{"id":143840,"date":"2025-05-30T10:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T10:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/143840\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T10:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T10:18:09","slug":"country-diary-a-springtime-with-an-ending-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/143840\/","title":{"rendered":"Country diary: A springtime with an ending | Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was in Cumbria this week to bid farewell to a beloved friend, the uniquely talented naturalist, conservationist, educator and campaigner Jamie Normington. We met when we were crowdfunding campaigns to supply copies of The Lost Words<\/a>, the celebration of nature\u2019s disappearing lexicon, to schools in our respective counties.<\/p>\n

Jamie would never describe himself as a writer, but he had a unique talent with words: his old Twitter account was one of the literal handful I ever set notifications for. He embraced it as his genre, managing to be idiosyncratic, insightful, sometimes profound and often spit-your-tea funny. Those same qualities made him a superb teacher, mentor, interviewer and compere, most particularly for Cumbria Wildlife Trust and Kendal Mountain Festival, both of which will be immeasurably depleted by his loss.<\/p>\n

Jamie Normington on Red Screes in the Lake District. Photograph: Amy-Jane Beer<\/p>\n

Jamie\u2019s last words to me were via WhatsApp. A three-word message: \u201cJinny Greenteeth vibes\u201d, comparing me to a female water demon of northern English folklore. Historically, Jinny (or Jenny) was depicted as a murderously rapacious hag who lured innocent young men to a watery demise. In an attempt to redress the routine demonisation of\u00a0feminine spirits, I\u2019ve been seeking to rehabilitate her as a fearsome but not necessarily malign guardian of our abused rivers. We commissioned a badass verdigris mask, which was first worn by my friend Helen Mahoney<\/a>, a local arts promoter \u2013 who, as brutal coincidence would have it, was taken by the same hateful disease as Jamie last year.<\/p>\n

Two days before Jamie\u2019s funeral \u2013 a beautiful woodland burial \u2013 I swam in my home river, the Yorkshire Derwent. The surface was twitching with thousands of dying mayflies trapped in a floating fog of fluffy willow seeds. Lives ending, lives beginning. I climbed out with them clinging to my skin and snagged in my hair. Jinny Greenteeth vibes indeed.<\/p>\n

I laughed, then cried, because this spring has provided such a potent counterpoint to personal and global turmoil. It\u2019s been a hell of a show: epic blossom, intense birdsong, more swarming insects than I\u2019ve seen for years, and now this mass emergence of mayflies, icons of carpe diem, a spirit that Jamie personified. A message from\u00a0the river and those who\u2019ve crossed too soon. It\u2019s over so fast. Make sure you live it.<\/p>\n

Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian\u2019s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com<\/a> and get a 15% discount<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was in Cumbria this week to bid farewell to a beloved friend, the uniquely talented naturalist, conservationist,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-143840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114596276058588126","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}