2 May 2019

Air and trees washed by heavy rain the new grown dust free oak leaves glisten in the sun decorated by the droplets that hang smiling into the new day.  Green this is the acid green of spring at its purest; from tree to tree it stretches in a single colour that will change by afternoon; each growth developing differently as it steps onward to the journey that is summer growth and autumn fall.

3 May 2019

Dear Jeremy Corbyn and dear Labour Party

Do you get it yet?  Do you understand that the British public do not want your ‘Customs Union’ which has all the costs of being in the EU but throws away our vote and influence?  And no, we do not just want Brexit to be ‘got over with’ as fast as possible.
The second Referendum in 2016 was won with lies, illegal money and immoral advertising.  The Electoral Commission and the Supreme Court have ruled that is was illegal.  It cannot be used as a basis for the ‘will of the people’.
If there is to be a Brexit, we want a say (for all British citizens however long they may have lived outside the UK) – and not a vague say in some undated General Election.  We want a specific vote on each stage of any Brexit – Withdrawal Agreement, Trade Deal, etc.  Not a new Leave/Remain referendum but a vote on the detail of whatever agreement any of you can get through Parliament.  Win a vote we take the next step.  Lose one and we stop this farce and Remain.
If you support such public votes people may just vote for you.  If you can win such votes then you will carry a majority of the country.
If there is any justice on the world then when this is over the Conservative Party will lie in tatters.
If you change tack you may just survive and be able to influence policy in the direction you want.  If you carry on as you are then your place in history will be assured as the individuals who destroyed the only political party created by the people of the people and for the people.

All the best
Steve

Insects flood the grass with life; crawlers scurrying in all directions each intent upon unnamed purpose; creepers sneak and creep from blade to blade at all times staying one above the crawlers; and all around buzzing gently in the air the flyers from fat round bumblebees to small thin almost fleshless collections of wings and legs.

4 May 2019

Winter lingers in the darkness scrapping icy talons across the green; not sufficient to leave frost but just enough to lay a trail of possibility across the ground; the sense of another party sharing space unseen; of another’s touch too light faint and ethereal to be properly described; so thin a single atom may be too wide to hold it.

5 May 2019

Will they stay and will they stay runs through my mind.  Bees have settled it would seem in one of our three empty hives attracted by the remains of honey left by winter losses.  They rob the hives on either side and if luck will have it that may help them stay.

6 May 2019

Starlings mob the suburban feeder wings fluttering to hold their places as it tips and turns each bird shifting right and left and back and forth preventing any settling.  And suddenly the feeder is empty and the birds beyond some rudimentary checking simply disappear.

7 May 2019

Stillness and silence even in suburbia; not even a bird breaks the moment no magpie finch or starling robin parakeet or woodpecker; traffic which is there must be loosing its rumble in the intervening brickwork; and then a squirrel grey and silent climbs from out a tree along the fence down a post and across the lawn to raid the bird food.

8 May 2019

Delightful is the touch of baby’s skin as it sleeps against one’s chest oh so tactile; breath small but strong the beat of growing life; the miniature hand with tiny fingers that grips and holds onto a future; and that wondrous smell that pervades their world of milk and cream laced with reality in those persistent notes of not yet managed wastes.

9 May 2019

Strength tenacity and persistence barely begin to describe a mother with her children; there is a fierceness in the gentleness of her love that softens through a generation and can be seen when children mother and mother’s mother are all together; without their care and thought and hope and love how many of us would survive to adulthood?

10 May 2019

With a little good fortune an hundred year from now these little ones will still be breathing whilst you and I are long lost within our graves.   And what I hear you ask will they be breathing; what will we have left for them; will there be water fit to drink and decent food to eat?  And when they gather will they ask each other how did anyone with friends and loved ones let this happen?

11 May 2019

Trees have used the wind to shake out branches that would not carry the full weight of summer’s leaves so broken ends criss-cross the path and lost with them are the first leaves they grew; and these will stretch their lives a little by draining branches of their goodness; and then succumb to nature’s blind cruelty.

12 May 2019

Standing proud and strong upon its belly in the middle of the path a slug; no shell no skeleton a slime filled sac that epitomises repulsiveness; an assailant upon the vegetables and flowers that we treasure should it ever make is through the wood.  Do I destroy this creature to protect my food or honour its right to try and live and reproduce and be and thus protect a species we may one day need?

13 May 2019

Crocus and bluebell fade as spring wanders softly on the path to summer; they curl and dry and they decline and fall and disappear for another year.  And beneath the earth they hold that beauty and delight and slowly spread to spring afresh in years ahead.

14 May 2019

Ringed by trees but not o’ershadowed there is a spot along the path that holds the frost from dawn to dusk as bright winter sun curls round about; and when that sun grows into spring and climbs a little higher that same spot captures it and holds the warmth and light almost from rise to set.

15 May 2019

Old women have died peacefully in their beds who were not breathing at that beginning; a lifetime and a year of babies blown screaming from their mother’s arms of bombs and bullets of tanks and traps of rocks and rockets whilst politicians sit and speak and sip and sup in stately spaces; an-Nakba.

16 May 2019

Woke to urban noise and light; no dog huffing in readjustment but bodies close with private sounds and public noise of early traffic.  Street lights that intruded through the night disappear but even a city dawn cannot hold the clean tang of home.

17 May 2019

Sea laps slowly at the shore; powered by sun and moon and shaped by wind each wave unique; a gentle roll up and across the sands or a larger surge that carries itself above and beyond the rocks spreading out in a thinner and thinner layer pushing the tide mark of seaweed a little higher up the beach.  And then a pause whilst swells mark a line before the tide turns and begins to fade.

18 May 2019

Drizzle dampens spirits all around; even next door’s cat just sits and stares through the part open flap; poppies litter the roadsides where the plough disturbed the earth but the farmer’s spray has not quite reached; flags of war they may be but also signs of hope that not all life must be wiped out each year to feed us.

19 May 2019

Cloud and sunshine mix; the sky is pale plain and unbroken; the sea is quiet quiescent and barely moving its end blending from water to cloud not seamlessly but with no defining edge; sand has almost lost its yellowness and becomes part of the wider uncertainty.

20 May 2019

Mist still and silent hangs across the land; holds a chill a final hint of winter past and lost and half forgotten; unmoving each patch of fog thickens in the hollows and thins on hilltops until the thinning penetrates unto the hollows and hours before the midday evaporates.

21 May 2019

Sun bright and strong and clear warms the chill night away; claims the space and struts its stuff across the grass and deep within the wood; smiles upon the world it warms and proclaims itself as summer’s harbinger.

22 May 2019

River drops reveals the roots of tree that long ago settled seed within the bank and grew; and as the tree expanded and the bank it pressed was worn away by passing water those roots became susceptible to water’s flow; so now some decades hence those roots all turn and flow into the waters.

23 May 2019

As we pass failing to notice them they collect on clothes and fur; we are their transport.  It is only at the brush on skin of arm or face that their truly repellent nature registers and disgust hits home; dark grey green grubs that hang from threads of silk and move up and down them back and forth across each other.

24 May 2019

Birdsong bursts across the wood in notes of joy edged with a tang of wonder and a sound that wants to hold all the spices of Arabia within it; new hatched high tuned vibrations; adults offering resonances to the warming world; and old reverberations that echo down the years from those who have seen the seasons turn a time or few.

25 May 2019

A lull rather than a pause or hiatus; less a stopping than a breathing point; the balance between spring and summer; the warming of the early sun on a world so lightly dewed draws forth aromas from the burgeoning green that will fade with flower and seed but for now fill the air with spice and honey and with earth and loam.

26 May 2019

There is a grass that proliferates in stretches near the path; as green as any other it hides against a background of emeralds and olives limes and jades; as if in fear it trembles at every movement of the air; a metre tall or more the fineness of its stem requires compatriots to support its bursts of seeds; and more being seed than leaf displays a hint of reproductive desperation.

27 May 2019

Leaf-dampening rain has left the world moist and soft particularly amongst the grasses that now bend across the path as if in supplication; there is wet enough to brush on legs and fur and dampen our enthusiasm; old dog walks more accepting than oblivious; young dog stops at every obstacle and wonders before attempting unsuccessfully to leap long runs of bowed soggy fronds.

28 May 2019

Line of grubs of maggots descend and climb and hang at eye level evoking disgust and revulsion at their creeping crawling preparation for a touch; and yet for those that will survive in days or weeks these caterpillars will delight and thrill as moths and butterflies and charm the world around them.

29 May 2019

A swathe of daises presents itself beside the path; the simplest of innocent flowers created with two daubs of a child’s paintbrush; yellow on white on green they sway gently in the breeze to delight the eyes and feed the bees.

30 May 2019

Water rolls joyously down the river; swinging wide at bends pressing into the bank and lifting a thin and nearly invisible layer of earth which it then deposits downstream building another bank or slowly raising the stream bed; and on rocks and roots it tumbles turning almost churning out some sound to add a melody to the birdsong.

31 May 2019

Not quite black upon a nearer ivory than white the scratchings of an old quill pen on parchment the butterfly moves from flower to flower then comes to rest upon a bunch of Sweet Williams their red and white petals profuse and full providing such contrast to the monochrome insect.  Holds for a moment tenses for a second and then the butterfly is flittering away to other coloured pastures.

1 May 2019

Sudden gentleness of the birdsong strange stillness to the air hollow hush upon the waters; lull between time zones hiatus between worlds space between margins; the nettles sheath their stings the bluebells ring with silence and the dandelion clocks tell lies about the time.