The Singing, Ringing Tree
- Trespassers won’t be prosecuted: do you have a right of access to the beach? - 25th March, 2024
- Why do boomers like minions? - 6th November, 2022
- Are you a true Isle of Wight local? - 30th October, 2022
The Ranger has no love for windchimes. This stems from when he lived a couple of houses down from a lady who had a garden full of the things. On a windy night the noise of his teeth grinding was almost enough to drown them out. So, usually, he’s not in favour of anything generating artificial sounds in the countryside. But it looks as though the exception might just have arrived – after viewing this video, the Ranger is thinking of a trip to Burnley! Shame about the mundane wire fence around it. Commissioned from architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu as some kind of economic development project, of all things, the collection of tubes, erected in 2006, makes eerie, harmonious yet attractive sounds when the wind blows, which is apparently quite a regular event at Crown Point, on the moorland overlooking Burnley. You can see a much longer corporate video about it here. However, it’s perhaps a little surprising that the sculpture is so very stately and gnomic. With that name The Ranger was expecting at least a plastic fish, or possibly an angry dwarf in a leotard. That would have been a tip of the hat to the surreal 1957 German children’s TV film, shown as a series in the UK shortly before tea time on school nights in the early 1970’s, and which originally bore the name:
Windchimes? I’m absolutely with you on that, wretched things. However, one of the loveliest artificial sounds must be the clinking of rigging in a marina – a delightful sound to fall asleep to if staying in a seaside B&B.