Windy days

It's blowing today.  Fresh and forceful.  The birds in between gusts are twittering like a playground of wind crazed children.  I imagine them in the trees, their feathers blown straight up, not unlike their little flightless friends, who are tearing about a brutal gravelly tarmac surface, with their coats held aloft and taut between their arms, billowing full sails propelling their fearless forms with thrilling velocity...

                                 
I smile.

How long before first collision? Ah the visceral memory of playground grit meeting unprotected knee skin.  I feel it, a muscle memory.

The wind is bringing on its wings change, memories of days passed.  There is a sad tinge of nostalgia in its sighs.  But it also tells of change, transience, the impossibility of permanence.  Life is forever shifting, sometimes with heart wrenching, brutal suddenness and sometimes with an inperceivable subtlety.  Cycles of explosive life, the green fuse of the leaf bud and then with its tension of opposites, the fading and slow sleepiness of the end of days.

I feel all this.  We are in transition.  We will all move to new places, roles, generations.  Sadder.  But wiser.

Life.  Let the wind remind you.  Like sand running through our toddlers' pudgy fingers, is to be marvelled at, played with but never caught in a tight grip.

It takes bravery to let go, but when we do there is release.  Muscles soften, hearts unharden and we see simply the blessings we had all along.  Now, now is what we have... wind and the high pitched chattering buzz of the playground, birds in swaying trees and a treasure chest of lovely times.  We live forever in the hearts of those we loved. 

wiser.

                        

 It will be alright.  The wind tells us so.

X

Returning

Returning 

To re-turn...make another turn...coming back on ourselves?

I like this thought.

I have made a pretty few turns this past year - turns, twists and sometimes tangles.  I have lost.  And I have gained.  I have felt my griefs and sorrows in equal measure to my smiles and magic moments.

And it's ok.

I'm glad to be back here.  Let's talk x

Pencil, Pen and Paper

Now as esthetically pleasing as the pencil is, atopped with the definitive pink eraser - and I place much faith and import on esthetics,  I do - it is with the gel pen that my affections lie.

Unsophisticated as it sounds, when placed in direct comparison with the historically elegant lines of it's cousin; the fountain pen, there is reason in my madness/ lack of taste.  The gel pen is your friend. 

Fountain pen is a haughty entity, needing months of getting-to-know-yous, bonding and moulding to truly become your pal. And even then, after years of frienship, is it a bond that can be counted on?  One built on utter trust?  Not wishing to air my dirty *stationary* laundry, but there are painful memories of leaks, exploded catridges and angry blots in our past.  They have been forgiven.  But forgotten...?

However with gel pen there is no scratchy, blunt, splotchy, pressing, pushing issues in our relationship.  With a free, easycome, easygo, roll-with-it sort of attitude, that makes me feel all woolly and at ease.  We click.  I just know, in its company, the writing between us will be effortless and free flowing.  The best coffee shop companion.  This a buddy worth their £5.99 price tag.

And so although its all still fresh and new, I am happy.  Its feels bold, confident; a match made in literary heaven.  I have no trouble interpretating it's message...

Oh pencil if only your whispered platitudes had been clearer.

x

If life hands you honey...

'Do as I say, not as I do!'

Why, oh why, I wonder, is it so difficult to do what is best for ourselves?

We can do what's best for our children. We can do what's best for our family and good friends. We even manage to do what's best for total strangers! So, why not ourselves?

We know, KNOW, all about five a days. Indeed many of us have it sussed. We know, that in actual fact it is a minimum of five and most of it should be veg. We know when to eat and how much, portions of tennis balls and decks of cards. We know about half an hour of activity five times a week. We know about plenty of shut eye and avoiding the bucket of wine of a night. Yes, we know about the antioxidant goodness of a couple of squares of dark, high cocoa chocolate. So, once again, why is it so easy to not 'know'. Why is it so simple to just stop doing what's best. For just ourselves?

Every so often I stop doing what's best for myself. For this, this, my mortal coil. That which has been tasked with the the busy burden of enabling, transporting, making physical all my life's dreams, loves and ambitions. In fact, I go to my very best, high achieving, ruthlessly efficient efforts to stop doing what's best.

It is at this juncture that I throw what can only be described as an inward 'tantrum'. It is an undignified, face on the floor, beat your breast hissy. Only untraceable to the innocent by stander? 'Why? Why?' I demand furiously. 'Why do I feel like a bag o'sludge?' How dare you, I rage at my poor, beleaguered self!

In its oxygen starved, sugar intoxicated, sluggish defence it cries out 'I'm so tired. Don't make me run. It would break me. Give me that kitkat. What? Dark chocolate? Not over my dead body!'

Many cycles of this, have I been through. I couldn't go over, or under, I had go squelching through. I have been a healthy weight for four years. It was not always; sadly, miserably and esteem shatteringly, the case. And somehow, each time, like a tiny, whispered miracle, I tell myself to...

"Shutup!"

I get bored of my conscience, like a formidable, nagging, beige wearing headmistress, arms folded across an indomitable bosom, barking at me from the second I wake, to 'Get out! Get out! Exercise!". I get irrate with the predictable, repetitive tsk, tsk from my elder and better self. The sanctimonious raised eye brow. And it's the inevitable sigh as I cross over to the dark side, the fridge's threshold that drives me to distraction. I lose all patience with the angel being an spineless sap and while the devil swings crazy from my shoulder with a bag of wickedness!

And so, it is with utter gratitude to my bluebottle attention span, I make a gleeful swing back to bowls of porridge and a morning run. In essence I do as I've been told. For it would seem, I (she) knows whats best for me!

A Tale

Everything has a story. Even, it would seem, inanimate objects. A story within a story writer.

Shadow letters on the ribbon.

Running my fingers along, peering closely, through squinted lids for possible letters, a familiar combination, perhaps a single startling word; clues of who and what and when. I yearn for a glimpse of a writer past.

It is a child's typewriter from the 50's and I smile as I unwind the long, dry ribbon (which smells faintly of comforting old books) for there in the middle is a long, wound about tangle. Pondering, I conjure up mother or father, a grandparent or a dear much- loved aunt, who half sighs half smiles, rolls their eyes and with a mock groan they free it once more for the eager type typer.

And once more and once more again I am reminded of the reasons we feel the draw of 'Vintage'. It is not, as a derisory comment once thrown my way, a load of smelly, old, secondhand tat. It is a reminding presence, an anchor point for a time not necessarily better but certainly instrumental and it tells us it's tale. We are not better, we are merely the step before.

Our Kindles and smart phones, our tablets and texting will make room for something new, newer, newest and the process will rush along in its unstoppable way, until one afternoon, a child will laugh and wonder why we ever held a lump of plastic and tech to our heads, passing on our news; departing and arrival times; our invites and announcements.

Watching the small folk, when we were gifted a round dial telephone, I marvel at all we have seen, in all but a blip of time line. The telephone of Tomorrow's World rests in my hand. My children try to locate the touch screen, hold the mouth piece to their ears and lose their place in a phone number, before starting the long dialling process once more.

I like the solidity of objects that worked with a machine-like clunk. I like an object that I can pull apart and with common sense and a screw driver, fix. I like an object whose usability is singular, elegantly simple and defining. I don't need my type writer to call my mother. I don't want my Singer to play Mack the Knife.

Neither a Luddite nor a traditionalist; Technology and progression are necessary and wondrous. But I will defend and prize any object happy to be fearlessly what it is and be good at it!

Taking Stock

"Harvest is ended and summer is gone." quoted Anne Shirley, gazing across the shorn fields dreamily."

Runner beans, a last perfect cucumber from the greenhouse, a tomato and two courgettes eagerly watched over for there was no glut here.

A slow allotment year to begin. Late frosts and miserable temperatures that stubbornly refused to rise, soil so water logged that seeds simply rotted away and those that didn't were secreted away by tiny paws. Spinach alone required furrow browed, stubborn tenacity and multiple plantings only to eek out a miserly first crop. It was whispered that even Billy's carrots failed, despite his mystical defenses against the carrot fly's predacious wickedness!

Fruit trees bore little or no fruit as our tiny winged pollinators were housebound for fear of the battering torrents. Discovery apples, a short seasoned delight, sadly were unsighted.

But there were companionable lunches of oatcakes and peanut butter, bowls of warm fragrant strawberries, little piles of baby broad beans and a curly soft lettuce or two. Raised up to the memorable by a miniature bottle of olive olive oil carried here in a pocket, a sprinkling wrap of salt and pepper and a scatter of hand picked flat leaf parsley. Sometimes to be had on the patch of contentious-snail-friendly-wasted-use but to my mind luxurious and verdant grass. Sometimes in the cosy south facing warmth of the shed, listening to the seemingly omnipotent rain.

A new year marked out and finished. Beginnings, endings, starts and finishes; sprouts, seedlings and pottings on; harvests and double digging. Manure.

Over a cup of tea we muse. The autumn on an allotment, the close of another growing year is comforting in so much as its not the end. It is simply prep, fate being generous, for another year. With our beds dug and turned over, like flipping the mattress, plans and dreams can begin. Sitting in my ancient, horse hair stuffed, arthritically creaking but enveloping armchair, poring over Herb and Vegetable Expert with a cup of tea is a sweet waste of time.

I note 'plant what you want to eat, NOT what you can grow'. For truly, there are only so many radishes a girl can eat. And 'Beetroot. What happened? Why didn't it grow?' Hastily followed by 'PIck the runner beans before they bulge' for they taste best before they resemble those in the supermarket. Who knew...? Not me.

Next year:

Little gems
Moroccan mint (for summer teas)
Endive
Beetroot (again)
A few radishes
Butternut Squash
Peas
Leeks
Potatoes (new and main crop)

....sigh. It's the possibilities that make life so rich, don't you think?