village life – Page 11 – don't confuse the narrator

colourless green ideas

When I visit my elderly mother, word puzzles are the main evening activity; our newspaper of choice is The Independent‘s “i“ as even the more expensive Saturday edition provides an evening of entertainment for two for just 30p, which really can’t be bad.

Yesterday we spent so long over the word wheel – our combined words ranging from leat for a mill stream to the Hawaiian luau and the mineral laurite – that we decided to leave the cryptic crossword for today. By the end of this morning’s first cup of coffee, though, it was already half done and I was sent to the village shop to splash out on a Sunday paper.

Despite the weathermen proclaiming that Friday was the first day of spring, we have grey skies and a real feel of autumn in the air. There are a few daffs about, but the most interesting blooms I found were almost as colourless as the day:

kennels & cottages

Well, they are clearly cottages not kennels, but they are in Kenilworth – in the heart of England – and I thought they were worth taking pictures of.
Continue reading

poems from the pueblo

Some of the short poems from this blog have been brought together with others in an eBook: Poems from the pueblo: Haiku & assorted fragments.

There are several formats available for download:

• FREE iPad-only version from the iBookStore. Watch the publisher’s video to find out more about this fully-enhanced ebook:
(The video has music, so you may want to check your volume control.)

Just read/watched/listened to your #PoemsFromThePueblo. What a little treasure box! And love the whole interactive thing. – Elizabeth Hopkinson, fantasy writer, sent via twitter from her Hidden Grove.

• Download the FREE ePub version direct from Tantamount. (This version includes embedded sound files which will only be accessible if your reader supports sound.)

• Or buy it from Amazon.

I’m hoping there will be more poems from the pueblo – both further collections of fragments and, eventually, a collection of the more substantial poems I have written while living in the Spanish hinterlands.

You’ll find full information about my books over on my website. Feedback and reviews are always appreciated.

a hook to hang things on

I typed “a hook” into the Google search box and was surprised to see that the first auto-complete option was “a hook in writing”.

At the moment, I have no idea of how to grab my readers’ attention half as effectively as this photo is likely to, nor do I have any ideas for a poem that might be hung alongside the image.

So I guess I’ll just have to leave you all in suspense…

sun, snow, sierra

Yesterday at 9am it was still so dark I was hardly able to see whether the garden was still there or whether it had either disappeared under flood-water or been blown away by the wind. Today, though, at around 8:30am: