Thoughts of a Soo

SPRING FORWARD    PodBean Link for those who like to listen This morning the air brings a whole symphony of floral notes playing on the cool fresh air. It is as if I am smelling it in shades of pinks.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a person holding a cake. I say it is a photo of my lovely mum posing for a photo with her cake to celebrate her birthday. I also say it was an absolute delight to share tea and cake time with her.   T he title of today’s blog , or its longer version ‘Spring Forward, Fall Back’, always helps me to remember which way the clocks go when the seasonal change of hour is due. Strange to still need this after all the years of changing the clocks, but it definitely helps me. So many of the regular clocks I look at change themselves these days so it is often a surprise to see those that don’t. I confess I rely on my wife to change the oven clock, but am at least proficient in remembering which button to press in the car to bring...

  A POCKETFUL OF TYRE VALVE COVER THINGS   PodBean Link for those who ike to listen Alt Text says this week’s photo is a group of black plastic caps on a wood surface. I say it is a set of new thingummyjigs to cover the tyre pressure valves. I have decided to use these to replace the mismatched ones I have seen too many times in the last ten days. I was also short of a full set having forgotten they were in my pocket and scattered them in the dark at a service station whilst needing to check my tyre pressures for the 9 th time in 10 days! I can recommend Corley services as having a pressure machine that works if you need one. I won’t bore you with a list of the places I have stopped with out of order machines! This morning the birds are particularly tuneful in their dawn chorus and seem to have sung in the scent of the cow fields. I am reminded of a family holiday when I was very young where eating cereal with the freshest cow’s mil...

JELLY PodBean Link for those who like to listen This morning the air is fresh and carries a tint of laundry detergent. If alt text was offering a suggestion I think it would say this  week’s photo is a picture of two people smiling. It is a selfie photo of Kath and I at the East Anglia Yarn Festival readying for Day 1. This was the first time the day has completely flown by for me. My second year of proper helping at shows so I reckon I am in the swing now and it can be added to the list of things I know how to do. I have come a long way from my initial wondering of ‘how do I actually manage to be there all day and make good conversation as well as know enough about knitting to be fully reliable?’ I learned by doing, and doing again. I recognised and celebrated my progress even when the steps were tiny. I kept going. My people haven’t all been in the right places this week and when your people aren’t in the right places everything wobbles. Mix that in with a phone that stops connec...

  WALKING WITH MY SHADOW    Podbean Link for those who like to listen This morning the cat from across the road sings me three hellos while the air brings us gentle elements of spring. Alt Text says this week’s photo is a shadow of a person on a road. I say this is me out on the country lane walking with my shadow. I liked the length of my shadow on this particular day and wanted to capture the spring sunshine. Whilst walking I had been pondering the way people sometimes look as though they are taking their shadow for a walk and sometimes look as though they are walking with their shadow. I was also thinking how I picture the metaphorical road I walk differently on different days. Can you begin to imagine the number of tangents this took my thoughts off into? I don’t always remember to take many photos and was incredibly grateful to the person I sat next to at the recent Mary Chapin Carpenter concert for sending me some photo...

I DON’T KNOW PodBean Link for those who like to listen. This morning the herring gulls are laughing and the air smells cleansed. I stand still in the moment and feel gratitude for last night’s Mary Chapin Carpenter concert and the clear starlit sky that ended the day.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a person smiling with a scarf around their neck. I say it is me modelling The Imperial Cowl by Kath Andrews Designs and enjoying having my photo taken.   Whilst wondering which poem I would like to record for ‘Poem of the Month’ for my YouTube channel I found myself thinking about what Alan Parry wrote about one of my poems about grief. In his review of Welcome to the Museum of a Life he says: “I Don’t Know explores the uncertainty of loss with a quiet, devastating honesty: “I don’t know if biting one by one / through a dozen budded tulips would help.” Finch does not attempt to impose order on grief; instead, she lets it unfold organically, o...