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.
The 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 up the clock change display! I do like waking up and seeing that my phone tells me the actual time, and that I don’t have to physically watch that hour tick away.
I love the way this change welcomes in spring and I also love ‘gaining the hour back’ in the autumn. In the autumn I like deciding what to use that extra hour for, and realise now that I have often thought of the spring change as a bit of lost sleep! This might be why I decided to change my alarm by half an hour on a couple of occasions this week. Perhaps I was subconsciously banking the hour in advance.
Making sure I positively framed the change of clocks this season I set my alarm for the usual waking up time, resisted the temptation to hit snooze, and got straight into the shower. My mum and I agreed that this was a good way of springing forward into the new day since the change of hour was going to happen whatever we thought of it! (And yes I chuckled at the fact that I still need to have this same approach to getting up on days when the clocks don’t change and that sometimes I still sneak in a snooze or two.)
Imagine my delight too when on clock change day there was time for a bonus couple of hours with wonderful friends to walk along the seafront before sitting on a bench taking in the sea view whilst catching up with each other’s news.
It seems apt to share The Week the Clocks Change. Here’s to finding the joy in spring as it unfolds its new season…
THE WEEK THE CLOCKS CHANGE
Summer beckons us forward with a smile.
A gentle hypnotic sway to her hips
erases last year’s jellyfish memories.
And in stomachs that have slumbered,
somersaults of love begin to turn again.
And a link to a seemingly younger me (perhaps 10 or so clock changes ago) reading this as one of the first poetry videos I made. I love that I taped the poem onto Kath’s chest and read it on location at The Little Orme…
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 9th 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 milk on was a brand new treat. I can picture the cockerel logo with its bright green and red revealed at the bottom of the bowl at the end of the eating, and the distinct yellow tinge to the thicker than usual milk. I remember too missing the birth of a calf because I was bored waiting for it to happen and went to lie on my bed. I saw it licked to standing and finding its first steadiness later on.
I am currently assisting with editing the next Sidhe Press anthology. The theme for this one is Grief and the submissions have come from a wide range of angles. All poems carry the poet’s unique view, but here there is something specifically tender about the words that are set down for us to read. Taking that first read of someone’s writing is a privilege and a joy, and editing always has me eager to see the poems that are sent in for consideration. Having said that there is a need to take things slowly and give each poem its own space in time.
There is a wonderful tingle when certain lines from a poem continue to echo in my head after reading, and I love that feeling of resonance. There are also always poems that are very good in their own right but don’t fit the arc of the anthology as it forms. These have to be let go, but I know they will find their actual home somewhere else. I had heard this from editors before and having experienced it myself I can see more clearly now what they were referring to. Parts have to fit the whole so that the poems weave themselves into the whole journey of the book and make that arc. Some poems talk to each other along the way.
Every time I have had a reading or editing role it helps me to look at my own writing in a slightly different way. This enables me to be more and more willing to cut and rearrange. It also helps me to be able to view a poem as if it is not mine and read it afresh in a different way from when it is forming on the page. That said I will be editing some poems that have flown back to me this week including the ones that tried their luck at the National Poetry Competition, and I look forward to sending them out again to see if they find their homes after a new viewing and the subsequent trim and tidy. This will be a nice distraction from checking my tyre pressures and willing the light not to keep displaying itself on motorway journeys that would feel much nicer without that strange orange symbol.
Here’s a poem I wrote after watching a cow on the way to work one morning:
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 connecting to the car for sat nav and a need to travel to unfamiliar places and it’s like trying to stand up on a waterbed to unscrew a light bulb. This week has been a time to think about what it is that steadies the wobble just enough…
It’s all the little things… efficient, friendly service from professionals, forgiving yourself for neglecting the visual check of your tyres, updated playlists, a new phone, three new tyres, remembering to take several deep breaths, keeping calm when you realise it was the settings in the phone not the phone, a compliment in an email, a WhatsApp message of support, hugs in a text, a lift in a car, keeping calm when your tyre pressure light comes on, remembering not to panic when three service stations in a row have dysfunctional tyre pressure machines, your favourite quick grab toastie, someone calling out your tyre pressures at the garage. It’s spending time with your family. And sometimes it’s actual ice-cream and jelly.
I remember my realisation as a child that Mr Jelly was not really Mr Jelly by the end of the book, and then thinking that if writers thought of the titles when they had written the books then perhaps the title wasn’t the right one. I also remember thinking that this thought was interesting in itself, but that the story was all about Mr Jelly and his development. I loved the way the character changed in shape. I loved that this illustration surprised me. I loved how there could be bravery inside even when things were shaky. Maybe this was the beginnings of my learning that emotions aren’t fixed. And now as I scan the titles in my mind I remember that I could taste the sausages when I read Mr Greedy, and I once cut the grass in the back garden with safety scissors which might be a throwback to Mr Neat.
Thinking about Mr Men led me to wonder which character came to mind for other people. I started by asking Tanya, one of the lovely vendors at the wool show, and for her Mr Tickle was first to mind because she could have benefited from his arms to reach the yarn from the van when unloading! The second person I asked also named Mr Tickle, with a cautionary warning around consent. Someone found my question rather random which I totally get since we had only recently met! I myself do like a random question for its “Oooh factor” but recognise it can also generate an “Oh”! There was also a vote for Little Miss Chatterbox and a mention of Mr Bump!
This week I am sharing Whitby’s Old Lifeboat because it fits the theme of holding on when feeling scared and because it honours my grandad.
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 photos they had taken. I don’t think I will forget the experience of being at the concert, but it is very special to have some visual reminders of the event.
I didn’t dress as Noddy or Thing 3 for World Book Day this year, but I did see the Gruffalo in the forest whilst out walking with a friend. The walk also had essence of searching for a Heffalump in the Hundred Acre Wood when we suddenly realised that we were in fact striding out to walk round the same route again. I don’t have a very good sense of direction, but can read a Pokémon Go map and am reasonably adept at following posts with arrows on them. I also find large landmarks incredibly helpful, and luckily there was a lake on the walk which helped us orientate ourselves. Walking and talking in the fresh air saw a couple of hours fly past which reminded me of a long chat I recently had over a cup of coffee. It seemed that all of a sudden the chairs were being put up ready for floor mopping, and we had sat down at lunch time! I love these kinds of conversations where time comes as a surprise, and I love the fact that there are now days in my week where these things can glide into being.
It was an absolute delight to find out that two of my poems had been shared at a World Book Day event. I felt a wonderful glow of pride when I was told. I always wondered whether something like this would happen and now I know it actually has. I tip my metaphorical hat to the sharers of words and to the fact that His Gun was performed from memory. I don’t have the skill to do that with my work, and can only recite very, very short poems that rhyme!
I will share His Gun with you because it comes from a time when I did dress up for World Book Day, and I am grateful for all the experiences this gave me during my time working in a variety of different schools. It is also one of the poems from my ‘tape the poems to Kath so I can see the words while she records me’ phase of YouTube which makes me smile.
HIS GUN
for the schoolboy who entered my office without really announcing himself
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, offering moments of both revelation and ambiguity.” I was drawn back to this poem and decided that it was the one I wanted to set down this time.
This led to me leaving a note on my desk to remind myself that I had chosen which poem to record. When I saw it the next morning and it said, “Poem of the Month: I Don’t Know”, I chuckled because very often it is actually the case that I don’t know until the last minute which one I will record and sometimes I can go to bed knowing and wake up no longer remembering!
I do know that the regular habit of recording my work has been a good way to develop my confidence with sharing my words as well as being able to share the poems as they sound in my head. When I read them silently to myself I see and hear the words as I read as if they are transported from the page – they scroll like a script. There was a lovely moment of revelation when I reached the end of this particular reading this month as I heard myself realise my nan is always with me. There was a wonderful sparkle within me at the whole resonance of that.
I have always thought of it as a quiet, contemplative poem, and I was surprised and pleased when both Julie Stevens and Susan Richardson engaged with it shortly after the book was released. I love seeing which poems from a collection others enjoy reading.
I am also grateful to Josephine Lay of Black Eyes Publishing for working with me on the editing of this poem to get it ready for publication. This led to the altering of some of the don’ts to can’ts, and I loved feeling what that did for the poem. It was good to pay attention together to which lines would change in their power by taking on this different starting word. It definitely made a positive impact and I know I wouldn’t have seen that change if we hadn’t explored it together. I love the duality of the meaning for ‘I can’t’… where one human can’t know the exact feelings of another and also the essence of, ‘please don’t tell me, I fear it will be too painful’.
During my coaching training we thought about the power of just getting going with things when you have an idea or a goal. I have seen this come to fruition in my recording of poems, and can clearly see the journey I have taken. I am glad I didn’t wait until I was ready! I love the fact that since my change of career I have also leant into this and this has enabled me to be willing to model Kath’s knitwear – after all, there’s always a delete button and actually I don’t mind looking at myself now. I also cracked on, and started a podcast so that I could see how it evolved. It has been so good to move away from the nerves that tickled at my very edges when I started!
I get the feeling writing some more poems is going to be a priority pretty soon because I don’t want to be in the position of not having many to choose from when it comes to poem of the month! Time to open the writing journal and set a seven minute timer…
Here’s to finding out which steps you want to take, taking the first one and the next. And then the next.
I will leave you today with my recording of poem of the month: ‘I Don’t Know’.
This morning the rain brings a gentle dampness, and the air holds the scent of sap and twigs.
Alt text says this week’s photo is two women taking a selfie. I say it is me and my sister taking a selfie having learned that it is best if we both sit down. When we stand side by side for photos she looks far taller than me and the photos seem a little out of balance. She says I have shrunk. She couldn’t see me at the railway station when she arrived for her visit, and I found myself standing on tip toes and waving a big double handed wave, so perhaps I might just have to measure myself to find out if I have indeed shrunk a little!
We first met up to watch the snooker a year ago, and before this I had never watched it live. We saw Gary Wilson’s 147 break, and laughed at my sister’s impression of me telling her I was suffering from shin splints from walking round The Orme. This year I know even more about snooker and enjoyed watching Stephen Maguire play against Ali Carter. I also know it is wise to pack my walking shoes when it comes to going for a walk with my sister.
I love the way our walking contrasts with the sitting in silence to watch the snooker semi-final. A perfect balance. This year Katie set me a new challenge of walking round The Orme before breakfast and up Moel Famau afterwards. There was a moment when we sat down to eat when she was doubting my will for the second part of our excursion, but I refuelled and was good to go. It was important to me to complete the two walks on the same day as part of my ‘Snowdon training’! I have been walking regularly and feeling an improvement in my ability, so it was definitely time to test my stamina. I had not completed a walk of this length (or indeed anywhere near this length) in one day for many, many moons, and having remembered how much my legs ached after my last mountain climb I needed to find out how I was doing. No shin splints and mission accomplished with a proud sense of achievement! That’s good progress for me compared to a year ago and bodes well for our nighttime Snowdon event. To celebrate I have invested in a new rucksack and dubbined my walking boots. I now need to keep up the momentum and ensure I focus on ascending some hills as well as walking regularly.
The snooker clashed with the Winter Wool Festival in Blackpool so Kath was there while my sister and I shared a Valentine’s Dinner of our very own. I made red pepper hearts to put on top of our heart-shaped pasta and it felt good to cook a special meal to celebrate the weekend. I was introduced to new songs along the way and am now determined to be better at keeping up with listening to new music. I love the playlists I have created over time, but have rarely added to these and notice that I am missing out. If you hear me singing about going to the ‘Pink Pony Club’ you can thank my sister and if you already like the song and haven’t heard the wonderful version by Edwin (Grandad Sings) here’s the link.
This morning the air carries the scent of young daffodils. I sense the raw potential of their bulbs and taut green leaves, and am reminded of a summer job many years ago. Riding on a farm machine with a conveyor belt that brought us the freshly ploughed bulbs for sorting was a job I had never heard of before doing it. Physical work out in the fresh air all day, and a brown envelope of wages at the end of the week to tuck into a pocket with pride.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a group of heart shaped objects. I say it is the contents of my heart jar, and that some of these hearts are just right for fitting in a pocket and some definitely aren’t. I also say there is a rose quartz heart missing from this collection, but even though it is not here it has been remembered in a poem.
One of my favourite greetings of the week was, “How Do”. I love the fact it is a rare greeting! It was delivered in a warm, friendly tone in response to my cheery “Hello” as I walked past a man sorting out bird feeders in his garden. I even remembered that it is probably a complete response in itself and I need not reply. I smiled and carried it with me as a gentle reverberating echo all the way down the road.
Because I had been feeling a little out of synch with greetings on a walk recently I have also made it my mission to say a little more every now and again when I pass walkers. Mostly to comment on the joy of the sunshine or the pleasure of walking. It puts an extra spring into my step when this is met with a reply that is also longer than a simple greeting. I like the feeling of little connections brightening the day.
In amongst this I had a couple of ‘grey walks’ this week; grey sky, cold air, no one around to exchange pleasantries with. And then this poem popped up in my memories on my phone:
Loneliness
Loneliness is grey.
It tastes like the lamb that I wish had never been killed.
It sounds like crying.
It smells like chips dropped on the floor.
It looks like a storm cloud closing in.
It feels like a rat that is going to bite.
Choosing a feeling, giving it a colour and thinking about what it tastes, sounds, smells, looks and feels like was one of my favourite ‘let’s get writing’ activities when I worked with children. This group poem was written by six year olds, and I love the way their images say something extra about their experience of the feeling. I liked it too when their adults joined in and everyone shared their different emotions. It strikes me that it could also be a ‘let’s think about that feeling’ activity. I know from having written one each time I have introduced it in a writing workshop, that the same exercise results in a different end product each time. Each poem told me something about what was important to set down or celebrate in the moment.
What emotion would you choose to write about today? Choose a feeling, say what colour it is, write a line for each sense. I would love to see your poem.
One of my short conversations took place in the mammogram ‘van’ in the supermarket car park this week. I am always glad that it is so easy for me to have this check carried out – close to home, easy parking. This time I had forgotten the exact procedure, but knew that it was a relatively simple process that didn’t take long. There were changing rooms outside the x-ray room, but the process was to go straight in and take top layers off in the treatment room. I removed my jumper with my thermal vest inside and put it with my bra on the chair as instructed. I told the radiographer that I had forgotten what to do and she reassured me that she would tell me as we went along. This made me remember how clear the instructions had been last time. All was indeed simple and I was impressed with the clarity of instructions especially since I can find it hard to follow instructions about what to do with my body. (I am often the person going the wrong way in dance routines.) Whilst we were exchanging pleasantries at the end I found myself replying whilst trying to get my head to come out the sleeve of my jumper/vest combo. At home I can take my thermal vest off inside my jumper and put it on again without any issues, but in the mammogram van I had to admit defeat, take it all off and try again! One of my values is to find humour in day-to-day things so it did rather tickle me, but I think I might just wear one layer next time.
Today I will share a poem that sets down the fact that it wasn’t just the rose quartz heart that gave me the confidence boost I needed at a writing event. (A version of this poem was first published in Dear Reader.)
This morning the scent of the air is secondary to the early morning chatter of the birds. I feel as though I am walking beneath their conversations. They sound as though they have definitely been awake longer than me and have much to say this morning. When I pause to take note of what the air actually smells like, I think of my sister who says air smells like air. This morning I think I see what she means. I sense no overriding notes or gentle undertones.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a heart-shaped object with a sign on it. I say it is a heart-shaped card holder which has been dusted ready for the year ahead. Two particular objects always remain – a sign that says, You’re every nice word I can think of, and a wooden postcard. Two gifts from wonderful people.
I sense some new year renewal. My water flosser recently took on a life of its own and each evening after placing it back in its holder it would randomly start up again after I had walked away from the bathroom. I learned to take the spout out of it to prevent the extra spurts of water. I tried recharging it fully before using it. I tried putting it down very gently and reversing out of the bathroom on tiptoe. All to no avail. The night I wrapped it in a towel and put it in the kitchen sink, it still got into my dreams and became a super-sized wasp burrowing through a pvc door to get to me. Its final destination became the tip. I like the small electricals skip there because it is easy to identify what can be slung over the side. I really dislike going when I have a whole heap of random stuff that has to go into a variety of skips, but a simple visit is satisfying. I bid it a fond farewell as I watched it drop because it had served me well.
The clock that was edited out of my iamb recording by creator and curator Mark Anthony Owen, and also appeared in my poem ‘The Clock Ticks Louder Now’ has gone to start a new life with a new owner. We originally rescued it from a charity shop for £3, and it has now returned to attract a new owner. It will enhance someone else’s house because we have decided to home one of Kath’s Mum’s clocks that did not sell at auction. Our new clock is beautiful in a different chunkier way than the red one. It is a clock that does not tock or tick whilst it tells the time. There will be no more removing of the clock from the room each Monday in order to record my podcast. And now I wonder whether the owners before us loved it until they too noticed the volume of its counting of the passing of time. Perhaps it is one of those clocks that will enhance a good number of homes in its lifetime.
If you didn’t know, February 2025 sees iamb celebrating being five years old. That’s twenty waves, 320 poets and almost 1000 poems. It is a wonderful site and it is so good to see its continued growth. A site with clarity and vision that truly celebrates poetry.
In other news, I am eagerly awaiting the photographs that will show me inside my drains. I will be admiring these as the face-to-face report I was given tells me they are good drains, on a good gradient and are working effectively. So even though they are old they are standing the test of time. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide I wanted to see inside my pipes. A house survey for the new neighbours showed them there were some issues on their side so I felt it would be good to check what was happening over here! I remembered being fascinated when issues at school meant I got to look down a wide range of drain covers and saw ladders, huge depth and the slow movement of waste. It was fascinating.
My thinking on my walks has become clearer this past week. There was one walk where I found myself thinking that seizing the moment is great, but that blue skies don’t necessarily mean it won’t rain, so checking the weather forecast adds an extra layer of information that is likely to be valuable. It would have saved me from one very wet sweatshirt.
Choosing poem of the Month for my YouTube channel brought me to THIS IS THE LAST DAY FOR CHERRY FONDANT FANCIES so I will also share that here. Its title comes from a promotional email I once received which tickled me.
This morning the air wraps around me with its cold temperature and brings the smell of raw cake mix. It is the unbaked beginning of a day.
Alt text says this week’s photo is, a red sign with a smiley face on top of a wood roof. I say it is a fence rather than a roof and a frying pan rather than a sign. I saw this on a winter walk and remembering repeating the route on a different day to see it again because it felt cheery and fun.
There seemed to be a lot of thoughts in my head on a particular walk this week. The seeming randomness of them appealed to me, but I also longed for elements of silence as I walked because I seemed to be staying in my head not looking at the surroundings or the view. Perhaps there were no buzzards, no singular robins, no territorial squirrels, but perhaps too I was not in a ‘noticing things outside of me’ frame of mind.
I had the rhythm of 4 in my head as I walked and I wondered why this kind of counting featured. I have noted elements of counting to 60 before which I think are my way of seeing how far I get in approximately one minute and seem to tie in with my Hurry Up Driver when I feel the need to get something completed. I don’t however recall a focus on 4. This led me to wonder why it wasn’t in 8s, I thought of people using 8 as a dancing count so I tried this, but it didn’t feel like it fitted at all. I imagined that I would actually need to dance to make this effective and my walking feet are not for dancing along. It might look funky though. I could picture it, just like I can imagine somersaulting down the aisles in the supermarket, but like my circus skills it’s not a reality.
I had chosen the circular route. I thought about walking this particular route the other way round if I did it again at a similar time because when people came towards me in bright sunshine I was readying to greet a silhouette rather than a person. My greeting seemed to change from person to person on this walk more than usual and I was curious in what it was that generated each response. A ‘morning’ here, a ‘good morning’ there, and sometimes a ‘hiya’ I also wondered why I talk to some dogs and not others.
A twinge in my back had me altering my walking posture to ease it. And then, just as I was picturing myself bending over to relax my muscles, a cartoon speech bubble appeared in my mind, enclosing a line from ‘Beauty and the Beast’. And then somebody bends unexpectedly, it sang.
I wondered what would be different when this walk was a true habit and how my body would feel in a more regularly exercised state. I had already mixed it up today and gone back to the shorter circular route because I didn’t fancy the there and backagain I had been doing all week. And now there was an urge to take a drive for a walk somewhere else, to broaden my vision. Followed by a momentary longing for spring when I slipped on a small patch of black ice that had escaped my notice. (Twice I did that this week, in the exact same place!)
The slippery patch marked me being about halfway round, and I used the homeward section of the journey to call to mind the joyful silence of a walk earlier in the week. I was now also beyond the fumes on the main road. This was a good place to take stock and let myself revel in noticing the quiet and noticing that for as far as I could see and hear there was no one else on the road right now. I felt myself tuning in to the way my head was clearing, and pictured the yellow brick road I had brought to mind during a recent coaching session. On that road I was feeling content in the middle of my journey, and here too was a momentary peacefulness on a grey, damp road.
After I had found myself wishing for such things, I did receive a blatant sign of spring. It came in the form of a plump, bright green caterpillar that landed on the back doormat after I had visited the compost bin. I am not sure exactly where it was before it became attached to me in some way, but I returned it to the outdoors world to continue its transformation.
I wish you thoughtful joy, and offer the following poem which I wrote recently for Top Tweet Tuesday…
This morning the air carries the dull scent of newspaper print. This strikes me as a contrast to last night when it was stirred with the magic of wood smoke and incense. The moon, jacketed in clouds, has waned to 58%, and in hedgerows the birds are welcoming one another to the day.
Alt text says this week’s photo is a plate of food with a bowl of fries. I say it is our ‘on the road’ evening meal on a day where late elevenses of tea and cake became twelveses, and lunch a little while later was a shared meal deal. Sometimes in someone else’s town it can be difficult to know where to go to eat and I am grateful to the local person I asked for advice who recommended this place to us.
I have motivated myself to get back into the swing of walking this week, and found joy in noticing the changes in the hedgerows and in the amount of light at different times of day. I have been amused by the sound of a squirrel warning off a dog from the top of a tree, and pleased that the days are increasing in length which widens my choice of when to walk. I thought I had a great video of the squirrel growling out its warning and then leaping from tree to tree until I watched it back and found I had held my phone upwards all that time and then actually pressed record as I walked away. So instead of punchy squirrel I have a five second video of my feet as I attempt to watch back my non-existent video.
My main walking motivation comes from my current mantra of ‘steps I take today are making future steps easier’, and I am enjoying tracking my progress. After a limited number of steps in December I can see that I am now building back up to where I was in November. The graph of brisk minutes, and the distance ring on my phone are useful tools in keeping me going me even though I pretty much do the same country road route each time at the moment! It helps to have the Snowdon goal in mind, but there is something really positive about it becoming habitually good for my mental and physical health beyond this. It is good to feel determined. It is also fun to remember the different times I have climbed the mountain or been up on the train in the past. All very different experiences, and each one special.
I had a dream this week where I was climbing Snowdon with my brother and sister. We were all kitted up, about a fifth of the way up and striding well when they said they wanted to take something back down to the car. I wanted to carry on to the top because I wasn’t quite sure we had let mum know what we were doing and I didn’t want to be late! Here it is in a poetic form because it felt good to set down a vivid dream that quite amused me when I woke up. (It’s got that recurring essence of ‘Hurry Up’ in it too.)
AND ALL I WANTED TO DO
was get up that mountain and down again
tell my mum I was coming back
if she could just take the pies out of the oven
and wait for me.
But I couldn’t get the message to send
and the batteries in my torch were failing.
It’s a bit like a companion poem for Hanging On which features in Gallery 4 – a gallery of dreams, in my second collection ‘Welcome to the Museum of a Life’…
HANGING ON
Sure of the rope that had me swinging
certain the rungs were wooden
I thought of the grip of past climbers.
All the dirt pushed into the twists
smoothed and darkened
by person after person.
And here I am
three-quarters of the way up
suddenly swaying on unanchored plastic,
with the realisation that the ladder is inflatable.
Sue Finch 