Tag: original poem

naming memories

On a visit to south Wales this week, when I stepped outside the back door, I found the iridescent creature pictured above sunning itself on the rosemary bush. Without doubt, it was one of the most eye-catching beetles I’ve ever seen.

I don’t claim to recognise all the insect life of the UK, but I was surprised just how unfamiliar this one seemed: I was pretty sure that even if my Observer’s Book of Common Insects and Spiders were not stuffed in a box at the back of a storage locker somewhere in rural Spain, it would not help me to identify it.
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summer blues

I was wondering why I seem to find so little to post about recently. After all, there’s no less news than there used to be. If anything, there’s probably more than ever. Perhaps that’s the problem: there is just too much information around for me to process it effectively and I think I feel less informed than ever.

Which may explain why I have fallen back on posting photographs.
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assorted fruit

Today I bought nectarines in the market. Five big, dark fruits that will need several days before they’re anywhere near ready for eating. Five fruits that cost me £2.50.

As I walked home, I was thinking that if they ripen properly, they will be well worth it, but if, like so much produce these days, they ripen unevenly, or rot before they are truly ripe, I won’t be very happy: after all, they cost ten shillings a piece, and that is a lot of money.

I’m not sure what triggered that reversion to old money, nor quite what path it was that my thoughts followed past the old-fashioned rambling rose draped over the wall to the fruit-filled memories of childhood.
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more dragons

I mentioned recently that there are certain words and phrases that I use over and over again: “rather lovely” occurs in a dozen posts here, while a search on “glorious” brings up 11 pages – over 50 posts. But it’s not just language that repeats; it’s also the topics.

There are daisies and dandelions scattered across these pages almost as liberally as the actual flowers occur in the neighbour’s garden, while bees bumble between posts, swallows swoop down and swans glide through at irregular, but fairly frequent, intervals.
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blind hope

There are lots of old buildings around here, and many newer ones that pretend to be old or use details from older buildings.

Many of the architectural features are bricked up and I wonder what is behind them.

I think the correct word for the bricked in windows and arches is “blind” – though I’m not sure if that is only for ones that were never intended to be open.
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