{"id":12480,"date":"2025-03-30T22:22:39","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T20:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=12480"},"modified":"2025-07-31T21:42:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T19:42:24","slug":"bedford-mill-meadow-on-an-ephemeral-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/bedford-mill-meadow-on-an-ephemeral-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Bedford Mill Meadow on an Ephemeral Afternoon"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

\u201cI became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.\u201d  ~ Edgar Allan Poe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Revised 31 July 2025 | first published 30 March 2025 ~ Bedford Mill Meadow on an Ephemeral Afternoon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once upon a time, whilst wandering lonely as a cloud (has anybody else done this?) along Bedford\u2019s magnificent Victorian Embankment, I found myself recalling photographs of this elegant tree-lined vista as it had been in a previous existence, namely in Edwardian days and later in the 1920s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quality of gracefulness in the apparel and deportment of those people in whose ghostly footsteps I now presumed to tread romanced me by their disappearance. I felt as though I walked among them, that they were all around me but nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vanishing act was like, or so it seemed to me, a carnival trick gone wrong, which nothing now that it had been played could rectify. We are all of us in the Western world walking along such wistful vistas; sleep walking in the washed-out footprints of those who walked before us; shuffling robotically into Caligari\u2019s cabinet, or should that be the cabinet of Count Kalergi?; hiding in the dark of it; preferring suffocation through denial and inaction rather than exit through the back; knowing that all that is waiting for us on the other side of the next door to open is the end of Western civilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bedford Mill Meadow on an Ephemeral Afternoon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime (whatever the meantime is), enveloped by the past and evasive of the future, I had walked as far as the monument to Britain\u2019s dead of two world wars, and pausing there for a moment or two, or it could have been 80 years, Time is a terrible trickster, I smiled the smile that people smile when they have very little to smile about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not afraid of you!\u201d I said, addressing my own mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mortality smiled back at me, a knowing, sad and secret smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We shared the embrace of mutual sorrow, and I was on my way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the dying,\u201d I explained, as I walked along the side of me, \u201cit\u2019s the ephemerality of what you were, what you are becoming but which you actually won\u2019t become since by the time you have become it, you will in every conceivable way have become what you least expected and most certainly never wanted. It really is as fast as that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Victorian<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I stopped, hoping no doubt to suspend my animation, upon the Embankment Suspension Bridge (where better?) and gazed, for who knows how long, steadily into the water; the fast, the flowing, relentlessly fluid, the ceaslessly wet and willing water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A young man of the present time was scorching down towards me, his arms a going at it like two strong steam ship pistons. He passed beneath the bridge, he and his canoe, and by the time I’d turned my head to look, he\u2019d gone. I wondered if I had also gone, for now I was quite alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The river\u2019s rivulets rolled on. The riveted bridge resisted. But I was quite alone, apart from a little touch of rust, which would not, it stood to reason, have been there once, when the bridge was built, but which seemed the more I focussed on it to be getting larger by the minute. The rust and I were good together. We were made for each others company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gazed along the river, this way and then that, but as for the boat and the young man in it, both had vanished into nothing and were going nowhere but in my memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I alighted from the stone slab steps leading to and from the bridge, some of which were crumbling ~ they would not have been crumbling when the bridge was built ~ the word ephemerality was bouncing around inside my bonce as if sprung by a pinball wizard. Had that been Roger Daltrey flashing by in that canoe, his hope to die before he grew old could well be the propulsion that has spent his life so quickly; so unbelievably fast that we can barely equate the OAP that he is today with the youthful figure whose ironic lyrics have been used in evidence against him since he tempted fate and sang them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overwhelmed by the stammer of Daltrey\u2019s My Generation<\/em> (and underwhelmed by Starmer and his sentence of death for this generation), I had to put myself down, purely in a manner of speaking, and nowhere could be better than on one of the many benches dotted around Bedford\u2019s Mill Meadow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Benches<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There used to be a mill here once, a real working mill, until time, short-sighted foresight, the love of money and poor town planning (ask Richard Wildman, he will tell you) took everything it had except its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bedford Mill Meadow on an Ephemeral Afternoon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Sitting there in a mill-less state looking at the swans, painfully aware of the amorphous shapes hobbling by in the sepia shadows of their heritage predecessors, to which not even he or she or those who are spotlessly white could ever hold a candle, I thought of the many celebrities that age had been unkind to.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All things being as they are, ephemeral, that great facilitator of\u00a0fame and spectacle, I refer, of course, to the internet, is a double-edged sword to the public figure. TV personalities (devoid of such as they often are), Hollywood moguls, celebs, statesmen and the women who try to emulate them but never quite succeed and show themselves up in the process, have a back-stabbing friend in the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the temple to temptation, all it takes is two or three clicks to move visually and effortlessly through every successive degenerative stage of an individual\u2019s life. On the internet and in the flesh, the \u2018before and after\u2019 comparison of plastic surgery is truly quite disturbing, take Michael Jackson for example. Attempts by plastic surgery to arrest the natural ageing process (and Buttox doesn\u2019t help) only succeed in making it more grotesque. Disintegration and decay flash before your eyes. Yesterday\u2019s sex bomb has gone off bang, and all that remains is a smouldering ruin. Whatever else the internet may be, and those with our wits about us know it for what it is, a fulsome, fatuous, flatterer, it is the last gallery here on earth to which you would want to entrust your ego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Look at me, I thought, sitting here on this riverside bench, here in Mill Meadow, Bedford, the very embodiment of rank morbidity. Pull yourself together man! But Roger Daltrey\u2019s silver balls, ah, they were too insistent. They were swinging low like chariots, and though I really should have gone home, which is where they should have carried me, retreated from the Edwardian parasols and boaters of the 1920s, they carried the \u2018E\u2019 word with them, and I, like the buffers on a pinball table, could not avoid them striking me time and time again. The bells rang, the lights flashed, the scoreboard registered \u2018Lucky 13\u2019, the name of the game ‘Ephemerality’ turned gold and then lurid black, and \u2018the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now I was growing tired of it, or afraid of what it was leading me to. Like bananas from Lidl\u2019s and Aldi\u2019s, nothing stays fresh for long. I\u2019d dearly like to shop at Sainsbury\u2019s or be seen in town with a Waitrose bag, but who, at my ephemeral age, would be willing to give me a mortgage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The soliloquy between myself was nearing a crucial stage. I was revelling in impermanence, whilst taking from my carrier bag a going-brown banana. It was then that temporality took me by the hand, not the one with the banana in it, and led me off chariot fashion to that Victorian villa across the river, yes, that one over there, for a privileged peep into a young lady\u2019s boudoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Said the chariot in dulcet tones, which I recognised immediately as those of the Standard Quartette, \u201cTake that gorgeous young woman \u2026\u201d (Who wouldn\u2019t, without a second thought, were it not for those horrible tats and piercings.) \u201cTake that young woman, for example. Here before the mirror she stands believing that she holds, like she holds the gaze of men, the time we call the present in her pretty manicured hand, when all she has is a glove that slips easily from her fingers. These are the minutes and their minion seconds, which, in the dazzle of self-adoration, fall cleverly from her grasp. She is so impressed with the here and now that she cannot see beyond her current reflection in the mirror, which, if she looked at a little more honestly, she would clearly see is changing with each relentless tick of the clock and with each diminishing beat of her ageing heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It starts with that straight, that perfect chin, which even as we look is turning into a double act, and then travels down to those full, firm breasts, soon to resemble John Wayne\u2019s saddle bags, and next the midriff on display, which is making way for two spare tyres. It’s all of it destined to go south, from the tip of her powdered nose to her proudly pedicured toes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAvalanche!\u201d I cried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBugger!\u201d someone else responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd take this young man,\u201d (I\u2019d rather not, said I.) (We had moved from the boudoir to an upmarket gym.) (I never knew before today, or could it be tomorrow, that chariots had the ability, not to mention audacity, to swing low wherever they wanted and whenever the mood so took them.) \u201cSee how he works those weights,\u201d the Chariot said of the sweaty young man, “pumping up his muscles to make them look like Popeye\u2019s, only to end up rather cockeyed: an awesome-chested arse-less wonder desperately searching for Arthur J. Pye.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Temporality does this to us, no matter who we think we are. It reads from the Book of Ephemerality<\/em>, the penultimate chapter of which reminds young women of the age-old proverb that beauty is skin deep and says to young men who body build that by the time they reach the age of 40 younger men will point at them and say, \u201cThat\u2019s a magnificent body you\u2019ve built for yourself \u2026 shame about the bay window!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you ever have the feeling that you continually wake from a beautiful dream into a carnival freak show?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How I ever got back to my seat overlooking the River Great Ouse, I suppose I will never know, and neither will you unless I lie. But whilst I had been away, someone had stuck a plaque on the back of the seat on which I was sitting, which said, \u201cHere sits a right silly Tw..!\u201d I am sorry to disappoint you, but the plaque in question had always been there; always. <\/em>In fact, almost every park bench in the meadow bears or bore, depending on the time you think you know you are living in, a plaque in memory of someone or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The inconsolability that follows the loss of a loved one creates the need to make material a memory to which one can reach out and touch. My encounter with my own mortality had reminded me of this, that the fear of ephemerality is for most, not all but most, not so much the loss of ourselves but the loss of someone close to us, someone so dear, so precious that the thought of being left alone in a world of utter indifference is the thought that is unthinkable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fairy tales, heroes and heroines frequently die of a broken heart. Yet for us in our ephemeral world where everything ends but not that easily, we have to endure our broken hearts and somehow learn to live with them. They are perhaps, after all, all that there is in our fleeting lives which seem to go on and on and on and probably do forever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Requiescat in pace.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bedford<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"Poignant<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Moving<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018-2025 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Bedford<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

><\/strong> Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

><\/strong> It\u2019s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford! – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

><\/strong> Bedford more to like than not – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.\u201d  ~ Edgar Allan Poe Revised 31 July 2025 | first published 30 March 2025 ~ Bedford Mill Meadow on an Ephemeral Afternoon Once upon a time, whilst wandering lonely as a cloud (has anybody else done this?) along Bedford\u2019s magnificent Victorian Embankment, I found myself recalling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2484],"tags":[1337,2540,2539,2538,2560,2026,2542,2541,2028,2544],"class_list":["post-12480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mick-harts-diary-2025","tag-bedford","tag-bedford-embankment","tag-bedford-mill-meadow","tag-bedford-mill-meadow-on-an-ephemeral-afternoon","tag-bedford-mill-meadows","tag-bedford-more-to-like-than-not","tag-edgar-allan-poe","tag-edwardian-era-bedford","tag-mick-hart-in-bedford","tag-mick-hart-in-mill-meadow-bedford"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Broken-Heart-min.png?fit=1200%2C1012&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7866,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/bedford-more-to-like-than-not\/","url_meta":{"origin":12480,"position":0},"title":"Bedford more to like than not","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"22 \u043d\u043e\u044f\u0431\u0440\u044f, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"A brief stay in Bedford UK Published: 22 November 2022 ~ Bedford more to like than not Rumours that I haven\u2019t posted much to my blog recently have invoked theories ranging from a nasty reaction to not-working sanctions to being fitted up by the British unjudicial system for saying things\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Meanwhile in the UK"","block_context":{"text":"Meanwhile in the UK","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/meanwhile-in-the-uk\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bedford Embankment","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Bedford-Embankment-2022-rz-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Bedford-Embankment-2022-rz-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Bedford-Embankment-2022-rz-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Bedford-Embankment-2022-rz-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/Bedford-Embankment-2022-rz-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8947,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/its-that-man-in-the-russian-hat-in-bedford\/","url_meta":{"origin":12480,"position":1},"title":"It\u2019s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"28 \u043c\u0430\u044f, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"May this fair land we love so\u00a0well in dignity and freedom dwell 28 May 2023 ~ It\u2019s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford! Great news! That is, great news if you are a dinosauric socialist or a politically challenged liberal: the results of the UK local elections suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Diary 2023"","block_context":{"text":"Diary 2023","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/kaliningrad-mick-harts-diary\/mick-harts-diary-2023\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"In the Russian Hat in Bedford","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Russian-Hat-Pint-of-English-Beer-min-1.jpg?fit=896%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Russian-Hat-Pint-of-English-Beer-min-1.jpg?fit=896%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Russian-Hat-Pint-of-English-Beer-min-1.jpg?fit=896%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/Russian-Hat-Pint-of-English-Beer-min-1.jpg?fit=896%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9192,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/frozen-peas-in-bedford-supermarket-is-no-woke\/","url_meta":{"origin":12480,"position":2},"title":"Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket is No Woke","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"1 \u0430\u0432\u0433\u0443\u0441\u0442\u0430, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\"I don't see it like that!\" All it took was a bag of frozen peas left on the end of the checkout conveyor belt, my public spiritedness and up went the balloon. And it was high drama at the local supermarket. 1 August 2023 ~ Frozen Peas in Bedford Supermarket\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Diary 2023"","block_context":{"text":"Diary 2023","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/kaliningrad-mick-harts-diary\/mick-harts-diary-2023\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mick Hart with frozen peas in Bedford","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Mick-Hart-with-bag-of-frozen-peas-expatkaliningrad-min.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Mick-Hart-with-bag-of-frozen-peas-expatkaliningrad-min.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Mick-Hart-with-bag-of-frozen-peas-expatkaliningrad-min.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Mick-Hart-with-bag-of-frozen-peas-expatkaliningrad-min.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Mick-Hart-with-bag-of-frozen-peas-expatkaliningrad-min.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2772,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/coronavirus-the-ghosts-of-christmas-past\/","url_meta":{"origin":12480,"position":3},"title":"Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"23 \u0434\u0435\u043a\u0430\u0431\u0440\u044f, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Mick Hart\u2019s Christmas Message from Russia (Not to be confused with the Queen\u2019s Speech) Published: 23 December 2020 When I see and read about the mushrooming angst as my fellow Brits try to come to terms with the first coronavirus Christmas in the UK, I breathe a sigh of relief\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Meanwhile in the UK"","block_context":{"text":"Meanwhile in the UK","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/meanwhile-in-the-uk\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"The ghost of Christmas Past!","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/The-Ghost-of-Christmas-Past.jpeg?fit=500%2C529&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3200,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/moving-to-russia-from-the-uk\/","url_meta":{"origin":12480,"position":4},"title":"Moving to Russia from the UK","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"20 \u0444\u0435\u0432\u0440\u0430\u043b\u044f, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Why I left the UK and moved to Kaliningrad Published: 20 February 2021 I was sitting in the office of our antique shop. It was a bright, sunny afternoon one Saturday in June. A couple whom we knew as being members of the 1940s\u2019 crowd had just parked their 1935\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Diary 2021"","block_context":{"text":"Diary 2021","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/kaliningrad-mick-harts-diary\/diary-2021\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"UK as the sinking cultural ship","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/5TReey5Gc.jpg?fit=800%2C664&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/5TReey5Gc.jpg?fit=800%2C664&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/5TReey5Gc.jpg?fit=800%2C664&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/5TReey5Gc.jpg?fit=800%2C664&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":14049,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/2025-that-was-the-year-that-was-uk-and-kaliningrad\/","url_meta":{"origin":12480,"position":5},"title":"2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad","author":"Mick","date":"30 \u044f\u043d\u0432\u0430\u0440\u044f, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Mick Hart's 2025: a nostalgic review in photographs 30 January 2026 - 2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad As the photographs immediately below illustrate, Kaliningrad has been and is experiencing a real winter this year. 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