathers. I find strong wind attracts me to the woods ... It intrigues me that beech and oak has a different tensile strength, so oak can be spotted growing through a beech tree by the way it bends and blow out of sync with the 'host' tree. Snow is perfect to add highlights to the winter silhouette of a tree. Spring sees the woodland floor covered in wood anemones and bluebells.
The 'full-time employment' itch may have me decamp from printmaking to 'web editor' once more. We'll see. Meanwhile I'm working still on different approaches to getting colour onto a print of an ancient tree: monoprint mess at home without a large enough roller, painting onto acetate with a brush, or just a cloth dipped in thinners.
Things have come a long way since I graduated with my MA in Open & Distance Education. And further still from my first stirrings to undertake an OU MA in 2001 when I began, but didn't complete a course in the MA in Open & Distance Learning (as it was then called).
I often reflect on the state of the industry, how normalised learning online and its subset 'mobile-learning' has become. Platforms and apps abound making it easier for anyone, teacher trained or not, to put together a course.
I'm doing a short course on lino printmaking. It has all the ingredients you'd expect, a series of stepped progressions with video, whatever is said and shown supported with text and additional references and links, and access to a 'Forum' where fellow students doing the course post content and reflect on their progress. Unlike the OU 'in its day' there is no common start time and cohort of students, indeed this course I am doing it rather looks as if it could be 2 years since someone last posted to the forum so I am not holding out for a comment from the Tutor. The thought is there. And for £7.25 I think I'm getting value - some things you need to be shown, not just pick up from a book. In my case I've even had six months of face to face teaching so I can produce a reasonable print - what I needed was a refresher and this gives me just that, and some insights and tips to build upon before I embark on a set of ambitions prints.
Horses are tricky things to draw. Someone who knows horses will tell at a glance if the eyes are in the wrong place, the legs wouldn't work and it looks as if someone 'pinned the tail on' at a kid's birthday party. Trees are more forgiving, buildings better still. The human body is hardest of all - seven years of life drawing and I have a feel for it! But horses?!
I return to a scene in Northumberland of four horses in a paddock that has a huge, ancient beech tree in one corner. When it comes to the horses first, they have to look like horses - then a make of horse (I think 'breed' is the technical term!) will mean they are shorter, taller, fatter, perkier, hairier, or not ... and finally (as you'd want to achieve with a portrait of a person), they need to capture the character of the horse (even if it is a caricature: a Shetland pony is straight forward, maybe a cart-horse too, but there's everything else in between.
Once you think you have a drawing, or outline right this must then be transferred to a piece of lino or plywood, and the entire thing cut out. There is no going back (or I haven't found a way to do so). Therefore, after several days of 'cutting' and a few 'graphite rubbings' I ink up and print off an A3 sheet only to find that I've made the head and neck too large and the eye is in the wrong place. Who'd know? My sister was polite. I pointed out that the head was too big - she agreed. She'd been supplying me with pictures of feet all week so they looked OK - but not the head. My fault. I had drawn a larger, detailed head, photographed this, and superimposed it on the body without being careful enough to check back with the original. I hear my mother's voice over my shoulder (she died in 2012) - telling me to 'draw what you see'. Observation, constantly referring back to the real thing counts for a lot (not over referencing photographs).
Anyway. I thought of a solution overnight - I masked off the head, printed up and once dry I will, with great care, ink in a head. Basically, I'll tape a drawing to the French windows, overlay the part-print, draw in the correct head in pencil, then use black ink to finish it off. This isn't to be a finished print, as I will then cheat further by reducing the end result by 200-300%, printing off on fine paper and glue it to a monoprint + beech tree overlay.
Thirty-Four trees were recognised as 'notable' and in a few instances 'veteran': hornbeam, ash, beech, birch and oak. This was in 2011. Since then one tree has fallen, two died and one broken off at around 3m. Does that bring the number down to 30? My searches could add a further six to the list - trees missed a decade ago.
As I explore the woods and try to figure out what makes one tree 'ancient' and another not I have found myself drawing them, in charcoal on A2 sheets in the summer, in a small drawing pad initially, and now in a larger book in ink - once home I transfer the picture onto an A1 sheet and from photographs try to add in the rest of the tree right into the canopy.
An ancient tree and a horse (or two or three) is more appealing than an ancient tree and a nude model I have found. I've even had a commission to do a portrait of someone's tree.
The detail of the horses is too hard to create so the actual prints are far larger and each horse is then reduced to fit the drawing. Though I also have an A1 pastel drawing where the horse prints A4 size can be added directly.
It's taken some decades to get this far, and no doubt Zoe has its experts to thank. My experience following Zoe, entirely App based on a smartphone, is that it ticks every box as a superlative online or eLearning experience ... or simply 'learning experience'. It is thorough, bitesize, mixes video and audio prompts, has support networks on social media, and an array of ChatBots and real people to provide support.
I like it the way I loved physics and biology lessons at school - you learn through doing, with the 'experiments' on your own body, from the blood sugar recording of the first two weeks, to building and establishing knowledge about foods with less of the crap (USPs, sugar) and more of the good stuff: fibre, protein, carbs etc:
My wife got where I am today by reading the books from the likes of Time Spector, Chris van Tulleken and thingey Mosely. I needed more structure, more evidence, more drip feeding. I think it should be the model for learning of this type.
I sign up to things. I'm a serial committer to learning. I'm up for a 'book study' kind of course, or one involving tasks and experiments. For now though I want to celebrate the achievements of the Zoe Blood Sugar/Fats study, and Couch to 5K from the NHS. I happen to be doing both.
We all know, surely, of the Zoe App and Dr Tim Spector from Covid Days. And surely, you've got wind of the 10,000 people in the US and UK who have now signed up to Zoe. I'm through the three days of formal testing and am on day 3 of the 10 day optional 'challenges'.
'The Five Stages of Elearning' by Gilly Salmon comes to mind:
Though these days where these stages and how the interaction occur has become seamless. Rather than a series of staging pools, or steps, the micro-learning of Zoe, for example, makes it far more intuitive.
Zoe learning comes in a number of forms: the box of kit and explanatory leaflets (not quite perfect), the App and the controlled steps and gates of Zoe 101, Zoe 102 and Zoe 103 which manages what materials are made available to you. The App includes BBC bitesize 'cards', dollops that are a phrase, or short paragraph followed by a prompt to answer a multi-choice question or to 'submit'. These an element here that triggers a timer, or calendar and prompt which has twice caught me out because the 'submit' implies you have begun a phase at that moment (twice I was reading ahead of myself by a day).
My appetite for further knowledge is only partially satisfied. This is not an academic course, articles in reputable journals are mentioned, but not cited: I'm not going to get a full reference or a link to that journal - which is just as well, as I love vanishing down distracting intellectual rabbit holes. This is something that has to be managed, common sense, the audience, the purpose and look and feel of the learning can all be upset with an abundance of footnotes and links.
I can draw a horse, I've been drawing naked people for the last seven years. Horses have their individual character, the same number of limbs and larger musculature ... they don't keep still unless they are eating which is problematic. I've been trying to capture my sister's horses - she has four: two horses, a pony and a shetland. I will have this wrong, but lets say there are two big ones, a medium sized one a Tiny Turner who is either a Shetland or a miniature Shetland.
My goal is to add them to a landscape featuring one of their grand ancient beech trees. I've referenced Thomas Bewick, but haven't the skill or storytelling talent yet to do a miniature episode of the Archers in a woodcut. I've also referenced Arthur Rackham, but mostly I'm just following videos on youTube and taking advice from the my tutor at Bip-Art.
This was/is the dining room/sitting room. I'm the only one at home, it is raining, so everything I am up to has come in doors.
There are four images of Warrior, each one I am trying, for the eight or ninth time, to capture in a black monoprint using different techniques: the cut, wiping ink from the lino and using a mat. To date what I do is paint over the ghost print, but this makes multiple test images of an edition of 1.
This is the way I like it, and would have made many a regular 'job' unsustainable. I don't know that the tally is - 32 jobs in 25 years? But working freelance as one of those 'portfolio' workers I am content to put in three or four shifts: social media and website for an educational charity, a swimming club teacher and coach (one of the largest clubs in the south of England with nearly 1000 members) and a Town Councillor. This morning I was out with a representative for Balfour Beatty who look after the roads around Lewes: potholes, broken kerb stones and damaged pavements. They're on top of it: reported issues are dealt with swiftly. The Western Front Association saw 313 digital members get a PDF copy of our member journal (we have over 6,500 members, 14,000 followers on Twitter and over 40,000 followers on Facebook). And I'm off to Mid Sussex Marlins in a little over an hour to teach a group of 'para swimmers', then take the junior squad I am responsible for (keen 9-13 year olds) and staying on for our Masters - they're impressive, with multiple World Records to their name.
And as anyone knows who follows me here the rest of the time is mixed between Markstakes Common, where there are 38 recognised ancient trees: oak, beech, hornbeam, ash and birch. I am starting a report on the additional trees that might be added to this list of 'notables'. My eye caught a dead beech stem covered in oyster mushrooms yesterday.
And drawing/printing/painting: once a month to life drawing at Charleston Farmhouse and once a week to BIP-Art in Brighton to print up lino prints. I'm working on a limited series of prints of a huge beech tree in Northumberland - it's a park beech in a field where my sister keeps her horses.
So, lots to keep me busy. And for a week we've had a family friend over from Poland. He lives in a city close to the Belarus border and reads Russian so kept us ahead of the news over the weekend by reading what he was getting from Telegram. The aircraft and helicopters shot down by the Wagner mercenaries were being reported as they happened.
Reelected recently to one of the greenest Green Councils in the country (Lewes), I am inadvertently bringing together a gaggle of interests, some tangential, some relevant. Following a talk on the 'Fungi of Markstakes Common' I am fast moving towards papers/talks on the 'Ancient Trees of Markstakes Common' - those identified 13 years ago (the ash have died, one Beech is a pile of dead wood, two other beech and one hornbeam have lost major stems, as with one of the silver birch - now dead. I could add another 12 to the old list.
Dealing with people is no less engaging and uses similar skills. I was out this morning with a tape measure to look at some local potholes and bring these to the attention of the Conservative run East Sussex County Council which is increasingly looking like the institution that blocks everything - these constipated Conservatives will be duly removed from power, where, in truth they have 'sat on their hands' for too long - doing little, taking their stipend.
But that's politics, and we don't want any of that here.
I'm itching for appropriate postgraduate study on woodland management, biodiversity, sustainability or some such but fear that too much that that is on offer is either dated, or to expensive.
An online course on Fungi for £40, something on trees for £90. Do I need it, or want it.
Anyone used Chat.ai.open yet?
Had it been around over the last decade I would have use it to assist with essays and dissertations. I find it/her/him an intelligent tutor, not always getting it right, but able to collate information and produce a coherent point of view. Like all tools though it/he/she must be 'triangulated' - we need references.
Online providers have developed, and potentially stumbled if AI interferers. For now, I cannot see anything less than human engagement from a tutor/tutors, and fellow students as a motivation to stay the course. That said, I can totally see how the trials and tribulations over six months or more to get a dissertation out of me from a tutor could have been dealt with over a weekend by Chat.AI. It was a case of de-scrambling my multiple, mass ideas and references from soup to a spaghetti with coherent lines of argument.
Meanwhile, if you Google 'Lewes District Council' you will find where and what I've been at for the last 9 months. I've learnt that for all my love of digital nothing beats a piece of paper through the letterbox, and a conversation tipped to listening to the resident with a problem, complaint or an idea.
With the May 4th elections fast approaching I'm out and about 'door knocking', delivering newsletters and creating social media for the Lewes Green Party. Otherwise I have my daily vigil to the woods: typically Markstakes Common, though other woods around Lewes are available. All this and weekly printmaking at Bip-Art in Brighton.
Five weeks ago I was invited to give a talk on the fungi of Markstakes Common; not that I'm a mycologist, simply because it is known that I've taken a few nice pictures with my fancy iPhone 11 over the last 9 months. I then sit down to prepare my talk. I'm thinking I'll get to 16 or so mushrooms - the number I estimate I will identify once I start going through the photographs (I have over 2,000 shot on the Common, initially of the 'notable' trees in various stages across the seasons, then what I call 'PosNots' 'Possible Notable' trees which I wish to add to the national register. And then photos (and video) under different weather conditions: drenching rain, frost and snow, as well as high and increasingly low sunshine morning, midday and early evening over the year. Then I get down to pulling out the fungi photos.
I had got to over 60 slides about two weeks ago, and have now pushed it to 87. Even if you take a few off the times I have used two slides that still is far more than I expected, and a morning workshop not a short talk at an AGM. I'll have to pick my favourites.
That is how scientific it will be: the ones that look the best, so the Oyster Mushrooms I spotted a few weeks ago, the Scarlet Elfcup I was amazed to spot the other day (I thought it was a crushed Coke can someone had pushed under some logs), as well as the extraordinary Candlesnuff, Coral and Porcelain mushrooms, and the tiny bonnets, Puffballs, Common Earthball as well as Polypores, Brackets and Conks.
That would do it. I'll leave slimes and moulds for another day and won't even start on lichens.
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