“March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.”
– LM Montgomery
The gleam of chill sunshine on the dew-drenched field gives a surreal silvery glow.
A single crow stands sentry in the tree at the entrance to school.
I emerge from school into a peaceful pastel twilight of pink, blue and orange; birds chirp in muted tones from the trees, and even the sound of traffic feels hazy and distant.
Fat white buds are bursting into delicate white blossoms along the reaching fingers of blackthorn.
Fields along the roads edge have been ploughed into rich chocolate brown, velvety perfection.
Lexi giggles, “Miss, your voice is really cute. “
I currently have a sore throat and sound like a chipmunk … I’m not sure I’m feeling particularly cute!
Above the distant tractor, a cloud of white gulls wheel and dance; swirling down to the ground and then taking flight again.
Stately silvery-brown old beeches are wearing fuzzy, mossy slippers in bright green.
In the morning quiet, in that calm before the students arrive, I’m sure I hear a piercing whistle … the oystercatchers are back!
A woman in a padded coat walks her small, grey, curly-haired dog; her coat matches the colour of the ornamental cherry blossom above her.
Tiny diamonds sparkle on the velvet petals of a magnolia flower.
At the base of a fallen tree, a wolf struggles to stand from its mossy bed, gnarled wooden limbs enmeshed in roots and branches 🔽.
A heron flaps heavily overhead with a raucous screech.
Nestled in the flat, grey sky, a tiny patch of rainbow shimmers and glimmers.
Fat ivy stems, woven into intricate Celtic knots, crawl up the tree trunks along the path.
The pavement is littered with ash keys, as if some unknown entity has been rummaging through a drawer to find the correct one before trying to open an unexpectedly locked door.
It’s amazing how judgemental a pheasant can look when it feels that you are disturbing it.
In my seed trays, twenty seven tiny green sprouts have appeared … If they all make it to maturity, it’s going to be a very tomatoey summer!
Wind howls hungrily at the windows, battering and buffeting the glass to find a way in.
Along the branches of the pine trees, nestled amongst the needles, the ladybirds have come out to play.
“I kept turning pages in my mind I kept crossing paths and crossing lines And I saw more Than these doors and corridors“
– Clare Bowen, ‘Doors and Corridors’
I feel like I’ve been much more negative than usual in recent months and it really isn’t sitting right with me. The point of this blog has always been to concentrate on the positive and burble away in a (hopefully) relatively entertaining way. There are a myriad little reasons (nothing life-altering, but lots of deep-rooted irritations) to explain why my attitude has become a little more ‘survive’ and a little less ‘thrive’ recently but I’m damned if I’m going to let external factors keep dulling my sparkle and enjoyment of life any longer.
To try and combat my annoyance* with various things at school, I decided to start a Writers’ Group. We are going to meet on a Wednesday lunchtime to see if we can develop a (deeper) love for creative writing. Being a lunchtime club, it is, of course, voluntary … which meant that on the first Wednesday I had absolutely no idea who would turn up. Or indeed, if anyone would turn up. Half of me was expecting that I’d be sitting there all alone *can you hear the sounds of a tiny violin?* in my room. I mean, what self-respecting teenager wants to spend their meagre lunchtime thinking about English, and words, and writing? Happily, that half of me was, well, in a word, wrong.
I had about ten students, which was perfect. I didn’t want too many; that would have just meant I didn’t have the ability to speak to each of them on an individual basis. I also didn’t want just one or two; I’d really like this to be something interactive and that’s just plain difficult if there’s only a couple of kids there. I explained how I thought it would work and then we got on with it.
Now, our lunchtime is a grand total of twenty five minutes long … which is going to make this a bit of a challenge at times. It’s hard to deliver a new idea, get the kids going on it and get any meaningful writing down on paper in such a short period of time. But we shall do our best.
For the first session, I’d come up with a couple of different ideas, but decided to roll with the concept of cut up poetry. I hadn’t had the time (or the forethought … I mean, how does Wednesday roll around quite so quickly every week?) to ask students to bring any printed material with them, so I raided my stash of past issues of Wanderlust magazine and photocopied lots of random pages because they’re so beautiful, I just couldn’t bear to chop them up.
We cut and snipped and chose our words. If I’m honest, I let them choose their words first and decided I would work with whatever was left. We didn’t have a lot of time and we mostly got our words chosen and stashed away in poly-pockets to work on at home. It was really lovely to see how enthusiastic the kids were about crafting something. I’ve seen a couple of the poems they created since and they are beautiful.
It’s surprisingly therapeutic to sort through someone else’s words and choose the ones that resonate best in your own head. I spent a happy couple of hours playing with words, moving phrases around and substituting something that worked a little better. This was where I got to: It’s not the most profound piece of writing, but it pleased me at the time.
The following week’s challenge was very different. In August, I read Gareth Brown’s ‘Book of Doors and it stuck with me (well worth a read if you’re looking for a book recommendation). The idea that doorways can be made interchangeable is a very appealing one. Stand in front of any door, clearly visualise the door you want to walk through, open the door and step into your chosen location. How fantastic would that be? To be able to travel anywhere in the world without the hassle of airports and traffic and parking.
So I spent a happy Sunday afternoon Googling doors around the world until I had a collection of varied, beautiful, colourful, decrepit, and just plain weird pictures of doors. I printed them, cut them all out and got ready to deliver my challenge: for them to choose a door that spoke to them and write a response. If they went through their door, where would they end up? What would they find? How would it feel?
I got a bit sidetracked then by a student who’d popped in for a last minute chat about an abbreviated version of ‘An Inspector Calls’ that they were performing the following day. A great chat, but inconveniently timed; I ran out of time having given the group very little input and was really worried they’d think I didn’t care and would drift away and not bother turning up today. Which made it all the more wonderful when I had some extras come to join us today. Betsy wandered through the door, full of apologies because she’d forgotten her notebook; could she possibly grab some paper to work on today. Iris scuttled in a couple of minutes late, having had to brave the cafeteria queues to get some lunch. Gabi, Lilly and Poppy waited ages before quietly saying, “Have you got any spare books, miss, it’s the first time we’ve been?”
We had a look at a local, Norwich based, writing competition that they could submit some work to and then we got on with writing. I think we all jumped when the bell rang to signal the end of lunchtime. I can’t wait to see what they produce.
If you’re interested, this is my door. It’s a photo that I took in Rouen last August, and I just love it. There’s something about the air of gentile decay that you find so often in French towns that really appeals to me … and who doesn’t love a bit of graffiti to spice things up?
* I have just realised that there is no noun form of the verb ‘to irk’ and if I’m honest, this feels like an egregious shortcoming in the English language. Irkation? (Following the examples of irritation, exasperation and vexation) or irkance? (Following annoyance, inconvenience and nuisance**)
** Even more vexatiously, there is no longer a verb form of ‘nuisance’. In the Middle Ages, from about 1350 to 1500, it used to exist. The verb was ‘nuise’, from the Latin ‘nocēre’, by way of the French ‘nuisir’***. And they just let it die out. Leaving us with a random gap in our language. English really is a constant trial to those of us that like a little bit of logic with our imagination!
“Go to the winter woods: listen there, look, watch, and ‘the dead months’ will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest.”
– William Sharp, ‘Where the Forest Murmurs’
On the screen, chilly blue fingers of shadow point the way down snowy slopes under azure skies; outside, the fingers are damp, grey digits, sliding under collars, pinching fingers, and smearing moisture across cheeks.
Black beans bubble in the crockpot, their steam redolent of spices from warmer climes: cumin, coriander and chilli … almost as good as foreign travel.
As the wind rises, the leylandii shakes out its branches; a flamenco dancer settling her ruffles as she gets ready to dazzle a crowd.
Despite the Merlin app telling me that their presence is ‘unlikely in Norfolk’, four cranes trumpet loudly across a wet field. It sounds like elephants roaming the county.
A hunched dark shape perched on one of the thinner branches of a tree turns out, on closer inspection, to be a buzzard, and not a vulture or a gargoyle.
In the flowerbed on my way to work, under the deep shadowy edge of an evergreen hedge, a single purple muscari has appeared overnight.
The quick, flittering movements outside the kitchen window resolve themselves into two robins, busily feeding in the winter flowerbeds.
Packets of mock standardisation material have arrived on my desk; February is the start of an extended exam season that begins with Year 11 mocks, continues with Year 10 mocks and culminates in the GCSEs.
Wish me luck …
Like small children playing hide and seek, arms and legs sticking out all over the place, two trees peer over the top of the privet hedge, their blossoms pale and messy in the grey morning light.
“My cat fell downstairs!” announces Erin; an attempt to distract me from the fact that she has managed to leave her glasses at home again and can’t actually see.
It almost works … why would her cat not have the balance its species is known for?
A tiny sunshine star is buried in the grass by my car.
The lonely ‘kee’ of a buzzard echoes through the sky as I hang my washing out; the world feels like it’s waking up again.
Gazing out of the window while the photocopier does its thing, I notice that the untidy gaggle of seagulls on the field bears more than a passing resemblance to the students at lunchtime.
Scarlet elfcups scattered across the woodland floor fool me into the belief that someone has discarded small pieces of plastic. Reality is so much better than my fear.
Freya comes to show off the creative writing book she’s decorated following our inaugural Writers’ Group session on Tuesday. She shyly shows me the beautiful poem she worked on at home.
Buds are appearing on the fruit trees; it won’t be long until they burst into flower and leaf.
I tuck seeds into their beds of compost, dreaming of long summer days, a glut of Cosse de Violette beans and tomatoes, and the things I can cook with them.
Crabapple blossom has appeared along the hedgerows; delicately crumpled scraps of blush pink, offering hope for the coming year.
“The rolling stone rolls echoing from rock to rock; but the rolling stone is dead. The moss is silent because the moss is alive.”
– G.K. Chesterton, ‘Heretics’
I have a bit of a confession; I rather like fence posts. I recognise this piece of information probably makes me a bit weird, but it is, nevertheless, the truth. We have some great fences round here … gnarled, weatherworn, and deeply grooved. I mean, just look at that texture!
Sometimes it’s the post itself, but most of the time, it’s what’s growing on top that really makes my day. Atop these characterful posts, there are tiny little worlds just waiting to be explored. Lumps and bumps of vibrant green. Velvety cushions strewn across hardwood floors. There are red tipped lichenous spikes, an orchestra of grey-green trumpets and many slender, fragile columns holding aloft the foundations of the next generation.
On the day I took these photos, everything was sprinkled with a glitter of diamond bright droplets. Not from rain, but from mist. Or low-hanging cloud. Or mizzle. Or whatever name we were using for it that day. Somehow, it made the moss look alive. I mean, I know it is alive, but it started to seem sentient. Tentacles reached out from behind tuffets of green, each one topped with an eye and bejewelled along its length. Even the velvety cushions seemed to be small furry creatures, hunkered down against the rain.
As a kid, I read a book called ‘The Forest of Bowland Light Railway’, in which my favourite characters were called cowzies (Looking back, they form a very tiny part of the book, but they were the bit that stuck with me!). Small bundles of fluff, they lived deep in the forest alongside the gnomes, the leprechauns, and the wild animals;
A cowzie is about as high as a rabbit sitting up on its hind legs. It has no arms and no legs to speak of, and its eyes though small, are hidden under long hair like a toy terrier, the kind old ladies and old maids loaves to carry about and which are always yapping.
The cowzies’ teeth, though hidden in their long hair, were as sharp as needles and about the sane length.
– BB, ‘The Forest of Boland Light Railway’
To me, tiny lumps of moss always remind me of cowzies; there’s no telling what teeth, eyes and features might hide under their fluffy exterior; they’re incredibly resilient, surviving hot dry summers, soaking wet autumns and freezing winters; they huddle together for warmth, and look incredibly cute and whimsical throughout all of it.
I mean, this one basically has whiskers to sense the world around it.
“Not lovelier. But a different kind of loveliness. There are so many kinds of loveliness.”
– L M Montgomery, ‘The Blue Castle’
Just in case anyone is wondering, spring has not sprung; Norfolk is still brown; and it’s definitely still raining. Ugh. I watch the pictures of gorgeous, fluffy flakes of snow falling thickly over the Olympic venues and dream of proper winter, of frost and snow and ice. And then I glance out of the window and my dreams come squelching down around my ears, soaked through and dissipated by the ever-present, constant drizzle a Norfolk winter brings.
Despite the rain though, I managed to get out today for a very short walk. I’d been over to my local garden centre to pick up some compost; thinking about planting my veggie seeds for the summer is helping banish the blues, even if they’ll have to be inside seeds for the next little while. On the way back, I took a slight detour and stopped to take advantage of a short break in the weather. I’m not sure if it was beginning to get dark, or whether it was just the approaching clouds (it’s difficult to tell the difference), but it wasn’t what I’d call a cheerful afternoon whichever it was.
I meandered down the road from the car, splashing through puddles and marvelling at how much water the edges of the road can contain before it’s actually called a flood. I’d chosen to go and investigate a local ford. It’s not really on the way to anywhere, so not somewhere I’ve found myself for years. The road only leads to one of the entrances to the battleground* so nothing but army trucks ever fords the river. Probably a good job given the huge amounts of water currently swirling and gurgling its way along the (much wider than normal) river bed.
*There’s a huge area (30,000 acres) just down the road from me that’s been used for training by the army since 1942. They co-opted and evacuated six villages during WWII and created a huge training facility. Apparently, there’s all sorts of training areas within it, including barious villages used for urban warfare training. It’s the reason why living here is sometimes like living in downtown Beirut, with machine gun fire and circling helicopters all night, and occasional tanks when you go round corners on the surrounding roads. It was also the source of great confusion when, several years ago, myself and our Head of Year 7 sat down to work out the buses for transition week. We had a map, and just could not work out which high school half the villages sent their kids to. Turns out there were no kids and the battleground was not marked particularly obviously on the map …… oh, how the rest of the team laughed when we asked what was going on🤦♀️.
Anyway, the skies were grey, there was so much water hanging in the air that I really needed gills in place of lungs and I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to take pictures. Everything was just so … monotone. But as I stomped up the road, surrounded by the drab brown of last year’s plants with their hanging leaves, I noticed something. Here and there, in and amongst those leaves were tiny flashes of orange and red. Despite the damp, despite the cold, despite the wind, a loveliness of ladybirds had tucked themselves in for the winter and still slumbered, one can only assume peacefully, in their beds.
Proof, that even on the darkest and most miserable of days, there’s always a scrap of something positive to be found.
“She left the hut and bright log fire at noon And walked outside on crisp white winter snow To find the iced slopes shadowed like the moon, The wild wood desolate and bare below; The red trees wet, adrift with icy flow, The evergreens with glassy needled leaves; A bloodstone veined red and white this view weaves.”
– Lynette Roberts, ‘Winter Walk’
A pied wagtail scurries across the garage forecourt, bobbing its head busily as it goes.
Tiny white flakes eddy and swirl in the air while snow is blown in dusty clouds from the top of the greenhouse. Pigeons jostle for a warmer position in the Leylandii.
Like a showgirl, the frosty pavement shimmers under the streetlights, silver lamé to brighten up my morning.
I discover that the French for pie chart is ‘camembert’ and resolve to use this at every opportunity!
Queues of golden raindrops glimmer along the washing line against a backdrop of red berries and grey skies.
A sudden flurry of wings outside the kitchen window draws my attention; a great tit pauses dramatically on the top of a garden cane, before fluttering away again.
Looking up, the tops of the Scots pines explode into the sky like fireworks.
Along the margins of the road, at all of the corners, is a thin line of squashed carrots, a timely reminder that this is Norfolk and it is winter.
The crescent moon sits like a jewel on the sumptuous blue velvet of the pre-dawn sky.
Pink smudges decorate the edges of the sky; the day clinging stubbornly to the last of its warmer temperatures.
Two kites circle vigilantly in the skies above us, their wings flicking and twisting to maintain their height.
Wind smashes against the building and periodic splatters of raindrops splash against the windows; it’s going to be a long day.
As I walk under the outspread branches of the maple tree, three pigeons take flight overhead; a sudden shower of raindrops pelts me. Stupid pigeons!
Revising Macbeth with my Year 11s, I left a quote on my board, “A little water clears us of this deed.” I come back later to find that someone has graffitied it with the words, “No, it doesn’t. Lol. ‘Out, damned spot'”
I am entertained.
Gulls scream raucously and enthusiastically from the roof of the Sports Hall during line-up, their voices drowning out the party line.
Thick mist wrapped tightly around the playing fields makes our building feel isolated; a small boat adrift in an endless sea of grey.
A song thrush trills and warbles derisively from the hedge as I hurry past.
“Late again,” he seems to say.
A squirrel bounds along, tail flying like a pennant behind it, sparrows flitter to and fro from the feeder to the hedgerow, and blackbirds splash in the puddles from last night’s rain. We’re all taking advantage of the bright morning sunshine.
“A book can be loved to death and not die. Look at how this one refuses to close. Place the weight of the world on it and it may stop demanding attention.”
– Z R Ghani, ‘The Art of Cloying’
So, in case you hadn’t already noticed, I’m a bit of a book nerd. I was not one of those kids that was taught to read at school, I’d already figured it out by then. Mostly because I couldn’t get other people to read enough stories to me and I was forced to take matters into my own hands. If people wouldn’t read to me often enough to suit my whims, then clearly the only thing to be done was to do it for myself!
Irritatingly, when I got to school, they insisted on “teaching” me to read all over again. And then they put me on a programme of scaled reading books. We moved a fair bit and I went to three different primary schools. And in each one I had to read the exact same books. Roger Red Hat, Billy Blue Hat and Johnny Yellow Hat were the worst form of torture for a child that was happily reading paperbacks at home. By the time I was doing this for the third time, I had whinged enough for mum to intervene. She stomped into school and told them they needed to let me free read because I was way beyond the limits of their (very limited) reading programme. Having reluctantly agreed, they were somewhat miffed when on the first day I rocked up with a battered copy of The Lord of the Rings that I was reading for the second time. My teacher at the time told me I couldn’t possibly be reading it and insisted that I read out loud to him to prove I could. It took two pages of fluent reading for him to finally back down and accept that I really didn’t need to know about children in coloured hats!
From that point forwards, there were no limits. Our house was full of books and I was both allowed and encouraged to read whatever I wanted. There were never limits of what I could choose; if it was on the shelves, I was welcome to give it a go. There were some mistakes along the way; in hindsight, Fahrenheit 451 at age 11 ish was probably a mistake. I never finished it, and haven’t ever gone back to it since.
Now I have my own house, there are just as many books in it. If I’m being completely honest, there might even be more! I have a towering TBR pile and about six books on the go at any given time. And that’s just the paper ones; my Kindle is also stuffed full of titles. Not that any of this stops me shopping for more … if anything, it just gives me an incentive to read more (such a hardship!).
A while ago, I heard about a place I was sure I wanted to visit. Just outside London, there’s a magical* book warehouse that opens to the public on two weekends a month. Called 66 Books, it sells everything at 70% off retail value. I visited for the very first time on my way back from Angers in November and it was the stuff that dreams are made on. A giant, two storey warehouse, packed with towering shelves, stuffed with books of every size, shape, colour, and genre you can imagine. Fiction. Non-fiction. Classics. Modern fiction. Cookbooks**. Sci-Fi. Crime. Fantasy. Nature Writing. You name it, they have it. The downside was the two hour queue in the freezing temperatures to get through the door, but the result was absolutely worth the pain.
*I mean, it must be magic, right?
**A definite weakness of mine – is there anything better than travel writing mixed with recipes?
I went again this past weekend with my friends … they might have been slightly miffed that I went without them the first time 🤷♀️. To avoid the queues, we stayed in Chigwell on Friday night and set off at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. It worked … a ten minute queue (because we arrived before the doors opened) and we were in! The stock was different this time and filling my basket was not a difficult process. Last time, I had concentrated primarily on an aisle of non-fiction titles that could have been put together just for me. This time, I was determined to give myself some fiction to read … I need some slightly easier to read content at the moment. My brain is so fried from work, that anything complicated goes in one ear and out the other in seconds.
One large basket of books and a grand total of £48 later, my TBR pile has doubled and my anticipation levels are through the roof.
Hilariously, when we went into Hemel Hempstead for brunch, we walked past a Waterstones and just had to stop for a look. Ah well, if this is the worst I’m ever addicted to, I’ll take it as a win!
“I heard a bird sing in the dark of December. A magical thing. And sweet to remember. We are nearer to Spring than we were in September. I heard a bird sing in the dark of December.”
– Oliver Herford
Above my head, the tips of the oak branches gleam as if gilded by the sinking sun.
Power walking past me, her trainers squelching through the sticky mud, a lady holds the lead of her small, curly-haired dog high, as if competing in the ring at Crufts.
A single silver star punctuates the deep blue of the dawn skies.
Even my footsteps are muffled this morning; school is adrift in a sea of thick, grey fog.
The circle of ducks on my desk are migrating, following meandering paths across the wooden land.
Streaks of red reflect in the wet road surface behind the string of cars.
Small, silky buds have appeared on next door’s magnolia tree; the ghosts of flowers yet to come.
A hierarchy of teachers has appeared on my whiteboard; cause for great hilarity amongst staff.
“Mr M: stole the wheels from the computer room chairs.” (He was fed up of them wheeling around the room on them!)
“Mr J: Late notice for EVERYTHING! Flaky as anything!” (I tend to agree)
“Mr C: Room for discussion” (He’s new)
Two geese march across the skies; their plumage dark against the misty morning.
Wisps of cloud hang, ghostly amongst the trees; hauntingly lit by the shafts of sunlight shining through the branches.
Like a disruptive child, a pigeon calls, its call taken up and repeated again and again by its friends.
White birches dance gracefully at the front of the stage, the darker chorus line of pines behind them providing an atmospheric setting.
Framed by contrails, three buzzards circle lazily in the pale blue expanse of sky.
Where sunlight touches, condensation boils off like smoke from an unseen fire.
The girls have brought dolls in as props for their drama performance today; watching them revert to childhood as they play with them before school is a delight.
My Year 11s look at their recent mock exams and compare them with the work they’ve done in lesson today, tentative smiles spreading across their faces.
They might be realising they can do this …
Two seagulls standing on the roof of the Science block are taking it in turns to scream stridently, and have been doing so for ten minutes. The Year 8s valiantly try to suppress their giggles, with varying degrees of success. I can’t really blame them.
Robins sing as I hustle up the road; joyful heralds of the last day of term.
Tree trunks are adorned with an intricate Celtic knotwork of ivy.
A pigeon sits judgementally on top of a streetlight.
Scapegoat Hill is huddled grumpily under a thick, grey duvet of fog.
Streaks of twilight are scribbled messily across the sky.
“November–with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes–days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines.”
– LM Montgomery
The branches of a weeping willow flutter gracefully in the breeze like a row of pennants at a medieval joust.
In the deepening twilight, a female pheasant scurries almost invisibly across the road.
Underneath the bronzed woodland canopy, a pine tree’s spiked skeleton lies, dark and bare.
Silhouetted trees and buildings overlay an eerie orange Halloween sky; it’s only a week late for decorations.
Having decided I’m a witch, one of the Year 7s says I must have a house full of spellbooks. I’m agreeing (just for giggles), when from the other side of the room comes the comment, “And they’ll all be in Latin!”
Their expectations of me are high!
A shower of sycamore leaves from above heralds the progress of a grey squirrel skittering through the branches in search of snacks.
Above me, in the flat grey sky, a single swan passes by, wings creaking rustily through the air.
A peacock butterfly flutters to the ground in front of me, its rich red reminiscent of the beech leaves it’s surrounded by.
Pink and silver skies glitter over fields and hedgerows as I set off on the drive to work.
The day dawns bright and clear; a promise that today will be a good day.
One of the Year 7s tells me her mum has synesthesia: I’ve never even peripherally met someone with it; I have so many questions.
Two geese fly low over the road, their wings moving in complete harmony, white patches shining in the early morning light against black feathers.
I’m distracted from my marking by the sight of a pigeon that is trying to alight on the slender branch of an ash tree outside. It wobbles backwards and forwards on its springy perch … aren’t we all just trying to find our balance?
Juliette stops at the end of the lesson to tell me that she is part of a singing group outside of school that is performing a Christmas concert in Ely cathedral at the end of December. I’m almost as excited as she is.
The morning arrives in a flurry of lemon yellow skies and brownish-grey clouds. A whisper thin crescent of radiant silver glows above the trees.
Laden tractors, orange lights flashing, crawl backwards and forwards along the darkening road, each with a long trail of cars following like ducklings behind their mother.
A thick, sullen grey fog lies over the town, cradling in the cold. As I leave, I emerge into another world where golden sunshine floods over the road and the skies are blue.
Sparrows twitter companionably as they forage amid orange berries in the top of the close cropped hedge.
“I’m so glad you’re back, miss,” are the first words I hear from Rosy, “Now I can rant again!”
Yes Rosy, yes you can. And I’m so glad to be back listening to your endlessly entertaining rants.
In the hedgerow, a crop of crab apples glow golden yellow in the sunshine; fitting prizes for some mythological hero.
The beech leaves have quietly turned to tarnished copper and slipped from the branches into thick drifts at the base of trunks.
The air is cold and silver gilt, nipping at my face and pinching my fingers.
“The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.”
– Ray Bradbury, ‘The Halloween Tree’
Pigeons scatter across the car park like unruly children.
Amongst the fiery oranges and reds of autumn, a single pink rose blooms on a tall stem.
Huddled in a corner, above a doorway, a bat slumbers deeply, oblivious to the mobs of children that pass beneath it all day.
Two geese gossip their way across the leaden skies.
As I turn on the Angers match, a raging torrent of French is unleashed; tumbling and bouncing between consonants, my brain frantically tries to make sense of at least some of the words.
Man, French people talk FAST!!
Crouched beneath an oak tree, photographing fungi, I am brutally bombarded with acorns.
I look up at line-up to see Dylan holding a piece of card from which a gigantic orb-weaver spider dangles. For one brief moment, I believe it to be a Halloween figurine …. until it wriggles. He grins as I order him to put it on the grass and leave it there.
Fog lies heavy across the field, illuminated from above by golden sunlight.
Ivy stems, mottled brown and grey, slither like serpents along the trunks of the fallen trees.
Autumn snowflakes fall in flurries, forming gold drifts in the darkness of the forest floor.
Above the chaos of the M62, a kestrel hangs, adjusting the angle of its wings in minute increments; an oasis of calm in an increasingly frantic space.
Beech leaves glow like banked embers against the ashy-grey skies above.
Long skeins of geese unravel untidily across the evening sky, their noise flapping along behind them.
The house is surrounded by a blank curtain of grey, as if someone pulled down a blind to cover the view.
Startled by what sounds like the barking of an irritated dog, I look up, only to see two black grouse whirring away across the hillside.
Larch needles lie in thick drifts along the edges of the road; sunshine cushions against the encroaching cold.
A startlingly bright rainbow arches across the charcoal sky, echoed faintly by a second inverted arch to one side.
In the thermals above the A1, a buzzard soars in lazy circles to gain height.
absolutelynotnormal 