GETTING LIGHTER AT LAST

Dry-ish at the moment, clearing beds, failing to light bonfire again, running the sit on mower in shed so battery does not go flat, time for mower servicing, read Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke again and forgot what a brilliant book it is (and found that it is my Dad's copy and a First UK Edition!) 

Now must  go out and move loads of ivy to the bonfire. Today will try with dry sticks and firelighter and paper and so on - was foggy early on but now cleared and sun shining.

I moved the bird feeders to another tree and the pheasants have moved with them, waiting for the great tits to discard any seed slightly below perfect.

There are signs of a new year with the euphorbias burgeoning with life, this one Characias, ssp Wulfenii.

Snowdrops coming out but R worries as one of the trees has come down on part of our woodland display, dreaming of bluebell woods in the spring. (This is at Muncaster Castle, cannot claim our ones are as good.)

Egret on pond,

And won Country Life poetry competition!

WITH EYES CLOSED

‘I remember the touch of things:

the brittle harshness of barn straw,

the warm softness of September hay.

They all come to mind, make me wonder

how so many things - not scent, not sight,

not taste, nor sound - are stored 

within my head: my father’s cheek

late in the day, rough with stubble,

the coldness of my mother’s hands - 

she would come in from the dairy,

silently, thrust her fingers

down my collar, extract a cry.

But that is sound not touch.

Sense the softness of a hen’s wing, 

moss on a dry-stone wall, 

a long-haired collie, stretched cat,

the harshness of a pig’s back,

crumbled slate on the quarry tip,

the rasp of a calf’s tongue,

the pain of a fist of gorse.

And there are may things 

remembered wordless. -

lichen on a stone, tadpole slime,

a slither of minnows on the palm.

Some things are more abstract - 

a warm bed under an eiderdown, 

being wrapped in total darkness,

bathed in sunlight, washed with happiness;

the ribbed surface of my elephant,

hand-knitted, hand-stuffed, no ears,

clasped within my arms.

The sense of freedom on the fell,

by the lake, under the water chasing perch.

Of no responsibility, no worries

of waking on a Saturday - no school,

alive, with eyes closed.’