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stamp of the week (of oddness)

July 3, 2011
Right now, Stamps
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A regular and mundane stamp for an irregular week for me. Or has it? It’s been a week where regular everyday events just appeared to carry more weight. I turned 40. There was the funeral for my next door neighbour. Friends all sitting together at the end of the garden, chatting about old days as the sun slowly set. Then but two days later in the garden backing onto that, young people celebrating something else, voices raised in high spirits, laughter, singing. Then my eldest daughter leading the orchestra into their final piece at school.

These kind of things happen everyday everywhere – they just seemed to be in a different colour this week.

I can hear skylarks

April 10, 2011
Right now, Thoughts
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Bright sunny day. A small breeze teases wisps of cirrus cloud in a near perfect blue sky, long shaded trails of white. Sitting on the grass, looking up at the tall thin trees gently swaying. Then above the shimmering rustle I hear skylarks – somewhere higher than the trees in front of me and beyond, above a field somewhere up in the air. The fantastic fluttering melody rising as they fly, unable to place the sound as it’s carried off by the wind and then returning. I remember the first time I learned the sound of the skylark, I was instantly taken back to fields in Norfolk where that sound seemed to be everywhere in summer.

I’ve only seen a Skylark once before, as I was cycling up a hill in Church Langton in Leicestershire but that sound is such a wonderful, beautiful sound.

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/skylark/index.aspx

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sudden blossom

March 25, 2011
Right now
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I was walking from work to the recycling bins with an empty coffee jar. As I went down the road I looked around me and listened. A bright day, bird song, sudden blossom on trees. There was pop music coming out of an open door – something r’n'b with bleeps and beats, a simple rhyme spoke/sung/rapped over the top – I thought to myself ‘How can we make this?’ I thought to myself ‘Is this how I will be judged too?’

I carried on walking past the coach works, the sound of angle grinders and panels being beaten and I looked at the jar in my hand. Once as a child with my brother we would take jars like this down to the river with brightly coloured nets, hoping to catch sticklebacks. Holding it up to the light amazed at we are, at what we have become.

March 13, 2011
Right now
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The morning is quiet and grey. The odd family car drives past, sidelights on, most only seem to have the one occupant and it’s usually Dad, the driver. There’s a breeze, the lilac and holly seem to tremble gently in it. Two rooks sit on the telephone wires right next to the tip of the pole. The garden has two piles of stripped tree cuttings, thin branches, almost shoots. There is soup to be made. Typing this out now, I’m grateful for how simple it all is.

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