Music - Finding my way back and forward - 3, and back and forward!

Mike3

This week my journey through the music of my life took an unusual turn.  I say that.  In fact it's taken many turns, backwards, forwards and sideways, linking many bits of my life together.  This is something of a long and rambling post the twists and turns of which are almost certainly much more interesting to me than to you, and to help you keep up with all those twists and turns I'm going to put some words in bold. Unless you're familiar with my love life, you'll find you soon need them, in order to get all the different Mike's straight in your mind.  (There have been three of them and all have died.)

Way back in December I was discussing the musician Johnny Coppin with a friend and mentioned that I used to own a cassette of an album of his, "Forest, Vale and High Blue Hill".  It turned out that I had rashly decided to dump all my cassettes prior to moving, including not only this gem but also recordings I'd made of my grandparents reading out loud and other family snippets from the sixties and seventies, all because I was trying to downsize and currently didn't have a cassette player.  So much spilt milk.

I tried to find a copy of the album but came up with nothing, even asking various local contacts who all reported that it seemed to be something that was only released on vinyl and cassette.

My third Mike (in a life partner sort of way), who was in fact Mike2 because I met him second, died in 2023.  He decreed no funeral or ceremony of any kind, believing as I and his elder son did at the time that the two of us would meet over an expensive bottle of wine to lament his passing.  Because of various health issues for both of us this is clearly no longer on the cards, so I'm left without a ritual to mark Mike's passing.  I've recently decided to hold a small memorial ceremony (with a celebrant) here at home and have been researching the music we might listen to.

While searching for music for Mike's memorial a week or so ago I thought I'd have one more go on the Johnny Coppin trail.  I found his website - but not the album title.  As a last step I emailed him to ask if there was a digital version floating out there in the ether somewhere.  And discovered that it had been incorporated in another album with the title "The Gloucestershire Collection".

A couple of phone calls, a bank payment and a short wait for Royal Mail and the CD The Gloucestershire Collection was in my hands.  

Many of the songs on my original album were based on poems by the Dymock Poets.  (You can find out even more about them at Friends of the Dymock Poets and by reading the book by  Sean Street, The Dymock Poets.  In one of the bizarre turns I mentioned up there ^ Sean Street and his wife are friends of mine!  The Dymock poets were from the Forest of Dean, the westermost part of Gloucestershire.

Mike1 (my first husband, who died in 1991) was also a poet and certainly knew about The Dymock Poets.  He had an extensive poetry library (around 700 books, I seem to remember) which I'm sorry to say I have severely culled over the years and although he would almost certainly have owned a copy of Sean's book, I find that I no longer do.  Forest, Vale and High Blue Hill was released in 1983 and that's when I owned a copy on cassette but again, I no longer have it.  Mike1 and I both loved Gloucestershire, although neither of us was native to it, and we frequently used to travel to places near Gloucester to watch the Severn Bore.

Naturally, as soon as the CD arrived I started listening to it and was immediately struck with some regret.  For whatever reason (the most likely  being the mundane one of no longer playing cassettes) I didn't share the Johnny Coppin songs with Mike3 (who died in 2014).  As I listened today I realised how many of them spoke his language.  He was a countryman and a true Cotswold Lad.  (He used to quip, "I'm a Gloucestershire lad, born and bred: strong in the arm and thick in the 'ed".  This last was most certainly untrue!) The poems and the tunes Johnny Coppin set them to were in forms Mike would have appreciated.  Being on the autistic spectrum was, I'm sure, why he liked music to have notable structure and tunes and songs to have verses and choruses.  The Songs of Gloucestershire deliver both in spades.  Mike appreciated the writings of poets who had gone out of fashion, such as Rudyard Kipling (he moved past the possible racism contained in Kipling's poems to appreciate them as having been written of their time.)  He would have loved the Dymock Poets if I'd introduced them to him.

I'm so pleased to be able to listen to these songs once again.  They speak, no, they sing out of  Gloucestershire.  I've lived here for nearly 50 years and spent much of my childhood visiting my grandparents in Bourton-on-the-Hill and now consider myself a Gloucestershire lass.  I should probably think of buying a fresh copy of Sean's book.

Why I love Christmas, by an atheist

 This isn't really a sad poem, or at least it isn't meant to be.  It's a poem that comes the nearest to explaining why I, as an atheist, still love Christmas and even the religious bits.

Christmas Eve

Travelling, I made sure to arrive by the start
of nine lessons and carols on Radio 4,
Dad poised to prepare sprouts, painstakingly
as a military man would,
Mum doing something not requiring machinery
and in earlier years, Aunt Jane
talking over all the quiet, meaningful moments
for all she was worth.

This Christian service for a Christian festival
still holds meaning for an atheist of forty years,
linking me to generations of family believers
and to others, non-believers, alike.

Now I build my own collection
of seasonal traditions: trifle for one;
roast turkey with trimmings
for one, or more if anyone cares to join me;
holly and ivy and red ribbons and candles;
cards posted expensively to friends;
extra phone calls, gifts, tree, fairy lights;
Jacqui Lawson advent calendar;
Terry’s milk chocolate orange in memory of Dad,
who had one every year and
I slip into the past again
all of us singing along to the carols we knew,
Mum’s clear soprano, my alto
and Dad managing the descant still
here I am, listening, and weeping
for them, and for lovers and friends

human connections
which, like the number 42, hold
the answer to life, the universe and everything
tears heralding grief
and hope
and the start of it all.

Happy Writing

Here's a poem about the question I often ask myself.  

Happy Writing
 
Why don’t I write on happy stuff
instead of being inspired by grief
or when times are really rough?
I could describe a lovely leaf
 
or sunsets making my heart burst.
Why is my utmost misery
the spur for writing my best verse
and posting it for all to see?
 
Why did I write two good prose pieces
on funerals, grief and poetry,
published in national magazines?
Why nothing else for folks to see?
 
Well, here is one and you can tell
it’s not much good, although it rhymes,
so lack of poems can only spell
the advent of much happier times.

Unstable

Unstable

UN-stabul as Mum used to say it
in her own invented
language and pronunciation
like raddy-otta-meez.
And why not.
 
“English also spoken here”
Dad said there should be a sign
on the front door
when they were first married
but he became bilingual.
 
So today I know I am living
through a time when things are
un-stabul for me,  unstabul
without my mum and my dad
and my Mike
 
who saw “breaded plaice” as
bearded plaice, which it fast
became with parents, carers
and now still me. 
They never met
 
but on the phone discussed how
a single grain of rice was a rouce:
Mum thought not but
Mike was adamant
about his invention.
 
My new house-to-be is full of labradors
and other tradesmen.
The architrave fades into less significance
compared to the builder, Jason, and
all his argonauts
 
and I am tossed around in an unstable
world, missing all three of them
feeling out of touch with my
linguistic roots and routes
through the maze of decisions
 
being uprooted myself just enough
so I am now unstable
ready to be blown down in the wind
or washed away in a rainstorm
or undermined by something small.

Leslie Wynne Prescot

28/05/1927 - 16/10/2020

Anthea Warwick Prescot

07/07/1928 - 28/11/2020

Mike Hitchens

07/12/1943 - 11/07/2023

Traffic

 

Traffic
 
I have been stuck in a traffic jam
cars and vans and lorries and bikes
jumbled up unable to make their way
forward
 
jostling for position for the getaway
nothing progressed at all for months
and all I could do was identify the
vehicles
 
that were all the many stresses in my life
not being able to focus on any one of them
compounding the stress and the traffic
jam.
 
Suddenly an acupuncturist or an osteopath,
almost certainly, has shown one vehicle how
to navigate out of the melee and start a
journey
 
making a space for the next vehicle to
straighten up and leave, like one of those puzzles
with only one space but the corner shape must
exit
 
and now all the vehicles are moving
each in a separate lane on the motorway
(though the bikes must make their by another
route.)
 
All the types of vehicle are still present
but moving at their own pace
at variable speeds stopping and starting
individually
 
and I have clarity at last
and I am back in my own body
and in my own head and I have found
myself.

Vulnerability

This poem is dedicated to all those who grieve, some of whom are not able to speak out about how they feel.  This is for you.



Vulnerability



Thin as the best tissue paper

clear, bright colours

salmon, startling red, pink, and white.

The white ones are first -

tiny but perfect circles;

I have never seen geranium petals

attacked like this before.



Late-season butterflies

which always seem so strong

still flutter by early autumn flowers

dodging away at high speed

when I come close;

they have war-wounded wings

with bites taken out.



My Westie thought

he was a mastiff

till he stood on a wasp

amongst windfall pears

and hobbled around

holding his wounded paw aloft,

an uncomprehending puppy again.



All exhibiting their vulnerability

for us to see

and remark on.



Mine is hidden.



We all think I'm a strong person

we all know I am dealing with a lot

we are all impressed with how

I am organising and getting through

my life and its many troubles;

we know it is hard.



But inside I ache

I weep

I grieve

I long

for a comforting cuddle

from my Mum

from my Dad

from my Mike

and actually from anyone

which I'll never have again.



This is my

hidden

hitherto unspoken

vulnerability.

#64MillionArtists challenges - a new year's perspective

Last year I began with a post about challenges in the year ahead - and it turned out there were many.  I knew of some in advance but others jumped out at me and a few are still ongoing.  These include a very close friend (who doesn't live locally) being diagnosed with myeloma (a treatable but incurable cancer),  my parents suddenly unable to live completely independently and my developing plantar fasciitis.

I also began two literal challenges - the Photo A Day challenge and the 64MillionArtists challenge, which to begin with was daily challenges in January but then became weekly challenges.  In spite of my expectations I completed every challenge and have begun a new year with the daily challenges too.

What I have been struck by is how many challengers posted at the beginning of January that last year had been very difficult for them, for reasons which included bereavement and other family traumas not dissimilar to those I had and how taking part in the challenges had helped them enormously.

My first thought was that one mostly hears bad news, because good news is more commonplace and doesn't need commenting on.  My second thought was, my goodness people are really going to town on some of these challenges.  And my third thought was, why am I happily reminding myself that they are only supposed to take five to ten minutes each.

I think one of the values of the January Challenge and then the Weekly Challenge is that it really does help in kickstarting creativity, in prompting people to have a go whose lives have undergone a major disruption.  You may be waiting for the confidence to start or waiting for something to connect to or, in my case last year, glad of something that was my own to do every day.  Once you've got over posting a rubbish drawing and nobody minding, you gain confidence.  Once you've really enjoyed a challenge you have the bit between your teeth.  Once you've got three quarters of the way through the year without missing a single challenge it's a matter of pride to complete the set.  Or so it was for me.

This year I begin in a different place but because I got so much out of last year's challenges, I'm taking on 64MillionArtists challenges again.  I don't need things which are just for me as much as I have more time for me than in January last year and the problems are not so urgent and consuming.  I have re-engaged with my creative work and set goals which I met before Christmas.  I've begun new textiles work which I'm keen to get on with so I do find myself thinking perhaps I'll miss this one, but I'm going to try not to.

Last year I learned a few things -

• in spite of being essentially a 3D artist, challenges which involve writing are often the easiest and most enjoyable
• challenges which involve photography are often the easiest to tick off
• I'm pretty bad at drawing but occasionally surprise myself
• I didn't want to engage much in 'making' challenges, with a few exceptions
• I really loved connecting with other challengers

- and I see that these are excellent reasons for continuing with the challenges.

Here are a few of my favourite things that came out of last year's challenges.

This one encouraged me to research and I found it fascinating that Stroud is such a hotbed of protest.  I found a connection with history which has often been absent in my life.

This was a photography challenge, Finding the Light.  I was pleased to have made a photograph where shape and shadow were so difficult to separate.

This challenge was lovely because it made me condense what I thought about relationships to a formula I'm still happy with today and because it stretched my Photoshop skills successfully.

This was a joint effort with another challenger.  It was called The Bridge.  We bridged the gap between us, never having met and not really knowing much about each other.  She supplied the photograph of the stone pillars which she'd built and I photoshopped in the oak beam and tweaked the background.

My favourite challenge, Walk with Nature.  I went out for an hour, it made my bad foot hurt a lot, but I then felt inspired to work for several hours to produce the finished piece.


and finally ...  a quick drawing I felt pleased with.

Celebrating forty years

Once there was a time when forty seemed old and then of course when I was forty it seemed quite young.  With increasing life expectancies, it's a long time since I heard the saying that life begins at forty; these days it probably starts at fifty or even sixty.  But forty years ago - well, that is something else if one can look back that far and still be an adult.

Two very important things happened to me forty years ago.  In July I went on my first pottery summer school.  In August I came to live in Stroud (having at last secured a teaching job).  I was truly rubbish at pottery and I hated Stroud.

Stroud has become the home I never want to leave and perseverence has turned me into a potter.  I've learned that rather than being good with my hands but not very bright, which I believed back then, I actually have quite poor hand-eye co-ordination, but am intelligent.  I now understand why it took so long to learn to throw a cereal bowl (many years) and I no longer brush aside my ability to do accounts and write websites as just things I'm interested in.

In forty years I've done a variety of work, none of which I regret and all of which I probably still draw on from time to time, both in my working life and in relating to others.  I've had therapy, two marriages, two widowhoods, two dogs, gained some wonderful friends and lost two of them - all of which experiences have contributed to my becoming the person I currently am.

An emotionally healthy person will be constantly changing, albeit often in small and subtle ways, so I'm pleased to recognise that I'm a work in progress.  I didn't get forty years of marriage to celebrate, nor children who turned forty (though I have some wonderful stepchildren doing that) but I'm really happy to be celebrating a forty-year relationship with clay and forty years living in the place which will always be home.

Seeing Bob

I could write a small book about my relationship with the work of Bob Dylan but I'm not going to do that now.

Here are two poems.  The second one was written in 1991 by my first husband, who introduced me to the world of Bob and with whom I attended 7 performances, including the one he wrote about anticipating here.  I had the opening lines of the poem in my head all day yesterday leading up to seeing Bob that evening.

The first poem is written by me about that.  For twenty-five years I've had a friend who I met through our interest in Dylan but although separately we've seen him many times, I with various different people, we have never managed to attend a concert together until now.

expecting my last time
watching dylan

before I let him go

I am caught unawares

by the thrill

of the performance

here he is before us

bob the same bob

just being in the now

like we should all

be, telling us

things have changed

here is what he wants

to show us

this is what he feels

in these songs today

and highway 61 is joyful

and so am I

me and my dylan buddy

twenty-five years

waiting to see bob together

and it’s everything

it could be

and worth the wait

tangled up in blue

I weep for the bob-centric years

of my first lost marriage

feeling reconnected

at last to the start of

things

bob the same bob

nobody else quite right

to go with till now

restored in my heart

joyous plaintive rollicking

genius poet muso

transformative

just as it should be

leaving me wanting

the next time

knowing of course

I want to do it all again

Jane Vernon, May 2017 

last year bob

you just like a woman'd

and man in the long black coat'd

to the ceiling

of the Hammersmith Odeon
on the night the

specialists in institutionalised poison

unleashed the attack on

my invasive leukaemic cells

I listen to the tape of your

weighty cries at the foothills of thunder

              at the chords of doubt

              at the crossroads of the spirit

              in the whine of love

              in the heart of loss

as you knew them on that day

which I spent blanketed in drugs and exhaustion

a year later I tick away the days

until I see you once more

I will be there this year

to allow you to stand amid

the waves of the hugest unknowns

while east and west play armageddon

while my blood cells orgy

while beauty holds my hand

and you with you lone harmonica

sing it all for us free

as you have done

since the primal

blowin of the wind

Mike Vernon, January 1991   

Because I am human

Because I am human I make mistakes.  I sometimes do things that are motivated by emotion rather than rationality, or where my motivation isn't clear because it's a product of years of emtional experiences. 

I'm not sure it's important here to explore why or how, but for a long time I've had a tendency to double check my thinking, apply doubt as if I were a person disagreeing, and this often involves putting myself in other people's places and beginning to imagine what their perspectives might be.  In turn, imagining what alternative perspective there might be to mine or to any widely accepted view has become something I do automatically in many different situations.  Various things result from this:  if I make an assertion you can be pretty sure I don't do so lightly and am now not in much doubt that I'm right; if someone behaves in a way that is hurtful to me or disapproved of by others, I'm likely to suggest what might be going on in the other person's head to have made them behave that way.  If I'm human and make mistakes and have 'baggage' that influences my behaviour, I see no reason why others shouldn't be the same.

When I was younger I perceived much of the world as either-or: blackorwhite, rightorwrong, yesorno, likeordislike, and found it difficult to contain two opposing ideas at once.  These days I do have a few absolute beliefs but in general I see things much more in shades of grey: mostly right but that bit was wrong; on the whole no but a bit of me says yes to that part; like that except for disliking one or two aspects of it. 

I think this part of my experience is more common than I used to believe; many of us struggle with holding two conflicting ideas at once at some time or another.  When we struggle, we often lash out or at least react quickly.  We want to resolve the conflict because conflict makes us uncomfortable.

So why now, why today?  Where is this leading me?  Well, it's leading me to write about my tendency to speak out about the possibility of another point of view.  Occasionally this brings admiration from others if I am able to see the good side of someone who has treated me badly, for instance.  On the other hand I've also been told that I'm "too tolerant".  More usually, I'm just unpopular.  Perhaps I don't make myself clear enough, but when I'm offering a possible explanation or perspective on something, it's often taken as a statement of my own point of view.  Today is one of those occasions when I'm being misunderstood in this way and I'm feeling uncomfortable about how what I've said is being taken.

Today my Facebook newsfeed has been full of reports of an incident on a Nice beach where a woman wearing modest clothing, including a headscarf, had been instructed to remove some of her outer clothing by police.  Most of the friends who shared the items or commented on others' sharing expressed horror or outrage or despair at how human beings were being treated.

I began the day by writing a post about why this might be happening as a comment to each 'share' that appeared on my newsfeed but because some of what I wrote was misunderstood by some other people, I gave up.  And then felt unhappy with myself for keeping quiet.

What I wrote was this:

It is wrong ... and yet ..
Terrorist attacks are random. After attacks we hear on the news things like "A man had been seen in the area carrying a rucksack", or "an explosive device strapped to the body failed to go off."
In a place where dozens of people were killed or horribly injured, I think I'd worry that there was someone in the middle of a crowd I was part of who was wearing enough clothes to hide a device. We're told suicide bombers are often women. In France this summer I was more aware of such possibilities, especially in Paris, where there have been attacks already.

Yes, this kind of suspicion means the terrorists have won, but it's hard to resist. Like thinking when someone is late that they may have had a horrible car accident. They almost certainly haven't, but sometimes people do, so why not this time?
Of course she was innocently living her life as she chooses to, but the man who drove the bus into the crowds looked as if he was doing that before he got into the bus, I'd guess.

I remember when we had not infrequent terrorist attacks in the UK in the seventies. It does make you change your behaviour and become suspicious of innocent people. I'm not sure I'd go to a Nice beach at all at the moment, to be honest.

What happened was, for instance, someone asking if I thought people should not be allowed to wear trousers or overcoats.  And saying that we must not give in to the fear.  Then other comments were made about what should and shouldn't be.  And so on.  As if I was saying what should and shouldn't be.  Well, at least, that's how some of the comments looked from where I'm sitting.

I'm really not doing that.

I rarely do that.

I just don't want to be silent when I feel some understanding - understanding, not endorsement - about why people behave the way they do.  If you've just read the section in italics you may have noticed that I started by saying what happened was wrong.  I went on to own up to feeling fearful in a way that changes my behaviour even when I know it's not the best thing to do.  Because I am human.  I want to speak for the other humans out there who are making mistakes. 

As I understand it there is a fairly recent by-law forbidding this sort of modest clothing from beign worn on beaches, that has been brought in in a number of French towns to please by a population who are frightened by increasing terrorist attacks in their community.  A population made up of people who are human, frightened.  There is a national law a century old brought in by people who were human, who wanted to stop the serious conflicts between state and church by making the country largely secular where officialdom is concerned.  And each policeman is human, given the job of enforcing a law but inside - who knows?

I don't have to like something to understand it.  If I say I understand why you might behave in the way you did, I'm not necessarily agreeing with you but I am offering my understanding of your point of view.  That feels ok, doesn't it?  Especially as I put it into the second person.  You'd like me to understand you.  Well, ok.  In the third person, singular or plural, I'm doing no more than offering the same to others. 

Because I am human.

Inside Out

How people work has been a subject of fascination for me for decades.  I've been thinking recently  about the inner world of the person and how this relates to what can be seen on the outside.  How difficulties can arise in relationships because what one person thought they said was different from what another person thought they heard.  How assumptions can be made based on what is shown outside rather than knowledge of the rest of what's inside. 

I've written here before about the importance to me of people getting me right and why that might be.  It influences my writing because I'm intent on what I say being completely clear.   Over the last few weeks I've been thinking that my lack of writing might be equally instrumental in what people are thinking about me.

When you arrive at my blog the first thing you see is the last thing I wrote, and its date.  You might think that the mood of that piece, or what occupied me when I wrote it is what's still going on.  It almost certainly isn't, especially if I haven't posted for more than a week or so.

I've been increasingly aware of this over recent weeks, noticing that the previous post to this, the one people have been seeing on arrival at my blog for quite a while, has been about bereavement and the feelings I put into a poem about it, but conscious that this has not been what I've mostly been concerned with since then.

And yet ...  I didn't write anything else.

I usually write only when I've got something I particularly want to say.  Whenever I thought, "I must write a blog post so people don't think I'm still pre-occupied with the bereavement thing," I found I either didn't have time or, mostly, didn't have anything I particularly wanted to write about.

I seem to write posts in batches, so expect to be writing soon with updates to the garden project and updates about my work, as well as other odds and sods.

And I'll be trying to convey my inside - out there!

Writing poetry ... or not.

For me, poems just happen or they don't.  I'd like to write more of them but can never write to order.  It seems that for me there needs to be an intensity of having something to say which requires a poem and then I can write one.  I think I can write well when I have something really important to say, and sometimes that might be in prose, but if what I want to write about is worthwhile but not really important (or even if it isn't particularly worthwhile but is required) I can write well, but don't always do so (and I apologise for the posts I write here which may be more sloppily put together). 

This poem arrived about a week ago. 


 

For the record

twenty-five years

since my soulmate died

I note the occasion

with good memories

and interest

looking back

a quarter of a century

friends new and old

the real me

emerging then established

I post on social media

to make sure his memory

is honoured

then start to miss

not him, but you

love for a soulmate

is obvious, almost

unnecessary to mention

but you who were not my soulmate

were more loved

were more in a story

we unfolded together

our love and life

a more real thing

that might not have been but was

a marriage of imperfections

worked with and valued

and family

embraced and embracing

unconditionally

he had the easy life

universally liked

while you struggled

to fit in

except in my heart

New poem

Here's a new poem I think I'm pleased with.  It can be very difficult writing about something intangible but I think I've got somewhere with this.
If you've experienced it yourself you may understand it better - such is the nature of it.

Coming out the other side

I notice

I feel different

and at first can’t say how

then I realise

the place I’ve been

sometimes indefinable

sometimes indistinguishable

from the outside world

yet when you’re in it

so clearly existing

behind a force field

through which you cannot break

is

unexpectedly

not where I am

no anniversary

or event

no clue

nothing sudden

each of us makes our own journey

through where it is

not the past but not the future

accused once

(behind my back) of

doing it unnaturally fast

yet here I am again

a relatively short time on

coming out the other side

and knowing

this is right.

 

Documenting my life

It occurs to me that much of the stuff that I like to do on social media is documenting my life.  H recently told me that if she were on Facebook and was my FB friend, she would immediately unfriend me if I posted photographs of my meals.  Just as well she's never likely to be on Facebook, then!  I love all that stuff.

As with this blog, the frequency of all of my other social media posts varies hugely and it may be that this is a reflection of what's going on in my life.  Often my working life just continues much as before, with nothing new to say or show for it.  Often my meals are just my usual meals and, loving my food as I do, once the food is on the plate, all I want to do is eat it and I never give photography a thought.  Often there doesn't seem to be much going on in the garden or the weather isn't good for photography or I am just plain busy.

Then there's a little run of things which happen which I want, not just to share, but yes, to document.  It seems to be that sort of time at the moment, so here are three offerings in that vein.

Who's been standing on my bowl?

A minor hazard of putting freshly-thrown pots outside to dry, which actually happens very rarely.  I quite like it, though I suppose I wouldn't if it was a bigger bird because the pot would probably end up squished.  I was tempted to leave the footprints as they were but in the end smoothed them over.

 A little bit of La Vienne in Stroud

 To be fair, there are actually quite a few, but I chose this one specially from the 'beach' when I went for my last swim in the river at Lesigny this year.

...  and here it is (blending in nicely, towards the top right, in case you are having trouble spotting it!) in my water feature, as planned.

It's a bargain!

One of the dear friends whom I lost recently could be something of a shopaholic.  She could not resist a bargain, even if it was something she didn't really need and still couldn't really afford.  I remember one particular self-catering holiday when she bought far more food than we could all get through because she kept finding brilliant deals.  They were good holidays. 

A bargain can be a wondrous thing, though.  One advantage (and there were a few, as it turned out) of getting started on the garden very late this year because I wimped out at the chilly March, was that I didn't get round to growing my own plants for the tubs and had to buy what was left on the shelves in garden centres rather late.  It was an advantage because they were so cheap.  My best bargain was undoubtedly half a dozen fuchsia plants at 25p each.

National Poetry Day

This post is possibly not for the faint-hearted.  

Here we are, National Poetry Day, and I had a few ideas about maybe posting some of my favourite poems on my Facebook page throughout the day.  When I started to look them out, though, it's not where my thoughts took me after all.  Instead, I found myself browsing my current "Writing" folder on my PC.  I don't write poems often and I have been posting them here from time to time over the last 12 months.  There are three, though, that are good enough - not good per se, not my best by any means, just good enough - that I didn't post when they were new because I wasn't sure whether people would want to read them knowing it was how I felt at the time.  To some extent they chart my progress through grief and the first two, at least, belong very much in earlier times.   So maybe it's time for them to be aired.

I don't have a jolly poem to end with but that's because I haven't written one.  Jolly things have returned to my life, as you will have noticed if you've been reading this blog over the past months.

nothing is enough

any more

with no more

you

I sit here

and carry on, though,

doing things

that are enough

in themselves

for themselves

just not enough

for me

one day

there will be things

that are enough

again

I know that

the knowing means

I can survive

this time when

nothing is enough

nearly done now,

a sunset photo

representing where I am

in time and emotionally

in three interminably

long weeks

not dodging any bullets

but facing it all

cramming in the essence

of 10 summers

beautiful places

wonderful friends

immersing myself

in the place and the life

so I can leave it

now it will be something

left behind and ended

no longer to be feared or dreaded

no longer like

a kick in the guts

Specialism

So often I’ve talked of my specialism

in husbands:

Mikes, born late summer 1942.

Red beards, ex-teachers because of stress

Divorced, two children:

an older daughter with red hair,

a dark-haired son born in ‘77.

And now another thing they share:

Died, leaving me behind.