Wednesday 30 January 2013

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Imagined alarm

Fallen small branch
lichen-striped
emulating adder
or some other poisonous snake

Sunday 27 January 2013

Overnight, again

Snow gone - except for the piles painstaking and laboriously cleared from drives by the super-dutiful (who seemingly never remember that it will go of its own accord as and when)

Saturday 26 January 2013

Thursday 24 January 2013

While doing the crossword

"Why have cotton when you can have silk?" the chocolate advert asks,
I conclude I'm just a cotton kind of woman -
too rough-fingered for the (perceived) luxury of silk.

Wednesday 23 January 2013

From my window

Some sort of silent signal has brought seagulls swirling in from all directions to circle above the golf course - someone eating sardine sandwiches?

Tuesday 22 January 2013

For those who don't have to go to out work

Thick toast crunching from the road beside the house
(where the sun never gets to shine, this month)
is good enough advice to stay in bed.

Monday 21 January 2013

Involuntary overhearing

I wonder, after visiting four of them this morning,
does the calibre of shop volunteers' conversation
reflect the charity itself?

Sunday 20 January 2013

Seeing paintings

Without my glasses, and before the sun full rises, the scraggy dun poverty of the hawthorn hedge across the road is reminiscent of Luke Fildes' 'Applicants for admission to a casual ward'

Saturday 19 January 2013

A better class of observation

I'm reading Anne Enright at the moment - her observation of details, recollection of emotions, feelings responses, her ability to write down and recreate are such that I feel as if I've walked through my life blind.

Friday 18 January 2013

Weather forecast

Having, less than five minutes ago, checked and found the north-east isn't due for snow today,
I've just seen three tiny flakes floating surreptitiously past the window.

Thursday 17 January 2013

Jewelled




Frost-encrusted spider's web
two feet long, or more
from gutter to the corner of the house
and another, much more obvious
white against the pinewood of the shed

Wednesday 16 January 2013

From the bedroom window

Curtains, half drawn since December,
kitchen bllind now fully up -
my neighbour's returned from her Christmas in Canada.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Walk in the snow

Giant strides (bigger than mine)
and an apparently levitating dog
allow me to play detective.

Monday 14 January 2013

Momentary confusion

Strangely fringed pink smudges,
on the far side of a pint of elderflower cordial
- my fingertips.

Sunday 13 January 2013

Cold feet

The light behinds the window blinds not sufficiently tempting to raise them and let in the cold

Saturday 12 January 2013

shaft, web, calamis, brachis and barb

An asymmetric feather, light and lying in the road, sent me searching for the names of parts thereof.

Friday 11 January 2013

From the bedroom window

The upward curving branches of the ash tree
clamouring hopelessly toward the uncharitableness of the white sky

Thursday 10 January 2013

struggling today ...

When the wind is in the west
noise from the trains and the planes get louder

Wednesday 9 January 2013

Deceitful:

The nearness of the slim C sliver of the story-book moon;
the non-slip surface of the night-black tarmac.

Tuesday 8 January 2013

New writer

Oh the joy -the sheer unadulterated heart- and gut- and brain-lifting joy - to open a book by a new writer and know, within the first couple of (very short) paragraphs, that this is going to be a good one.

[Karen Campbell - Len Wanner's incisive inteview of her, one of many he did with Scottish crime writers, in 'Dead Sharp', led me to think I would like her writing ... so not too much writing from me today ...]

Monday 7 January 2013

Rare reluctance to rise

Sometimes ideas for writing come when lying still, refusing to get up just yet.   Thus such activity is justifiable.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Have we met somewhere before?

Raising the kitchen blind I see a sky striped pink and blue which brings to mind, for the second time in twenty-four hours,  a ludicrous and thankfully long-forgotten song.

Saturday 5 January 2013

Early morning incident (or: too many crime books)

Velvet dark and total solitude between house and shop,
car parked, doors open, engine running - get-away?
Two black-clad men close before the window - break-in?
No.   Jammed shutters, yet again.

Friday 4 January 2013

Mild response

My pleasure in the mildness of the morn not enhanced by being told what his car thermometer tells him in double figures.

Thursday 3 January 2013

In response to Dorothee's Facebook addition

Crossing the Tees on the bridge to Yarm, the red-stemmed shrubs measured in brown the distance the flood waters had risen.

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Retrospective 2

Two:   to the gym, where too unfit (but I need to persevere)
[And a demonstration of homophones which I only learnt about last month]

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Retrospective 1

Post-sickness, fragile, self-indulgence in books, both reading and ordering from Amazon