for the May Queen

I wasn’t up early enough to bathe in the dew this May Day morning, but I did go for a walk later on. The hawthorn is just coming into bloom, so I had a look at what was happening in the hedgerows and elsewhere to celebrate the arrival of the May Queen.

may blossom Continue reading “for the May Queen”

frustrated plans

During this coronavirus lockdown, times and dates have become less important than they sometimes are for many of us.

For those who have been furloughed, normal office hours are irrelevant, while for those who are working from home, even early morning meetings seem to start later – the breakfast meetings I attend are at 9 instead of 7am – and since there’s no commuting time, there’s no need to set an alarm clock.
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wandering and pondering

I’ve been trying to get out for a walk most days recently, despite the lockdown and I’ve made sure to take a camera with me, or at least have my phone to hand. With fewer people around, I am thoroughly enjoying the quieter atmosphere as it gives me more space for thoughts.

So, having posted some bits and bobs of early poetry drafts recently, I think it’s time to go back to the sort of photography and musings that is the other mainstay of this blog. There wasn’t any particular plan or theme here when I started, but having juggled the sequence of pictures, I think I’ve found a bit of a narrative thread.
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a sense of scale

There are things that we see and hear that are forgotten in a moment, and other things that stay with us for many, many years.

The things that stick with us can come from any number of different sources and, while some may be profoundly important and shape the way we see life from that moment onwards, others are as trivial as a phrase that continues to echo in memory or a scene from a TV programme that has no relevance to anything at all.
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perspectives

Regular readers will probably have realised I rather like dandelions.

Well, not just dandelions, but catsears, hawksbeard and coltsfoot, and all the other wonderfully named, bright, yellow composite weeds with flowers like the radiant suns that dot the pages of children’s picture books.

I like the seed heads, too, with their downy parachutes counter-balanced by tiny elongated seeds.

Which probably explains why there are so many of them scattered across the pages of this blog. Perhaps not as many as there are on the wide green lawns in the park, but plenty, nonetheless.
Continue reading “perspectives”