Slow down, you move too fast

You got to make the moment last.


The juxtaposition of the rising sun 

and this window will not provide 

spectacular skyscapes for much longer.

I see I'm a little earlier than last year,

but even so,

can it really be time to make marmalade again?

I've come to watch your flowers growing.

These hyacinths will be up and out before we know it.


And the children?

Just passing through.

Heraldic blooms

 Amaryllis rampant.

Hyacinth couchant.

Freesia sejant.

All terms normally applied to the postures of lions

on a shield.

The Long and Winding Road

Out to the country on our house quest again.

Feeling increasingly like Goldilocks,

we've seen,

 too cramped, too noisy, too musty,

too wrecked, too overlooked,

too gardenless.

I fear that 'just right' may not be achievable

and we must start to whittle away at our priorities.

Let joy be unconfined

A happy and special addition to my King Penguin collection.

Well done O. You made it.

On with the dance!

Let joy be unconfined.

Lord Byron

Temporary installation

Faint pink chalk lines,

prettily scribing the sky,

or thousands of frail bodies

sedentary, sublime in sleek metal tubes

being flung out of the blue

to far destinations.

Laser cut

Tree and bird inked against a pale blue sky today.
Like a Rob Ryan artwork.

Final bow

The tree was felled today

shedding its needles until the hall was as

deep in them as the forest floor.

The ham, beef and goose

linger on only as tubs of frozen stock,

and the last of the mincemeat

went into an apple pie.

Chestnuts from the Christmas veg box 

were almost forgotten, but using our friend Bert's

method of boiling first for two minutes,

had their shining moment today.

Will Nigel bounce?

If you've been listening to The Archers

for as long as I have

the signposts were in dayglo yellow

and had people shouting through loudhailers beneath them.

Glorious review for his Dame in the panto?

Touching gift of Mummy's brooch?

A banner on the roof?

'I'll just have to climb a little higher'?

Puhleese...

But maybe, just maybe,

they have a cunning plan.

I'm going to have to check the map of Ambridge

but could he have fallen into the treetop walkway?

You heard it here first.

Papery sweet

A quarter past eight on a January evening...

The whole room was as equally and agreeably warm 

as a bath full of water.

Groups of freesias and papery sweet narcissi

and violets set about in silver mugs

gave out their delicious evasive

chorus of scent.

Another sweet no thing, this time from

The Rising Tide by Molly Keane.

2010 - A View

Wherever you open your window,
I wish you a Happy New Year.

Keaneing

A winter's morning. A sky like a dirty old slate.

Trees untidy, lead-coloured brushes against it.

The air full of snow and rain 

and the hour full of the absurd necessity of going out hunting.

At such a moment there is one thing impossible 

and that is to see a summer's day.

White flowers in the evening seem the only terms 

in which it can become remotely visible.

Say stephanotis in darkness.

from The Rising Tide by Molly Keane.

Embroidered table cloth from my grandma;

from the archives.

(The Manual and I are locked in mortal combat.)


Keening -
  a form of vocal lament associated with mourning
that is traditional in Scotland and Ireland.

There will now be

a short intermission.

I have a new camera.

The manual,

which I fondly imagined was only bulky because 

it was multi-lingual,

is in fact 211 pages of vital English directions.

Well I say English.

It might as well be Japanese for all the 

sense I can make of it.

It took me ten minutes to attach the shoulder strap

(see page 25).

There are sixty three pages of 'basic' instructions

but no glossary or index.

So far, local weather conditions,

dark, drear, dismal, dim,

have not allowed me to experience its full range of

cleverness but I have just chanced upon page 105

which offers night portrait, night scenery and

creative night scenery, 

so all is not lost.

Christmas passed

Well that was lovely.

Now I'm feeling a trifle peckish.

I wonder if it might be time for a little smackerel of something.

Cold bread sauce would just hit the spot.

Sunny Christmas Eve hall

The given-up-for-lost goose has arrived!

I can put the chicken nuggets back in the freezer.

Merry Christmas.