poem – Page 35 – don't confuse the narrator

you don’t know what you’ve got…

When I moved to Spain in the late Eighties, I still thought of the UK as my home. Having now, at least temporarily, ceased to have a permanent base in Spain, I seem to be in the opposite position. I don’t think I’ve ever really suffered with home-sickness, but there is always a hint of greener grass elsewhere. (Or, more realistically, greener grass in the UK and bluer skies in Spain, I suppose.)

I don’t know if the leaves in the picture are actually olive leaves – there were certainly no olives visible on the trees – but even set against the grey English sky they reminded me of the olivar I used to walk through to get to the pueblo and I had to stop to take a photo.
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temptation

I came across this gorgeous rosebud recently: a vivid splash of colour on an essentially monochrome day.

The weather had been erratic and I was sure there would be a storm within a few hours that would destroy the flower’s perfection; I wondered fleetingly whether the house owners would miss it if I “removed” it before that could happen. Instead, I settled for taking pictures.
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a poem for every occasion

Two months ago, the rolling green of Middle England was covered in purple and I wrote on the blog that the rosebay willow herb is one of my favourite summer flowers.

Tangled rosebay willow herb after seeding

Today, the countryside is every bit as green, but the bright aspirational flower spikes have long gone and the feathery thought-like seeds have been carried away on the wind.

Nothing is left but a dried up scribble of empty seed pods, which perfectly matches the barren tangle of my mind at the moment.
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on trend

When I set the blog up, it was deliberately anonymous; now, it’s perfectly possible to connect the dots and find out who does the writing here. Even so, I don’t usually post pictures or other details about myself, so this is an exception.

Green grass, orange & white boat, blue sky, granny hair in foreground.

The photo is from the same set as those I posted yesterday, and manages to show the colours I failed to capture in the second picture. It also shows another colour entirely: my natural hair colour.
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in the clouds

Three weeks ago I wrote that my external hard drive was refusing to boot. Faced with the prospect of losing ten years worth of photos, writing and other memories, I managed to remain optimistic.

I finally took the drive down to the shop earlier this week and have spent a tense few days waiting for news. The chap now tells me that he thinks he has managed to recover everything. To avoid a repetition of the problem, he recommends that I start storing things in the cloud.
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