Criticism unfair on the Bronx

RE the article in the May Voice about graffiti in Montpelier railway station looking like “the Bronx”.

I grew up in the Bronx, although living in Bishopston for a long time. I am appalled that a railway station can be compared negatively to the likes of an entire borough of New York City. I know that there was a lot of graffiti in the Bronx when I was growing up but since then it has been cleaned up and considered anti social trespassing.

So I would ask for more research before defaming an area of NY in an article in a newsletter in Bishopston, Bristol, which is 3000 miles away.

Bronxite

Trespasses

by Louise Kennedy

Review by Bob Deacon of Bishopston Library

THE year is 1975. Chinatown is showing at the cinema. Jim’ll Fix It is on Saturday night television and Mud are top of the music charts. Trespasses is set in Belfast at the height of the Troubles. The main character in the novel is Cushla, a 24 year old Catholic primary school teacher whose social life is limited to driving her alcoholic mother, Gina to Mass and the odd shift at the family bar managed by her brother Eamonn. It is in the bar that Cushla meets Michael Agnew, a married, middle aged Protestant lawyer who takes on civil rights cases for Catholics. Michael invites Cushla to an Irish Language evening where she meets his bourgeois bohemian friends, with their liberal republican sympathies. They start a secret affair, involving many illicit meetings including a derelict farmhouse and a dirty weekend in Dublin with far reaching consequences for them both. The novel is full of believable characters including Gina who was born above a pub in 1920, during the first Troubles, after her parent’s home was burnt out by her protestant neighbours and whose nine pregnancies resulted in only two children. We also get to meet Gerry, a guitar playing teacher colleague and ally to Cushla at her school, which is ruled by a dogmatic priest called Father Slattery. Each day, at school, Cushla invites her pupils to update the class with the latest news. Every report refers to booby traps, petrol bombs,

Saracens, incendiaries, rubber bullets and internment , common words in every seven year old’s vocabulary in Belfast. The novel also includes several acts of human decency and kindness, breaching the sectarian divide, with Cushla & Gina delivering food to the home of a protestant pupil Davy whose father has been savagely beaten by paramilitaries. This is an engaging love story, written in beautiful intimate prose with skillfully drawn characters and convincing dialogue, told with empathy and with style by Louise Kennedy. If you are not a library member, please visit us at 100A Gloucester Road, and obtain a library card, giving you free access to over two million books including this novel. .

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n NATURE WATCH With Dawn Lawrence

THERE is one family of plants that almost always impresses. It is one of the largest with around 28,000 species, but it is not always about size, is it! This family contains some of the most specialised, surprising and valuable plants in the world: it is the orchid family.

Orchids are usually pollinated by insects and many rely on a single species: it seems reckless to tie your reproductive fortunes to one particular pollinator but it works for this family. One of my fondest wildlife memories is from watching fly orchids: in front of my eyes a wasp landed (a tiny thing that looks like a fly – hence the confusion in the orchid’s name) and the orchid gave a purposeful twitch that left a package of pollen stuck to the wasp’s head. I probably imagined the wasp’s surprise at this sudden assault, but it launched itself off, no doubt quickly returning to visit another fly orchid having forgotten the startling experience. Orchids also have a precarious start to life. Their seeds are microscopic and contain no nutrient store. Upon germination the seed has to rapidly establish a connection with a fungus via its roots; if successful a mycorrhizal association is created and they grow together exchanging nutrients, if unsuccessful the seedling will wither or even be overwhelmed and consumed by the fungus.

We have more than 50 native species in the UK (it is quite hard to get agreement on the exact number) and around 20 in the Bristol area with bee, pyramidal and common spotted orchids being the most commonly seen in our part of the city in June to August, whilst green-winged and early purples appear earlier in spring.

Like so many plants, the common spotted orchid has suffered huge declines since the intensification of farming in the 1960’s but it remains relatively easy to find and can form a colourful carpet across an accommodating stretch of grassland. It has a spike of white, pink or lilac flowers with a frilly lower lip splashed with darker pink or purple. These spikes can be around 60cm tall and contain 50 flowers. It grows on woodland rides, verges and cuttings but favours open grasslands - the best place to see it locally is the Downs.

Orchids have the unusual facility of springing up unexpectedly where they were previously unknown or have long been absent – this is both a comfort and an exciting spur to keep looking. A couple of years ago I was surprised by the sight of a single pyramidal orchid lighting up a front lawn on Redland Road with its neat spike of candy pink flowers (they are held in a rounded pyramidal shape).

Orchids can survive for many years without flowering and this one may even have derived from the turf originally used to lay the lawn.

Look out also for bee orchids, with a fat brown velvet lower lip and three lilac petals, popping up on dry banks, sparse grassland and even waste ground.