Thoughts of a Soo

Singing as the Darkness Lifts 18/12/2023 This morning the air carries the natural smell of the sweetness of thinning brown leaves. A few stars shine amongst the cloud, and I wonder how many shooting stars there have been above me. One night I stood in the darkness of a powercut, let my eyes acclimatise, and saw two slowly gliding to make their lines across the sky before the cloud smoothed in. The next morning the repeated call of a tawny owl made the best gentle alarm clock as dawn broke.   I wanted to mark a moment of joy this week when I was close to completing the facilitated element of the Level 7 ‘In Good Company’ coaching qualification. This has been a huge achievement for me and I didn’t want to wait until the very end because sometimes I forget to enjoy the anticipation of endings. So, I put a call out on Twitter to see if anyone wanted to join me in having a hot chocolate at 16:45 on Wednesday. And people did and it gladdened my heart to be toasting...

Singing as the Darkness Lifts 11/12/2023 This morning the moon is new and the air carries the tiniest hint of trampoline. I am transported back to a shingle beach where I lie on my stomach on blue vinyl staring first at the sea and then at the impressively strong tight springs that hold the trampoline to its frame. That’s an interesting place to start a Monday morning and the thought of all that jumping makes me smile. Gymnastics was not my thing, but I did love the feeling of the bounce and that wonderful boing from seated bounce to standing up again. That feeling of movement that ripples with momentum.   On Saturday night it sounded. ‘It’ being the sound of Santa’s sleigh approaching. I was very quick to wrap my Christmas lights round my neck, and call to Kath to bring some money to make a donation. And this year on the town tour, Santa blew me kisses as well as doing the lucky Santa wave. A perfect treat. I always feel lucky to have seen Santa and those blown kisses made...

Singing as the darkness lifts 04/12/2023 This morning the air smells clean. No notes of particular trees or grass, but perhaps the tiniest hint of evergreen leaves from low bushes. The rain continues and the temperature feels a little higher than the minus figures we have had lately. Alt Text labels this week’s photo as A CLOSE UP OF A SOCK DOLL and once again it is correct! This is Sock Monkey, a brown and white stripey toy with a red thread mouth and two blue buttons for eyes. He was created one Christmas from the ‘make something all by yourself’ gift from my sister. He has real personality and perhaps explains why I didn’t choose to progress with needlework when I took my options at secondary school. I always look forward to his emergence from the Christmas Decorations box! So, no fruit fly poems this week, but I have enjoyed my little delve into extra reading about these tiny creatures and I look forward to finding out what other insects might find their way into my p...

  Singing as the darkness lifts 27/11/2023 The full moon is somewhere behind the cloud this morning. The air seems to carry the scent of trees, but I am unable to determine what kind. Something in my head is telling me sycamore, and the ground is scattered with sycamore keys so maybe it is. There are poem drafts in my journal as a result of Pascale Petit’s workshop last week and I know I will craft them slowly to relish in the moment and ensure I have squeezed all the poetry out of them that I can and extended them to their fullest selves as poems. There is a slightly different style to what is evolving and that may be resulting from the fact that my second book is now so very close to completion. Yesterday my editor and I worked through some final tweaking to bring the book into fuller clarity for the reader in its structure. This was also the time to discuss the cover. When I heard what Josephine had in mind I felt giddy with excitement. I cannot wait to see what comes bac...