It's been over twenty years since the last one was seen here, off the coast of Ireland. It was thought that the North Atlantic population was beyond recovery, and that they were surviving only in the Southern Oceans, far from the Japanese and Norwegian whalers, whose activities early in this century nearly drove them to extinction.
I've always been fascinated by these creatures; especially since they remain firmly in the world of my imagination. They haven't yet appeared on primetime, with David Attenborough's dulcet tones in earnest commentary, bringing them into the mundane world of recorded fact, reducing them to the size of my TV screen.
I checked on the Internet, to see if anyone else had managed to film them. There are remarkably few images of them, by the standards of Internet culture; usually if you go searching for something, the choice is overwhelming. Plenty of material on every other type of whale, but not the Blue.
There is, however, mention of an American documentary, by a photographer called Al Giddings. He is quoted as saying that he had not expected to film close-up footage of the Blue in his lifetime. I found a photograph of a Blue Whale's dorsal fin and a bad painting of something looking rather like the Loch Ness monster. That's all I could find, in half an hour of surfing. I'm sure there are more images out there, but if photography steals souls, as some believe, then the Blue Whale's soul is still relatively free.
I've been greatly cheered by this news. It's too early to say whether these sightings, and soundings, mean that the population is definitely on the increase or that they've simply moved closer to us. In other words, we humans haven't a clue. At the end of this century of technological sophistication, I find that reassuring.
trickling water
I know that this news has had some impact on my life this week, but I can't quite put my finger on why. As I write, someone is putting the finishing touches to a fountain that he has built outside my window, in the courtyard. There's a magnificent gleaming nickel-plated fish poised mid-leap between two (currently empty) rectangular copper pools. Tomorrow the electrician arrives to connect the pump, the pools will be filled up, and I'll work to the sight and sound of trickling water from then on. That's a little bit of heaven on Earth, as far as I'm concerned.
There have been other activities in the courtyard this week as well. Yesterday, plants were delivered; hundreds of them. Whereas up to now there have just been earth patches, as bare as the builders left them, flattened by kids determined to ignore their parent's injunctions to stay out of the mud, there are now verdant banks of evergreen shrubs and trailers. Half of them are still in their pots; if I get a chance, and if I finish this in time today, I'll plant a few more.
I helped the gardeners yesterday for a few hours, in the pouring rain. I've blisters and a sore back to prove it, not to mention a chesty cough which is lingering longer than it should. I didn't do it for payment, and I didn't do it because it was right outside my window. It wasn't that the gardeners were women and they needed a man to help them move and plant some trees. It's true I will get great pleasure from my environment being green and pleasant, but it would look the same whether or not I helped.
The word I think I'm struggling towards is community. It's a dubious concept, at the best of times. The rules for each community differ, and they are largely unspoken. Here, in the centre of impoverished King's Cross in London, there is a taste of seventies counterculture in this refurbished Victorian tenement block. The residents organise a festival every summer, with circus acts and rock gigs and tea and biscuits for the local pensioners. That was my job for a couple of years running, persuading the old dears to be civil to each other while I made countless gallons of tea stew with an old Burco boiler. Obviously, they couldn't stand each other, but they turned up anyway.
The kids aren't too pleased at the moment, especially the older boys in World Cup mode. The gardener has dictated that there's to be no more football in the main yard, because of the plants. They are complaining bitterly about grown-ups being unfair to kids. I am delighted with the new rule, because three of my four potted plants have been broken by footballs slamming into them, and it is impossible to relax outside when a ball is being kicked around.
I have to smile, though; for when I was their age my hate figure was a neighbour who banned football in the cul-de-sac where we lived. My mother had to use her most persuasive charms to dissuade me from picketing her house with a "Boy's Lib" sign. The world keeps turning.
critical mass
But the kids are excited by the new fountain; the older ones are holding up the little ones to explain where the water is going to spout from, where it will go, and they all want to touch the glistening fish. A resident designed and made it all; it was paid for by the residents' association. But I know he can't have been paid properly for the work he put in, merely the cost of the materials plus expenses.
A community is as rich as its members want it to be. It's not about money, it's about whether people want to put something into it, without expecting anything back in return. If the number of people willing to do that reaches some unknown critical mass, then the world becomes an infinitely more pleasant place.
I'm sorry, I know that this is turning into a whimsical, green, eco-friendly, save-the-whale ramble, but there you go. Warm-blooded animals, with hearts bigger than we are, are circling our islands again, forgiving us for our previous crimes. And I'm learning about what big-hearted gestures of community can do, if enough of us make them. That's enough of a link, really. I'm going out to plant a few more shrubs.n