It makes you think that each of our stories is a vessel of sorts.
But it’s only once I’ve sampled the stories in full (this can be done at Compton Verney’s welcome centre) that I understand the meticulous variety and scope of the project. I’m curious about the other stories on offer, and it turns out to be possible to listen to an edited selection at an audio post (good tip for landlubbers). How does this English idyll connect with remembered hell? What does it make you feel? A lazy schadenfreude? An I’m-all-right-Jack complacency? Or, more wholesomely, an enhanced gratitude for an English summer’s day? I step out of the boat undecided yet delighted by the rarity of reverie, the way the peace of the lake allows for the driftwood of thought. On a bridge spanning the lake, four sphinxes keep watch. There are oaks and cedars and hopeful new plantings. Across the lawn is the becalmed house with its magnificently restored Adam facade and stone the colour of milky tea. But what are you to feel about her terrifying ordeal as you idly pull on the oars? I am accompanied by a cluster of dragonflies and try carefully to avoid a swan preening itself with standoffish – swim-offish – grace. I love the sound of her voice, its light and warmth. She was told to follow a star – a biblical instruction.Ĭrossings revives the miracle of being alive at all – of staying afloat She was as lost as she was brave: “How do I know the boat is going the right direction?” she asked.
Row, row, row your boat gently across the … I listen to the testimony of gallant Iranian Mana Azarish, who, aged 13, when her father’s courage failed him, guided a boat of refugees across the Channel. Each story lasts 20 minutes and the outing takes half an hour. You then take out a boat with your story (the boats are equipped with speakers and can accommodate four people at most).
Each story is given a couple of sentences – you have to choose just one. There is a list of 10 stories – a multifarious anthology, mostly about journeying by boat on water – on a board on the bank. Nine rowing boats, freshly painted, wait by the water’s edge. Walking through his parkland at Compton Verney, a Robert Adam house in Warwickshire – now an art gallery – the lake is indolently still as if it knew better than to stir in the summer heat, and it’s tempting to imagine how gratified its creator would be by Crossings and the beautiful way in which multidisciplinary artist Luke Jerram, in collaboration with Radio 4 producer Julian May, has identified new capability within the landscape. T he great 18th-century English landscape gardener Lancelot “Capability” Brown acquired his can-do nickname because he used frequently to speak of what he called the “capabilities” of the land of his aristocratic employers and could tell them of the transformations promised.