Roads to Joy

We must be getting fitter; we traversed the circular route around the marsh dyke to the River Ken, and back through the fields to home, in just about an hour of ambling, looking and listening.

Along the way we invented descriptive words for the natural sights: a tapestry of stichwort; a serried rank of Jacob’s ladders; a hurry of speedwell; a flutter of yellow-tip butterflies; an exaltation of purple angelica. Perhaps we should have thought of the swans as an elegance. The joyful descriptions seemed to pour out.

And at every cluster of trees, the bird song erupting. The sonorous honking of the swans in flight was like a deep punctuation to the shrill cries of the smaller birds. By the time we got back, we were so falling over ourselves in delight that we wondered if we should go on and do the whole circuit again! Instead we sat in the sheltered garden and thought about trying to capture the feeling of the walk in words.

And besides, I had a new assignment: dragons. Along the walk, musing to myself, I’d invented a different, sort of sideways inverted, approach to a story, and I began to feel antsy, sitting. I wanted to be on the keyboard. And so, as the light breeze cooled us, and the white wine and a G&T beckoned from the refrigerator, we gathered ourselves together and stepped inside to our knitting and writing activities.

A couple of iterations and editing forays later, and A Bedtime Story for Grandpa was delivered, 550 words precisely on a single side. The knitting project has a little bit further to go. But the day had been full, and thus satisfied, replete with a lovely dinner, after the washing up was sorted and the rubbish bin was set out for collection early the following morning, we relaxed.

An enchanted, delightful day. And another retrieved delight, this morning, remembering it.