Beyond the Garden Gate

Some time I will get back to saying something significant and thoughtful, but that time will not be today. Instead I rejoice that I now have not just a gate and a proper fence at the top of the garden but also restored fencing either side of the house, rather than a few bits of rotten pine held up with ivy. 

And the fish appear to be doing all right. The orange one gets a bit aggressive at mealtimes, but not consistently and now that it is one of four fish it can't have a go at all the others at once so there isn't that much of a problem. But this isn't a photograph of them, but of one of the other inhabitants of the pond, a frog who hangs around behind one of the bunches of weed.

Meanwhile the small tree of eating apples which doesn't always fruit has excelled itself this year. Usually producing small, not that tasty fruits, whatever other horrors 2020 has brought with it, this year the tree has fruited copiously in a way it never has before. And the apples are huge. Yesterday I ate easily the biggest eating apple that has ever passed my lips - bigger than this one! 

The Wonder of Trees (and water)

On Thursday morning my younger niece got up and found herself running a temperature, so that put paid to my sister's family's planned trip up to see me: they were all fine as it turned out, but caution is appropriate at the moment. I decided to go to Winkworth Arboretum as planned, again making a bit of use of the National Trust card my sister bought me for my birthday last year. I have quite a bit to go before I actually make up the equivalent of the cost!

I and Ms Formerly Aldgate did a tour of the Arboretum a few years ago, but apart from making our way up the spectacular Azalea Steps I remember little about it. The Steps are entirely flowerless this time of the year, and instead I found myself looking at the trees. In ordinary woodlands you tend to come across patches of hazels, oaks, ashes, sycamores, and so on, but the point about arboreta is that they are carefully managed for as much variety as possible. They look natural, but in fact are, to a significant degree, artificial, and somehow bring home the majesty and loveliness of trees even more than normal woodland. The last picture here could speak for many of us.

Myths and Legends

The reason Dr Freud gave his theories names drawn from Greek myth was that he saw beneath the familiar founding stories of European literature and culture a vast, dark ocean of seething emotion and trauma, and he was right. Identities are built on stories, and they affect how we respond to the events that come our way and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Christianity, of course, involves meditating on, and identifying with, a story, internalising it until it shapes the whole way you approach your life.

Current political events in the USA are bent around that country's founding myth. I don't mean the narrative of the Pilgrim Fathers, who seem to have dropped out of public consciousness, possibly because the message of religious liberty doesn't mean much these days; but rather the other one, the idea of the pioneer who carves out a homestead from the wilderness and then defends it and his family from anyone who might take it away. The country is divided between those who identify with this story, who see it written into their own lives, and those who don't, though I wonder whether they know they don't - whether they recognise it as a kind of ideology, or not.

Modern conservatism has lately exchanged the story it used to tell itself for another, like the United States. The belief in organic society, of the slow, progressive growth of institutions and laws which embody the spirit of groups of people, has been replaced by hard-line meritocracy, expressed, I noticed the other day, beautifully by Donald Trump fils at the Republican congress: 'you can have the life you want to have - one with a great job, a beautiful home, and a perfect family. You can have it'. Ultimately you get what you deserve, and you deserve what you get. Hardly anyone articulates this or thinks it in its hardest form, but it shapes the way they think.

Then, there is our Prime Minister, who the same day decided 'it's time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight [sic] of self-recrimination and wetness'. I am slightly younger than he is, but we were probably both brought up on the same Ladybird Books and illustrated tales of unquestioning British historical derring-do and achievement on Blue Peter. I don't think I'm embarrassed about anything. I see no good reason to be very embarrassed, or proud to come to that, about events I took no part in. For some centuries the English (and dragging along with them the Scots, Welsh and Irish) were the most effective pirates and thieves in the world, and anyone who lives in the UK now benefits from their efforts, some more than others. I'm not the one who doesn't want to talk about that. Who's embarrassed?

Finally, not quite a founding story, but certainly a political myth, is the idea that whichever side in society you belong to, you can win. Perhaps political systems like the British or American encourage that idea especially. Whether you buy into your society's mythology or are alienated by it, the people who feel differently to you aren't just going to go away, and therefore they can't simply be defeated. Losing an election doesn't mean they vanish. Change means they have to be dealt with, and new, more inclusive and convincing stories, have to be told. 

Rainy Day Talk

The rain poured down and the wind beat around the church this morning. I was waiting for Justin, the local promoter who organises the live music events in the church, or did before March. Don and Carol arrived. I've never had anything really approaching a spiritual conversation with Don and Carol any time in the last ten years, and they aren't the most regular attenders on Sundays in normal times. I thought they'd come to do the cleaning and then remembered we haven't had a standard cleaning rota for ages, as Corona-cleaning takes precedence over common-or-garden dusting and polishing. But they were there to sit and meditate for 15 minutes or so as they don't feel confident attending corporate worship yet. 

I wondered what Justin really wanted from me, as his concerts won't be able to start again for ages - not until we can let people in on a 1m-distancing basis, as only then will he stand any chance of breaking even. But I think he just wanted to explain his thinking. To me - to anyone, perhaps.

There was no room at the café over the road so I made to go home but noticed that Joy was sitting outside with her son, so said hello. She and husband Tim are both lawyers - they don't make it to church very often but both children were baptised with us. She's near-desperate to get back to the office, at least for a couple of days a week - working from home all the time is much too unsettled. Tim is working for the properties department of a local authority elsewhere in Surrey and is often working until 1am. 'We sometimes see each other at weekends', she smiled, collected her coffee from Astrid at the hatch, and they went off into the rain.

Constructively Obstructive

 

It is said that one of the topics which radio news programmes can always count on to arouse rage and vituperation is cycling. In fact just a few days ago I did hear an entire feature on this phenomenon, which the presenter put down to the way cycling is perceived in Britain as a sport rather than a means of getting human beings from one place to another. Like in fact quite a lot of people, I am both a cyclist and a motorist and conscious when I am on my bicycle of not getting in the way of motor transport, because I know how stressful it can be when you are in a car, and late.

Yesterday, I'm afraid, a modest amount of obstruction was part of the point when I went out with Hornington's chapter of Extinction Rebellion, cycling round and round the town's roads. It reminded me I need to buy a new bell, and have done for quite some time: there was no chance of me joining in with the mass bell-ringing. Mind you, my brakes are possibly an even higher priority even if, yesterday, I ended up cycling slower than I ever thought possible.

A Wearying of the Flesh

There is no excuse for me feeling tired today: I was off yesterday, and for all of last week. And yet I have felt shattered, notwithstanding. This morning I went on my customary Friday cycle tour of the parish, delivering newsletters to the congregation members who aren't online. Many of them are now worshipping in the church physically again, but not all, so we keep up the 'remote offer' to give people the choice. I got back and found I could hardly speak, even to myself, or God. For the Lord this may well have come as a relief, I don't know.

But I wanted to find out what was happening to Deirdre. Deirdre had gone into hospital a few weeks ago and I had heard nothing more. Yet, a couple of weeks ago, I dropped her weekly newsletter off and was sure I heard the TV on, so I wasn't sure what the situation was. Deirdre's niece told me she had come home the day before I heard the TV, promptly fallen over, contracted an infection (not COVID) and been readmitted to hospital. She was now staying in a care home for at least six weeks. 

I needed to know this information. The trouble was that Deirdre's niece rehearsed it and some other details several times in the course of the call. It was one of those conversations which you are sure has come to an end and then restarts, or rather goes back to the beginning again on a loop. By the end I was walking around the study with the phone and all but screaming. When I could finally hang up I was amazed to find the conversation had only taken twelve minutes. I told myself Deirdre's niece clearly needed to talk it through with someone, even if I had absolutely nothing to contribute beyond 'yes, absolutely, I'm sure' and so on. Had I been in a fit state, there still wouldn't have been anything to say.

Curiously I stopped feeling shattered about 5pm, and that had no reason for it either!

Means of Escape

This photograph represents something of a triumph. My rotting fences are in the process of being replaced, and that includes the panels right at the top of the garden which seem to have come down in high winds a few months ago and been moved around by persons unknown. I was very keen to get this section sorted out, as it opens directly onto the woods and it was most uncomfortable feeling that any interloper could have access to the garden with a modicum of determination. And now I have what I have always wanted - a gate! Should the bailiffs ever come beating on the front door I can flee into the woods.

Learning How Things Are

A whole six days ago, the Daily Mail ran a front-page headline ‘Pick your own exam results’, denouncing the Government’s decision to introduce measures to prevent the same kind of exam-grading fiasco happening in England as had afflicted the Scottish education system. Six days are a lifetime in this epoch of almost daily policy reversal and upheaval. Anyone would think that this was a Government without a single free-thinking, cognitively-different weirdo or superforecaster in it, given its apparent inability to predict any consequence at all.

But it was that headline that interested me, combined with the Government’s stated anxiety about ‘grade inflation’, the progressive ‘devaluing’ of exam grades over time. I can see the theoretical point behind this, but it confuses me. Surely if we aim at improving educational standards, and we have an exam grading system based around absolute rather than relative measurement – that is, that everyone who achieves a particular mark gets a specified grade, rather than say the top five percent of marks achieving an A, or whatever – grades are bound to rise over time?

The narrative behind ‘pick your own results’ is the mean one of suspicion and hostility towards the young. It’s the belief that the young have it easy, that they are coddled and indulged – and, by extension, that the professions including teaching conspire to indulge them. Most years exam results improve: the explanation must be, not that the system is getting better at educating children (at least in terms of enabling them to pass examinations), but that the exams are easier. As a columnist in the Express put it a couple of days ago, ‘children must learn to fail’, the implication being that their increasing success as measured by exam results is fake. Of course these newspapers suddenly realised that the students who were being expected to learn that lesson, this way, were not unidentified abstract snowflakes somewhere else, but their readers’ grandchildren and therefore beyond reproach, hence their volte-face.

In economic terms, a bit of inflation is a good thing; a bit of inflation, in fact, is the life-blood of an economy. You just see what happens when prices stop gently rising over time: it’s not fun at all. But I wonder whether there is a link between being concerned about ‘grade inflation’ and concentrating on inflation of other kinds – and that behind both is a basic approach to the ideas of resources, limitation, and justice, and even truth. Gradgrind would-be-Victorians respond to the child’s cry ‘That’s not fair!’ with the answer that life isn’t fair, but what they mean underneath that brutal retort is that it is very fair indeed, that its existing structures of power and authority reflect an absolutely just recognition of ability, talent and effort, and that the powerless should damn well learn their place. Your failure is your fault and your responsibility. How dare anyone suggest otherwise.

Sussex Scenes

And Friday's trip out took me on a shorter but slower journey southeastwards. My intended first stop was the National Trust-owned Bodiam Castle. Thanks to my birthday-gift membership card I wasn't paying for what amounted to a short walk around an attractive ruin ('It's like a child's idea of a castle', as I heard someone say), and that was just as well.

It was quite sunny at Bodiam: less so at Winchelsea, a place I'd wanted to visit for some time. Built in the 13th century to replace a small port washed away by a succession of storms, Winchelsea's prosperity was already in decline by the 1500s, and the 'town' today - if you can so term a settlement that houses about 600 souls - has the strange feeling of inhabiting the ruins of something else, a bit like the way Avebury sits in the middle of its stone circle. It's laid out on a grid pattern but most of the grid is empty, and many of the buildings incorporate medieval bits and pieces left over from the time when Winchelsea was a much more considerable place. It has three mighty gates on the steep main roads, and a church which was once twice the size. The great treasures of the church of St Thomas the Martyr are its mid-twentieth-century windows, burning with colour.

Winchelsea had an impressive variety of holy wells including one of St Catherine. This one has been identified rather dubiously with it: its other name of Queen Elizabeth's Well also seems to be a mistake, borrowed from one in Rye. The genuine title seems to be Strand or Grindpepper Well, and you can find it by going down the steep stone steps off Barrack Square - 'Spring Steps' - and then (as I discovered) before you get to the very busy road at the bottom striking off to the left along the overgrown slope. At first I found my way to the road and couldn't work out how I'd missed the well.

Following a suggestion made on these pages I headed next for Cuckmere Haven on the coast, a long, slow journey that took me through Hastings and Bexhill and then striking southwards across the South Downs which were shrouded in a strange warm mist which made the landscape most odd. There was a type of pillbox I'd never seen before, resembling a sort of corrugated biscuit tin. Cuckmere Haven was busy with cyclists, punters and photographers as well as souls paddling - which turned out to be a bold choice, not because the sea was cold (it wasn't) but due to the pebbles, most uncomfortable underfoot.

Meanwhile, along the A264 some laudable lunatic is building a castellated folly to live in. It's very easily visible from the road and very hard to photograph!

Somerset Scenes

I never, ever take a break in August but this year as in so much else normal practice has been put to one side, and this week I've have had my first bit of leave since January. Not long ago my sister and her family had a trip to Glastonbury and that reminded me that I haven't been there for years, even since Archangel Janet and Mal Friday from London Gothic moved there a little while ago, so I went on Wednesday. But not just to Glastonbury: there were a couple of stops first.

These included the Nine Springs at Yeovil, now a Country Park but once part of the Aldon estate centred on the big house on top of the hill, Aldon, or Aewelldune originally, the 'hill of the great spring'. The ornamental walk centred on the stream flowing around the base of the hill was laid out in the early 19th century and was regularly opened up to the public throughout its history until it was - in a curious phrase which leaves the nature of the transaction open to question - 'secured from the Batten family' by the Borough of Yeovil in 1928. I found it busy with families and dogwalkers, making their way to and fro around the walkways, arches, stepping stones, grottoes and cascades. It is not quite a Gothic Garden, but more a fairy dell, I suppose, and that seems to be how children view it.

My sister was kind enough to buy me a year's membership of the National Trust for my birthday and so far I hadn't used it at all, so although you can't go in it at present, lunch at Montacute House was an ideal opportunity to do so.

On the other side of Montacute village is the early 19th-century St Michael's Tower on a small, steep wooded hill, the site of a medieval castle. Headley & Meulenkamp in Follies say you shouldn't take the steep path up the hill unless you have crampons: it was all right going up, but coming down I had to grab a stick to help me and proceed very gingerly indeed. Of course the tower does not really lean at the angle my camera suggests, or at any angle in fact.

In Glastonbury I hurried round the sites I hadn't seen in 25 years at least. The Abbey is better organised now, with a smart visitor centre and museum, the most moving item being the funeral pall made out of a cope which once belonged to Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, hanged on the Tor for refusing to accept the Royal Supremacy over the Church.

The Chalice Well hasn't changed much at all, although I remember a time when hardly anyone seemed to go there. People still seem to manage to meditate among the laughing children jumping in and out of the streams - and people taking photographs.

How I made it up and down the Tor in heat that was into the mid-30s I'm not sure. I had a full bottle of water from the Chalice Well, that must have been it. An hour with Janet and Mal and two hours' drive home and I could barely think!

Bare Ruin'd Choirs Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Dr Abacus called my attention to the article from the Times a few days ago in which Mr Benedict King, whoever he might be, looked forward to the reduction, at the very least, of the 'dessicated' English cathedral choral tradition at the hands of the epidemic, as, he argues, it provides 'no longer a service, but a concert. And often a bad one'. His case is only slightly vitiated by the fact that both the churches he cites, Westminster Abbey and St John's Cambridge, aren't cathedrals. Interestingly he suggests that money saved by not pouring it into the musical establishments of cathedrals should instead be diverted to maintaining and restoring the thousands of parish churches which are 'one of the great glories of this country', a line which will hardly fill the Church utilitarians with any more enthusiasm than a parade of boys in ruffs and red cassocks does.

I have a lot of sympathy with this. I loathe Anglican Chant, which is the fare most cathedral choirs serve up to accompany the offices of Mattins (rarely now) and Evensong. Having sat in the chancel of a cathedral during Evensong I can assure you that the closer you get to the source of Anglican Chant the worse it sounds, too. I wish I could remember which composer it was - Fauré? Messiaen? - who was taken by a friend to an English cathedral Evensong and innocently asked halfway through the Psalm 'Tell me, why are they singing that same bad tune over and over again?' It is highly laudable, perhaps, that the Church continues to support the education of a great proportion of the country's musicians, whether they go on to write or perform in an ecclesiastical context or, more probably, not. But it's not necessary. It's certainly not necessary for this to be part of the mission of every cathedral.

Gavin Ashenden pokes beneath the surface of this quite helpfully, pointing out that there has long been a spiritual conflict in the Church of England between 'the eucharistic community and the musical performers'. There was definitely a touch of this in Swanvale Halt in the 1950s where the attempts by a succession of parish priests to displace Mattins and Evensong with a Mass as the main offering of corporate worship on Sundays foundered on the fact that it would mean the choir either doing a lot more than it already did, or a lot less, and whether this issue was at its heart practical or ideological none of the incumbents tackled it until the decline in Mattins congregations became so catastrophic that there was no avoiding change. In 1950 there was a Parish Mission led by the Vicar of Poplar (impeccable Anglo-Catholic parish, of course) and which used the Mirfield Mission Hymn Book - again something that had undoubted Anglo-Catholic credentials but which the organist and choirmaster at the time took deep exception to, especially when many people asked to keep singing the hymns from it once the Mission was over. But then the Choir would have to learn new stuff! 

In the early phase of the Catholic Movement in the Church of England, incumbents generally strove to replace their church's chaotic and unbiddable parish bands playing serpents and ophicleides with orderly robed choirs which would render worship seemly and provide a better ground of spiritual discipline. At first this was considered terribly 'Popish' but by the later part of the 19th century even fairly Evangelical churches had robed choirs. This was partly to do with what happened at St Paul's Cathedral. English cathedral worship was generally quite dire until Gladstone put in Richard Church as Dean of St Paul's in 1871 as the first Tractarian to get his hands on a cathedral. Within a few years the rest of the College of Canons had conveniently died and Church was able to install priests who followed his line - including Robert Gregory, who succeeded him as Dean in 1890 - and John Stainer as Organist. They did two things: ratchet up the standard of worship in the Cathedral itself, and use the Dean & Chapter's powers of patronage to install Catholic clergy in churches across the Diocese of London. What was happening at St Paul's became a standard for other cathedrals and major churches to aspire to.

However, the Catholic Movement was never completely on board with this. There was a divergent opinion which, just like some Evangelicals, was most suspicious of congregations delegating such an important element of worship as music to a group of professionals. At best a worshipper could allow their spirit to be borne into the heavens by beautiful music: at worst, it could - as Benedict King suggests - decay into a performance with nothing very spiritual behind it at all. In the Parson's Handbook, no less, Blessed Percy Dearmer remarks:

The duty of the parson is to keep ever before men's eyes the simple but often forgotten truth that church music is for the glory of God and not for the glorification of choristers. And true art is at one with true religion; but ... there are many choir-masters who are not even artists enough to prefer a simple service well sung to a pretentious one sung badly.

Thus mainly Anglo-Catholics, including Dearmer, moved towards promoting the use of plainchant in services, which could be very elaborate but equally could be very simple. The ideal was that the congregation sang, only led by a choir when necessary. Choirs could, and still can, be a force for spiritual good - I have seen it happen - but it requires conscious effort to make it so. And in this as in all things, you have to make the awkward and unstatistical judgement as to whether the results justify the effort.

Compliant Connubials

You don't often get images of me here, but as you can see, in this case it hardly matters. Alan and Lisa's wedding was the first we've done under Current Restrictions - only thirty souls, no singing, and masks on most of the time: those leading services are allowed to remove them as are those reading or speaking liturgically, and I certainly thought that meant the couple as they said their vows but we replaced them for the signing of the registers. Lisa and Alan arrived in a campervan and entered the church together, as Lisa's dad isn't in the same bubble and so couldn't 'give her away'. She's a teacher at the infants school and so although her colleagues couldn't come in, they lined the road to cheer her on. The photographer had a camera on a drone but only used it outside the church so I didn't notice until it was all over. I rather like these somewhat shorter services, but don't tell anyone that. Sorry my stole is skew-whiff (to say nothing of my mask, I didn't know I was wanted for a picture).

An Unexpected Pleasure

On Tuesday the Diocese of Guildford issued a statement on 

the use of face coverings in churches. None of it was unexpected until I got to to coda, a section which bore an unusual title, thus:

Help! I don't think I can cope with any more regulations. I just want things to go back to the way they were!

'We all do', the statement went on, before beginning on a series of bullet points, including:

'You will get things wrong. And even if you do ever manage to get the hang of it all, the guidance will change'.

'Moving to hybrid worship (online and in person) is harder than online only'.

'You are doing your best! Remember that everyone is finding this difficult'

'Have a rest'

'If you're finding all this overwhelming, speak to your Archdeacon'

I sat reading it and boggling. This is very probably the most sane, reasonable, realistic and above all humane statement I have heard since the horror of the epidemic began, not just from the Church (which has issued plenty of stuff that has been none of those things) but from any public authority. Credit where credit was due: I sent a message of congratulation to the Communications Department.

(Of course they were right: by Thursday the guidance had indeed changed).

Box Hill

It was with some effort that I compelled myself to make up a flask and some sandwiches and head out for a walk this glorious afternoon, but it was worth while. I still find it hard to shake the habit of only walking with something to go and look at, and new examples in my vicinity are reducing in number, but Box Hill furnishes a few. 

The first of these is Broadwood's Folly, a little circular flint tower (one of quite a number in Surrey) dating from the early 19th century. Once upon a time you could get in through a now-blocked doorway, and you can see the marks of the internal stairs to access the long-vanished roof for a view over to London to the north. 

This area of the Hill was completely deserted, and I suppose it's no surprise as the long wooded northern slopes of Box Hill are accessed by tracks which are a long way from civilisation and were baking hot this afternoon. The areas around the National Trust car parks on the south, on the other hand, were busy. Everyone kept their distance sensibly and it was delightful to see people enjoying themselves in beautiful countryside, especially as I reckon about half the visitors were black or Asian, which was a surprise to me. We always get told that people from ethnic minorities don't go walking in the countryside: in Surrey they seem to. 

Financier and big-house owner Leopold Salomons bought Box Hill and gave it to the National Trust to preserve it for the nation, and has a memorial at the viewpoint on the southern flank. Everyone takes photos here. 

Box Hill Fort is one of a string of late Victorian defences ringing London to the south and east, just in case the country was invaded from the Continent. It really seemed a sufficiently likely scenario for the Government to invest in a set of these small fortifications designed for the storage and distribution of munitions.

WW2 anti-tank defences, on the other hand, you find all over the place. The old stepping stones at the ford across the River Mole to the south of Box Hill were destroyed as an anti-invasion precaution (just imagine a group of Nazis goose-stepping from one to another), and then replaced in 1946 using re-purposed dragon's teeth. The spot was very popular this afternoon.

I walked back from the Stepping Stones to the Burford Bridge car park and celebrated with an ice lolly, the first I've had in some years.

Dog Days

Much to my surprise I find that 'Dog Days' used to appear in the Book of Common Prayer: even good Anglicans in the 16th and early 17th centuries would have taken notice of the movement of the stars and their subtle influence, and so in this extract from the 1552 Book you can see the end of the Dog Days on the Nones of September not long before we see the instruction Sol in Libr. indicating the transition to a new sign of the Zodiac. 

Traditionally the Dog Days, the time when Sirius appears above the eastern horizon just before dawn, are the period when nothing much happens, the depths of summer torpor. I certainly feel that at present, hence there is little enough to say here. I say little happens, but what little there is seems to be an inordinate strain, requiring concentration to keep going at all, which must be a reflection of the times. Even though so much of my normal routines has been closed down by the action of the coronavirus restrictions, other things form an even more iron (and energy-sapping) routine than before. I go down to church every day now, not only to say the Office, but to clean the furniture where people are supposed to sit if they come in to the building, and the door handles and rails. I scrub the toilets on a Saturday because we don't have a cleaner at the moment, and organise, record, and distribute the weekly audio service as well as the physical one, which takes a surprising amount of time. Many of our most active folk have disappeared and all we're doing at the moment is keeping the life of the Church ticking over. But what a lot of effort it seems to take!

Yesterday I found myself being overtaken by a sudden sense of panic and anxiety and realised it was provoked by having too many windows open at once on my laptop as I was transferring information from a variety of documents into two successive new ones. That tells you a lot.

Trout's Mouth

... was the phrase we used in my family when anyone was visibly grumpy, on the grounds that a trout always looks miserable. So do most fish, in fact, and this one has good reason, as it has most of the things wrong with it that goldfish can develop: white spot, fin rot, and swim bladder issues. This is why it's in a quarantine tank in the main bedroom. 

Sadly it's not as unhappy as the fish I found dead in the pond this evening, for no obvious reason at all. It had no signs of disease or damage and only yesterday appeared happily feeding with the others. As a precaution I've cleaned out the pond and will order a new filter tomorrow. So only days after posting very contentedly about the delights of the pond I am reporting disaster.