Roads to Joy

When there’s really nothing better to do than to wonder what sort of brick/block pattern the wall was built in, in the easy shade of a tiny garden, it can feel like a gentle peace has descended. The labours of the day (such as they are, in these senior times) are completed, and a time for musing is upon us.

Thoughts turn to a bit of tidying of the little herb/salad planters, perhaps to sewing of new seeds tomorrow. And how might the ersatz outdoor office, otherwise known as a glass-fronted potting shed, fit into the space where the woodshed currently sits? I’ve measured and measured but I still can’t quite envisage it in my mind’s eye. But that will be something for next year, far beyond our current ken. My mind drifts. I might be stretched out in the lovely hammock, if it weren’t for the wasp nest we discovered earlier.

For now, safely out of the creatures’ flight path, it feels good to be thinking, rather than doing. But you could hardly call it thinking — it’s more of a casual amble through the thicket of aimless thoughts than any directed approach to problem solving or logistical resolutions. La de da, la de da.

I do understand that creatives embrace fallow times. Times to let your consciousness relax a bit. I hesitate to call myself a ‘creative,’ but it’s been like that on the writing front since I finished the third novel of my science fiction trilogy, back in May. Although I may revisit the effort as part of my adventure with colleagues in the British Science Fiction Association (Orbit 14, a new writers group), my perspective is changing towards a different venture: historical fiction. I managed to make inroads into a less obvious bygone era (1980s London) with which I will try to contrast the rural lifestyle of 1920s Brittany, as I developed a particular task for our local (Northumberland) writing group. But mostly my new project, Keep Me in Your Heart, has been just tucked away somewhere in my drifting mind.

Come late summer, perhaps from the beginning of August, and I shall apply myself again. I’ve kept the creative juices going, I hope, with intermittent writing stimuli, but I’ve deliberately avoided diving into a big project. For now, as the heat wave hits the south and we relax in relatively temperate tranquility here in the Scottish borders, it’s slipper time.