Singing as the Darkness Lifts

THIS MORNING, WOOD PIGEONS   PodBean Listening Link This morning, wood pigeons are sounding their calls and I remember them heralding in the sunny days of my youth. The air carries definite hints of spring, and I call the scent raw floral as I am transported back to my time of harvesting daffodil bulbs. Last night’s mist has cleared and the day is beginning to be seen.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a group of books on a patterned surface. I say it is three elements of the post I received on Saturday. I also say it is an absolute delight (and indeed a rarity) to receive three wonderful things in the post on the same day. It also tied in well with my recent thoughts about surprise and anticipation. (More about the excellent book Safety In Numbers soon, but if you have read it or been to any of the launches so far you will know it is a thing of beauty. I heartily congratulate Gill Connors on bringing this book into the world.)   I’ll delve a bit into anticip...

BREATHING THE SCENTED AIR   PodBean Listening Link This morning a chorus from herring gulls welcomed in the morning, and the wind is swirling and mixing the scents of flowers and green.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a person holding a drink and a plate of food. I say it is me enjoying a sit down in a café at Chester Zoo with a drink and a doughnut after visiting a range of animals including a gorgeous tapir that seemed pleased that I told it that I thought it was gorgeous.   The first of March brought sunshine and gifted the perfect day to walk round The Great Orme in Llandudno. There were plenty of fresh smells to delight the senses for my sister and I. After the foodie smells from the doughnuts and onions on the pier, we had the herby scent of grass and gorse mingling with the fresh sea air as we headed round the coastal edge. There was a moment of pure contrast when a strong smell of fish puffed up from the cove below us where we had stopped t...

I SEE BLUE SKY   PodBean Link for those who like to listen This morning the air holds the scent of green and unfurling. The birds are well awake when I step outside and are singing to each other of a new day to be in, seemingly unbothered by the wind.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a tree with no leaves. I say it is blue sky framing the branches of a tree, and that it delighted my heart to be walking under it.   After last weekend’s yarn show I set myself a catching up kind of a week. The kind where sparkly conversations with good friends featured amongst time to tackle admin type things and time to see if the poems that wait patiently in the draft folder are ready for polishing. The kind of week without a particular routine which allowed for resting and for seizing the moment when there was a gap in the rain to take a daily stroll.   It was good to get out for daily walks again after having recently had to wait for my cough to diminish. I felt ...

NO KISS ME QUICK HAT     Listening Link This morning the air is cold and brings the scent of bark. The birds are singing to welcome in the day, and one short daffodil holds its trumpet proudly aloft on the front lawn.   Alt text says this week’s photo is two women smiling for a selfie and indeed it is. It is Kath and I in a corridor in a hotel in Blackpool the night before a yarn show.   I have decided that Blackpool will be one of those places that is ‘snapshots in time’ for me, and this week I have added a cabaret singer in a hotel to my ‘album’. Staying away for Kath’s work saw us in a hotel in Blackpool for a couple of nights and on Friday night we wandered down for the onsite entertainment. We had not planned to do this and had no knowledge of anything other than there was going to be something happening. When we got there, we got the treat of a person singing a wonderful range of familiar and well-loved songs. It was great to be in the audi...

  UNDER A BLANKET     Listening Link This morning the air is simply cold. I am unable to detect anything other than cold and fresh. The fresh feels revitalising.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a person with a scarf behind her face. I say are you sure you want me to try to decipher that description. I also say it is me sitting on my chair with the blanket I have been spending a lot of time under lately. The blanket is a hexi-flat blanket made by my lovely wife from leftover yarn from a range of different projects. It holds the colours and memories of socks and blankets and shawls and jumpers. And this week it has helped me to be cosy and weighted during a week that featured a persistent sore throat and general feelings of yuckiness.   Progress measures this week have included three distinct stages of biscuit thoughts: 1.     Actively disliking the thought of a biscuit. 2.     Not wanting a biscuit,...

    Something In Nothing Zoe Brooks   Perhaps the fairy tales you were told at bedtime ended with and they all lived happily ever after . Stories in which the perils were overcome, and the moral was outlined clearly at the end.   When Zoe Brooks addresses the reader in her poetry collection Something In Nothing, she is quick to warn us that here things do not end neatly and cleanly. As the answers tell us in Happy Ever After – A Catechism we know not to “rely on breadcrumbs” and “when midnight strikes to hurry home”, but true to the original versions of fairy tales Brooks shows us the darker side, where “when a shoe does not fit cut off your toe”.   The characters chosen for this book weave in and out of the pages as we peer through different lenses. Bluebeard’s Garden has us watching Bluebeard’s new wife carrying out tasks in the garden and sighing because “Nothing lives long in Bluebeard’s garden”. In Cathedral we too feel the chill a...

    SNOW MOON AND GRATITUDE   PodBean Link for those who like to listen   This morning the air carries the smell of grass, and a thread of geese sound in the sky.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a heart shaped object on the ground. I say it is ‘Lovely’, a photograph I took of a discarded elastic band found in the gutter near the end of my road in February 2022.   February this year started with a full moon, and it felt good to turn the calendars over to welcome in a new month before taking time to take a stroll under the Snow Moon. Cloud meant I could not see it, but I knew it was up there somewhere and I sent it a gentle howl!   On the last day of January I took a walk before going to the last session of January Writing Hours with Kim Moore and Clare Shaw. It felt good to clear my head in anticipation of the final session and to give a gentle nod to all the hours I had spent in their zoom room with my wr...

HYDRATION, CONVERSATION, AND GOOD COMPANY      Listening Link This morning the birds are singing in the day under a clouded sky. The air is fresh and gently perfumed. I breathe deeply to determine what might be coming from my soap and what is flora on the breeze.   Alt text says this week’s photo is a mug of hot chocolate and a photo of two men. I say it is a photo of a mug of hot chocolate next to a coaster, with a picture of me and Paddington Bear eating marmalade sandwiches on it, along with two carefully balanced biscuits. I also say it is a picture of the kind of comforting drink I have when I am sitting quietly on a cold day.   In the week that began with Brew Monday I found much joy in hydration, good company and conversation. From minty tea in a zoom room, to soup and fizzy orange in a pub, to tea and water in the company of a wonderful friend.   I have thoroughly enjoyed reflecting on where I have taken time for specific refre...