Seven

The brain has shrivelled. I'm finding it difficult to string together a coherent sentence, never mind a post, so am resorting to the old standby, a list. The equivalent of a musical scale, an arpeggio. It may have limited interest but it is the doing of it rather than the end result that counts.

1. Less blogging, more reading. I am re- reading Molly Fox's Birthday. It was, yes, a birthday present and turned out to be such a page-turner that I galloped through and only realised at the end that I had skipped much that was good, that deserved time and care. You could be tricked into thinking of this book as superior Irish chick-lit. It isn't. A subtle, compassionate writer, Deirdre Madden. (The Indie liked it too.)

2. Prompted by the news headlines I took down Reading Lolita in Tehran from the bookshelf where it had been gathering dust since I brought it. You probably need to have read more Nabokov and Henry James than I have to appreciate it properly, but the book shines a chilling light on the realities of living in a theocracy. At around the same time I caught Iran and Britain on BBC 4. Very, very good. Unfortunately it is no longer on Iplayer on the Beeb's website, but if it ever comes your way, watch it.

3. I dreamed the other night that I was temping in a grey steel and concrete office that I shared with a man and woman that I didn't know. I had been careless and made a mistake. I knew it, tried my hardest to concentrate but to was unable to. Nightmare.

4. My boss has gone down with swine flu. Am checking whether or not I have a sore throat.

5. The cat's fur is a totally different colour in sunlight. Bright ginger. On grey days he is sandy, mottled. A lion's pelt.

6. An afternoon of summer sun, warm strong wind, pink rhodendendrons, the first fuschia. Ten bumble bees on the lavender bush at last count. The silver birch outside the window sways in the breeze, slender and loose-limbed branches in perpetual motion.

7. Feeling the way forward step by step after a trying time. Tentatively. The landscape has changed. Certainties are no longer as certain. (Astrological note: Saturn transiting 12th house. Still).

Heatwave

The humidity and heat - 28 degrees and rising - bring with them a fretful quiet, a slowing of activity. Of necessity. Impossible to think clearly and quickly, to move at a pace beyond minimal. My office is up four flights of stairs, on the top floor of a converted 18th century townhouse. No airconditioning. The south facing sash window is jammed wide open in the vain hope of capturing a breeze, the sunblinds drawn. As an emergency measure we set up an electric fan on a folding chair between our two desks, taking care as we come and go not to trip over the cable. In spite of natural inclinations the work rate slows and I put off anything beyond the basics, the simple. My margins are very thin in high temperatures. The fan's turbulent air blows papers off the desk and dries the eyes.

My office colleague is American, born in the desert lands of the South-West. She loves this weather, flourishes in the heat, goes to the sauna regularly in winter for physical and emotional health. We manage our thermostatic differences and make allowances for each other - I dress in layers for flexible temperature control, she brings extra woollens. I sweat occasionally for her, she shivers from time to time to keep me happy.

****

A first appointment with a local shiatsu practitioner this afternoon in the ongoing quest for spasm-free muscles. Shiatsu worked miracles for my lower back in 1993. The first session was a Wednesday evening and I had to take the rest of the week off work, nose and eyes were running so much afterwards. A continuous stream. Not a cold, or flu. Detox.

Later in the year, in the October, a major life change occurred for which I am thankful to this day. I still believe an apparently unrelated series of events including the fact that I am alive now - a tad melodramatic but possibly true - were in some way triggered in a treatment room in a basement flat in North London that evening in May sixteen years ago.

In my book, everything is connected and in ways we can't begin to imagine.

Survivors

The back is less stiff and there is a greater range of movement in the neck and right arm but there is still work to be done, and I still need to limit computer time. Working on muscle trigger points - as many as I can locate. Still having physio. Going forward I've been advised build up some supportive muscle, so I wander over to the local authority gym. At 5.30pm it is packed. People pounding the running machines. Serious. No smiles. Hmm.

****

I work in the old part of the city. Walking distance from the cathedral and its green. Walking distance from pretty much everything: the bookshop, the library, M&S, the bank, Boots, the chiropractor and the gym.




A local architectural salvage firm had a temporary display in the tourist office just beyond the cathedral green. A favourite lunchtime haunt of mine for the duration, situated as it was en route to the Best Sandwich Shop in Town. A mishmash of rescued objects: statuery; horse brasses; coloured pharmacy bottles, dark green and brown, thick, uneven glass; small carved cows; steam engine plates; even a green man or two. I yearned after some of them. The cherub, or is it a satyr? - check out that unnervingly louche expression - with his shield and whatever it is he is holding in his left hand. The LNER plate. The antique tiles.

Part of the pleasure lay in the incongruity. A motley bunch. All survivors of small cataclysms of refurb and rebuild.

***


The rust-speckled white angel and his close companion were particular favourites. Better if you enlarge the photo and I couldn't get rid of the reflection from the street. But still, there's something about that face, blank and watchful, the protective curve of the arms. Those wings. Kitsch perhaps, sentimental possibly, but that's too harsh. I find it lovely.

Maybe an angel should only be seen half hidden among the reflections of the physical world. So you are never quite sure if he is actually present or simply a trick of the light.

Three score

My birthday today. A big one. This last week I've been like a child awaiting Christmas.

Sixty. Three score years. Ten more to go before my time's up if tradition is anything to go by. The family genes hint that I may be around a bit longer than that but the reality that individual existence is finite and that it will vanish, dissolve into something with a different shape and form or without shape and form, ideally lends a heightened awareness and a freedom to each day. A lightening up. Which is as it should be. Throw what's left of one's allotted span into the air and see what shape it takes when it hits the ground.

Inventory:

• The blessed liberation from the hormonal merry go round, and a consequent level of calm and equilibrium (some of the time) .
• I can finally stop trying to get it right. If I haven't by now I never will and it doesn't matter. It being life.
  
• There are still yearnings: to belong, love in the widest sense and an end to loneliness. But you start where you are with what you have.
• Good health and fitness - the right rotator cuff excepted - are real, unexpected gifts. My body and I are finally on amicable terms. Weight has normalised. Clothes fit. I had huge food issues once so this is a big deal.
• Family: my sister, my cousin. Meeting up with the former in a few hours time.
  
• Friendships continue and a couple of new ones are forged. Others fall apart or fade away.
• Nearly bankrupt we may be but as of today the state throws a small monthly pension in my direction. Not enough to live on by itself, I'll need to work for a good while yet, but I'm thankful to have it. Plus free prescriptions for any medicine I might require and - best of all - free bus travel all over England. The downside: the identity photo on the bus pass is truly depressing.
  
• And there's more. As an OAP I can sign up for U3A, show up for the £3 afternoon Silver Screenings at the local cinema, get ten per cent off paintbrushes and spanners on Wednesdays at B&Q ...
• Engaged and humorous colleagues who do a great job in the community. And who threw a surprise lunchtime birthday bash on Friday.
  
• The cat. Of course. He's the feline equivalent of 86.
  

There are skills to develop. Plants to discover. A blog to write. Books to read. Seasons to greet. Footpaths to walk.

****

The sky pale blue, translucent after weeks of rain. The warmest day of the year so far according to the BBC. When I let the cat out just now the air was clear and heady, like a fine cool wine. Earth and grass damp. Breathe deeply.

Prana. Life force. The one constant

None of it matters.
All of it matters, every second and atom.

I wouldn't be twenty again for the world.

Bedtime

Prompted by Dale's recent post:


I think of my father particularly at this time of the year. He died in April over a decade ago, during the bluebell season.

****

I was eleven years old and heading towards a difficult adolescence, my sister, L, around one year. At her bedtime and because she insisted, my father - in his late forties by now - would carry her around the living room, moving from picture to picture, object to object, stopping briefly at each.

Goodnight ships (in front of a picture) ... goodnight other ships ... goodnight table ... goodnight trees ... goodnight window.

During the ritual my sister clutched her favourite stuffed toy, a koala bear. The pronounciation defeated her. The rest of the family followed her lead and called it Kayola.

****

He was at his best with babies and very small children: something tense and taut unwound and his defences lowered a fraction to display a quiet tenderness. He would have doted on grandchildren almost certainly, but neither L nor I were cut from a conventional nor a maternal cloth.


****

Our relationship feels easier at this distance. I struggled. So did he. The difficulties - there were a lot - matter less, his integrity and humour matter more.

Green corn

On this misty, rainy morning we climbed a hill ...

and walked through the bluebell woods ...



... and along a leyline and passed a church and two dogs and their owners and marvelled at the bluebells and the cornflowers and the pink campions and the rape (ugh, hate that word but the fields are shockingly, wonderfully yellow) and the red soil. And against the red soil the green, young green wheat, green woodlands. In the field, larks rose around us, singing.





A verse from the John Masefield hymn came to mind

Lo, all my heart's field red and torn
and thou wilt bring the young green corn
the young green corn divinely springing
the young green corn for ever singing.






Echoes of long ago school assemblies. Horrible, I hated my schooldays but on this particular morning the angst has faded and I'm not going to quibble about the religious theme. Masefield, the avid reader, seafarer and eventual Poet Laureate, was a local lad: he knew about red soil. And it is a beautiful poem ....

... the laughter of holy white birds flying after

On this hill, the parliamentarian armies laid siege to our royalist city in the valley below over four centuries ago. The men were so hungry they ate the cider apples in the orchards and the potatoes and robbed the farmhouses of bread and towards the end in extremis resorted to eating acorns. Difficult to imagine today in all this greenery and lushness. Indeed, the land is almost too perfectly cared for, too well manicured: wild flowers flourish along the lanes, no pesticides on these verges, no litter that I could see. A mystery solved when the landowner's name is spotted on a notice. Enough to convert one into a present-day royalist.



The hardest part of the walk was the last part, climbing the hill for the second time. A steep, hard pull. Near the summit we rested on a log on the edge of the wood in silence for five minutes or so. The field in front of us rose steeply, the line of the horizon curved like a giant's back recumbent against the sky. Raindrops on leaves. The moist smell of earth. The harsh call of a pheasant. The distant murmur of traffic, faint but just discernible. I hadn't wanted to come out this morning, had something on my mind, hadn't wanted to see anyone. Yet growing older, I have learned from experience that I don't always know what's good for me and consequently can be persuaded. By people I trust, by an uncertain yet stubborn faith in the apparently random flow of life.




"Shall we go?" my companion asks. We head for the car. Next stop, the house and a late lunch.

...

The shoulder still stiffens when I spend too long here at the computer. I overdid it on Friday and it took thirty six hours for the pain to subside. Thank god that nothing is obligatory in the blogosphere. Short posts, long posts. Whatever works. Right now, photographic posts seem to fit the bill. I love taking photographs and it's easier on the body than writing.

Grow

There were moments during the seminar when the heart began to pound and the eyes welled. Just being present, sensing the rusty cogs in the brain creak and groan with effort, was moving and exciting. Blame the euphoria on our lecturer - a grey haired, affable man, dauntingly intelligent. He wove ideas and concepts into a magical whole and yet at the same time, as they say, he spoke my language. I came away without catchphrases or coherent soundbites, just three pages of scribbled notes - can't afford to forget this, must record it - some photocopies and a changed perspective.

I had wondered whether or not to go, whether I would be out of my depth. Now and again I was but it didn't matter. There's all the time in the world to reflect and ponder. Mostly I was carried along. My colleague, C, had the same reaction. A bonus to have her with me on the long journey home.

I hadn't realised how thirsty I have been for study and to be stretched by a subject that fascinates, in the company of like minded others. There's this sudden craving for learning, an urge to explore and to grow and take a few risks.

Even at nearly sixty. Especially at nearly sixty.

Time to check out some prospectuses, perhaps?

****

Oh, and Relatively Retiring may recognise the photograph .....

Stretching

The shoulder and neck are better, though not cured. Too much time on the computer, using the mouse and the dull throbbing starts. Moderation, that most elusive of qualities, is my holy grail.

The immediate goal to work on the cow face pose, which with my hypermobile joints I used to find so easy in yoga class. One arm reaching backwards over the shoulder, the other behind the back reaching up. The hands clasp. Once I was proud of my prowess, glowed when the teacher praised my flexibility. Yes, I know, self-congratulation is at variance with the non-competitive spirit of yoga, but that didn't stop me. The karmic comeuppance is that these days I can just about manage the pose on one side only. Impossible to move the right arm upwards behind my back.

The difference between a year ago and now is still dispiriting. A lesson is humility. Also in self-forgiveness: nobody made me sit at the laptop for hours at a time without taking a break

I'm supposed to do exercises three times a day. Some days it's only twice but Sheila the physio is pleased with progress and the gap between our appointments has lengthened from weekly to fortnightly to monthly. At my request - she knows I do massage and is supportive - we name the muscles, bones and joints beneath her fingers as she works, massaging and stretching contracted muscles, neck then arm then shoulder, me on the couch, her standing alongside. A litany, a recitative: Pecs minor, scalenes, subscapularis, levator scapulae, coracoid process, C4 and C5 ....

When we tire of A&P we talk about cats, hers and mine. Or gardening.

I turn onto my back. She places both hands, one over the other, on the injured shoulder, leans her weight forward onto her arms. Clavicle and sternum are pushed towards the spine and my lung capacity is reduced by what feels like 90%. She's a large woman in her early forties, as tall as I am and a former shot putter, solid and muscular. The effect is not dissimilar (I imagine) to being run over. I close my eyes, wonder if my skeleton can take it, imagine the pistol-shot crack of fracturing bone.

At the end of the session the muscles in the right shoulder and arm feel blessedly looser. Silent prayers of thanks for the NHS. And for Sheila. We've almost, in a way, become friends. Not quite, the professional relationship takes precedence, as it should.

But I like her, and I'm grateful.

****

A visit to a National Trust garden last week. I couldn't tear myself away from the spiralling, unfurling ferns. Uncurling. Releasing. Stretching out of themselves.

Abeyance

Writing The End seems far too final. Impossible not to leave the door slightly open.

Nonetheless, after two plus years and three blogs the time has come to stop, at least for a while. A combination of the RSI (which is serious and painful and which I need to take seriously and blogging really doesn't help) and the awareness that, physical injury apart, I have been spending more time than is beneficial in front of the computer screen.

So, in abeyance until further notice. At least until the summer.

Three months of minimal computer work, the physio says.

After that, we'll see.

More Snow

No better place to be than on the bus this morning.

The road winds up and out of our low-lying city and as the altitude increased the view broadened till we few passengers could see across the fields to Wales. Skirrid - the Holy Mountain - and the Sugar Loaf and the Black Mountains, all, including the last, a pristine white. A panoramic view in any season. Today, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

In town you have to be up early to see the snow at its best. This past week it has fallen overnight then as the day progresses the temperature rises. Snow drips off the trees, turns into slush, flows away down the drains.



Here, just a little higher, the land is colder, the air crisper. The driver changed gear to accommodate the upward climb. In the reserve and silence of the lower deck we stared out of the windows at a changed world. Random travellers. The familiar reborn, recreated.

Update: More snowy pictures here.

Snow

You'll have to indulge me with this post, readers in North America and, indeed, other parts of England. And Wales, and Scotland. Our snowfall has been minimal in comparison to yours, probably, but nonetheless in these parts it's a rare event. I'm not working till Thursday so can enjoy it all as I prowl around the garden with a camera.

A touch of cabin fever mid-evening yesterday. Home alone after an exceptionally social and stimulating and surprising weekend. Restless. The urge to pull on boots and go out into the fields, into the snowy darkness, to explore. Sloth overcame courage and I surfed the net instead.

*****

The male blackbird is getting braver in approaching the patio, the one spot in the garden that is free from snow and where I can scatter crumbs. He flies off with staccato cries of alarm when the the cat approaches the French window - just a few feet separate them through the double glazing. Suddenly my elderly cat is transformed from the peaceable beast that I know. He crouches, every muscle on alert. Teeth chattering. Pupils dilated.

My companion. Still a hunter after all these years. His instincts remain as sharp as ever. Does the same apply to his owner who is also, in her own way, ageing?

Candlemas

Cotton wool balls of snow rush towards the windscreen. The wind whips up the flakes on the road surface into swirling, dancing patterns. White snakes, says B. He drives fast, even in this weather. Oncoming headlights dazzle, dip and disappear behind us.

To the west a hill curves on the horizon. A line of trees on its summit, stripped of leaves, fine drawn shapes against the last vestiges of daylight. The silhouettes are so distinct that even at this distance I fancy I can see individual twigs and the discreet, tumescent buds of spring.

Dilemma

La falaise a Penarth, le soir, marée basse - Alfred Sisley.

I linked to this painting in a previous post. The coastal scene is not that different today, over a century later. The promontory in the distance is Lavernock Point, a few miles out of Cardiff, one end of the proposed Severn Barrage, linking South Wales to Somerset. According to a front-page article in today's Independent, this will harness the powerful tide of the Severn Estuary to provide 5 per cent of the UK's energy needs.

That's a lot. You can see why the Government are very interested indeed, and why at first glance it makes sense. A wonderfully green scheme. But. But. It will mean the destruction of natural habitats, marshes and mudflats, for thousands of migrating birds, fish and eels. Vague promises are being made that alternative wildlife sanctuaries will be found but the loss will be immense. There are other less damaging options under consideration for harnessing parts of the Estuary - such as the ones put forward by Friends of the Earth, who have come out strongly against the Barrage - but none that deliver this kind of mighty renewable punch. As the Indie says:

There is little doubt that a barrage would destroy more wildlife habitat than any other British construction project in modern times. The Severn Estuary, where the celebrated naturalist Sir Peter Scott founded Slimbridge, the wildfowl refuge which became one of the world's most famous nature reserves, provides an 86,000-acre feeding ground for wild swans, geese and many thousands of wading birds, such as dunlin, turnstone, oystercatcher and ringed plover, from all over Europe.

Under EU wildlife habitat laws, if the Government were to go ahead, it would have to find alternative compensatory habitat – mudflats and marshes – which might be as much as 40,000 acres, and which might cost anything up to £3bn.

But that is unlikely to hold the Government back, such will be the temptation to grab that massive 5 per cent renewable energy boost from a barrage – for in December ministers took on the enormous obligation, in an EU-wide deal, of sourcing 20 per cent of total UK energy demand from renewables by 2020. Twenty per cent of total energy (which includes heating and transport) means finding about 40 per cent of electricity from renewables – nearly 10 times the current figure of about 4.5 per cent.

The Herculean size of that task means the Government is very likely to go for the barrage, especially as the onshore wind industry is suffering strongly from the rise in the euro against the pound, meaning turbines made in Germany and Denmark are now about a third dearer than they were a year ago.

Dilemma. I know the area well and would grieve at its destruction. I am in favour of renewables and clean energy (who isn't?). I distrust the forthcoming Government consultation process and the hidden agendas behind it that quite probably mean that it will be a rubber-stamping of a decision already made. I am a supporter of Friends of the Earth. There is a long way to go and we are currently living through the mother of all recessions and the country may go bankrupt and there will be an election soon. But I suspect the Barrage will be built, eventually.

Family

Last Sunday afternoon, late. The train is crowded. Luggage everywhere and no seat to be had when I get on at Bristol after a few days at my cousin's place. Not my favourite part of the journey, this, but fortunately it doesn't last long. Twenty minutes at most, then a change. I share the stretch of grimy corridor with a father and two sons. The father, late thirties, jeans, sweatshirt with a logo. The boys maybe ten and eight. The father asks if they are in the way, offers to help me with my suitcase. A Welsh accent. He seems kind.

The two boys chatter, looking out the window, pointing at trains, carriages, signs. Look over there, Dad. Is that the same train we saw at Swansea? It would have to be a very long train if it's the same one, says their father. Laughter. Oh Dad.

The older boy starts to talk to me, unprompted. Quick, darting speech. I notice the bulky dental braces.

"We're going to Maesteg". The Valleys. "We've been to see our cousins in Durham". That's a long way, I say, I did the journey myself a few months ago.

"I know. We've been travelling all day". He turns back towards his brother and the window.

Rail travel may be a novelty for both boys. There is something old fashioned about their excitment and keen interest in everything on the other side of the glass, with nary a computer game or ipod to be seen. I watch them with mixed emotions - happy, wistful, sad, who knows - their lack of cool is very endearing. As is their confidence in each other's company. Their security in being part of a unit.

Newport. The father offers to open the carriage door. People start to board, pushing. Almost dark. Goodbye, I call as I get out. A faint reply is just audible over the blaring cacophony of the station loudspeaker.

Mouse II

An upsetting Friday at the now very part-time and occasional job. The backwash turned yesterday into something of a convalescence. Rest, light housework, repotting plants. Don't think. Follow a gentle routine. Eat properly. Don't think. Drink water. Let it go. Don't think.

Today, feeling stronger, I summoned up the courage to plug in the vertical mouse.

It works. A bit hypersensitive compared with my old mouse, but we'll get used to each other. Ugly and cumbersome, yes, but who cares. As we all know by now, looks aren't everything.

Mouse control is mainly via the hand and fingers. No twisting of the arm. My biceps brachii are cautiously optimistic. Not to mention the acromioclavicular joint and associated muscles and ligaments.

Better days.

Diffuse

The Bristol Channel and Severn Bridge from north Somerset.


A blustery wind rushed in from the Atlantic. Diffuse light, muted colours, boundaries between sea and sky and land softened. Studies in blue and grey. The Impressionists would have loved it. (In fact Sisley did paint some later landscapes on the opposite side of the water).



If you can see Wales, according to the locals - tongue in cheek - there's rain on the way. If you can't, then it's already raining. Sure enough a few hours after these were taken the heavens opened.

****

A line is crossed.

Certainties dissolve. Or maybe are distorted by the mists within.

Gargoyles and a Vertical Mouse

Last Monday the new physio diagnosed chronic RSI in the right shoulder. A consequence of a couple of decades of computer work and faulty posture and seating. The latest chapter in an ongoing saga. Remedial exercises three times a day and a course of ultrasound (thank god for the NHS) are prescribed. Most important of all, a limit - a drastic one - on computer time, certainly until the vertical mouse, now on order, arrives. Never heard of a vertical mouse? Neither had I.

Just as well you've stopped full time office work, she said. Lucky too that the injury doesn't much affect the range of movements needed for massage.

I'll be blogging and reading what I can, when I can. Ditto commenting. Want to do more and frustrated that it isn't possible. Face to face with my own limitations yet again - something I resist and resist - and a reminder that no-one (including, especially, me) can do everything and be everywhere.

Strange, I find, how driven behaviour patterns crop up everywhere, including in cyberspace. Laugh at them and they dissolve. But only for a while. They return and sit on your shoulder, whispering in your ear until you laugh and shrug them off. Again. Grotesque, comical gargoyles.

But I will catch up with the blogreading. In due course. Promise.

Snapshot

Northern Israel, near the Lebanese border. October 1995. A pit stop. We were warned not to take photographs of the soldiers in the area, there had been incursions across the border and people were jumpy, but this one - so young - seemed open and friendly so I took the risk. I gestured with the camera. Would he mind? He smiled and I pressed the button.

It was what passed for a time of hope, the narrow window of one year between the signing of the Oslo accord between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin and the death of that hope by assassination a few weeks later in the November. Even then, in the best of times relatively speaking, there seemed to be little optimism. Just a sense, at least among the Israelis that we met, that it couldn't work out, that the enmity on the other side was too deep. That it would always be like this. We had sat next to a Palestinian doctor on the plane from London to Tel Aviv and he spoke with quiet bitterness about a life in exile. He was equally pessimistic.

****

This isn't a political post about Israel and Gaza, though heaven knows I have my own opinion.

I had a CofE education. These days forgotten snatches of Old Testament verses float back into the memory.

The Lord hardened Pharoah's heart.

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.


A hard heart.

Not a refuge, not a defence. Not at all. A place of danger.

And Then

A farewell speech, a homemade cake, a present. Embarrassed shuffling of feet. Strange, as I will in fact be back working there for a few days towards the end of January, and periodically again after that. And I meet a former colleague for lunch next week and another at yoga class on Tuesdays. Nonetheless it is the closing of a chapter. And a stepping into a void.

I'm lucky. Small pensions kick in over the coming months which will pay just a few of the bills. I have skills, including massage - ostensibly the latter is the reason for leaving a nearly full-time desk job. Pass out cards. Offer tasters. Get a massage or two myself. Do yoga. Speak to people. Prepare the paperwork. More than anything else, trust. Listen for the nudges that indicate a way forward, even if, especially if, it is in a direction I don't expect. Be content to breathe and walk and garden until then. I can temp while I wait.

What of the waiting times? And the uncertainty? That's where life is lived, not in the illusion of plans and goals. More of a challenge when you live alone and there is no-one to chivvy you, and when you tend towards worry.

I want to cultivate both the garden and my friendships.I started working almost immediately when I moved here and have put little effort into finding and nurturing friendships, a community, a tribe. Like work, this takes work.

I need, really need to read more. Much more.

Don't know where the blog and blogging fit into all this, if at all. On verra bien..

Create. Create. Create. Anything.

****

This morning, while I typed, the sky caught fire. The frost has vanished and a west wind is blowing. Beneath the horizon, invisible, a full moon.

Sunday

Should I blog about the new computer and the relief to back and shoulders of not hunching over the laptop and the delight of a proper keyboard? Should I, after watching the news and trying to take in the futility and the suffering? It's the dilemma of personal blogging, the sense that trivia is sometimes just, well, trivia.

****

A solitary female blackbird pecked at the stiffened crusts of bread. Minus 6 degrees yesterday and the frost seems permanent. Low grey cloud. Rock-like soil. The rasp of the scraping of car windscreens. The cat dozing on the sofa. M did indeed install the new computer. A visitor engenders a flurry of tidying up. I made him two cups of tea - milk, one level teaspoon of sugar - and he polished off the plate of Jaffa cakes.

****

Saturn transiting 12th house. A stripping down, a melting away.

****

At one point a robin sang in the rowan tree. The song pierced the silence like an arrow. Clear. Utterly beautiful.