Category: Musings
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A single flower . . .
Sometimes the beauty of a single, solitary bloom is enough to take your breath away. This lonely tulip in our new-to-us garden was one such. I’m reminded of the William Blake poem, Auguries of Innocence, of which I suspect most of us are aware only of the first quatrain: To see the world in a…
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We have a ‘slow worm’ resident in our compost
This limbless lizard certainly lives up to its name! When I lifted the old carpet section laid out on our compost box, I revealed this fellow. I ambled back to the house, retrieved my phone and ambled back. He was still there, looking around with his little eyes. I don’t actually know our slow worm’s…
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The gathering moss . . .
So the corollary to the aphorism about the rolling stone must be that the sedentary one does gather moss. Our gardens, front and back, have accumulated a rich, thick, mossy carpet. Apparently this ground covering is an ideal environment for an ecosystem of invertebrates, and as such should be a brilliant place to retrieve, with…
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The past co-exists with the present
Our new home is a kind of retro chic. Or possibly, rather more ‘retro’ than ‘chic.’ We are finding, however, that we can accommodate the technology of fifty years past while also revelling in the convenience of the present. It feels like the best of both worlds. When we unpacked the big box of vinyl…
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The origins of creativity . . .
You begin to realise, as you learn more about the area around Dumfries, that Robert Burns is quite the most important figure in these parts. What we may not appreciate, especially if we’re not natives here, is that the tales of this patch were ready and waiting for a poetic sensibility to capture and immortalise.…
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The value of symbols
I can’t think of anything conveying much more symbolism than a suspension bridge over the Ken Water to the graveyard on the bank beyond. We are, each of us, suspended on a kind of bridge between the life that went on before us, and the life that will go on after we are gone. Of…
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À la recherche du temps perdu
So we are unpacking at a steady rate. When you’re packing up to move, things start out well, and then, in my recent experience anyway, things deteriorate into a frenzy of desperation: gots to clear the place; put everything in a box for the movers to shift! The joy arrives with the unpacking. In a…
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Five Days to Completion
We put in a bit of practice, this morning, shifting things out of the New Galloway Town Hall and into Kitty’s Tea Room across the road, preparing for lunch service commencing again on Tuesday. We’d felt so sad to hear, when we returned to this village after our big move away from Sparty Lea, that…
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The wonder, and joy, of a remembered dream . . .
Never mind the actual dream events, I thought to myself earlier this morning, it’s the conflation of strange but contemporary circumstances that has sparked a graceful note from my subconscious. That note is like an admonition from my listening, watchful alter ego: yes, you do have an imagination, somewhere within. I have no real wish…
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History as grist for story . . .
Long ago, when we were young(er!), we visited Sicily several times, falling in love with the island. On one of our holiday adventures, we persevered and actually found the mausoleum, high up on Mt Venere above Caselmola, where the doughty Florence Trevelyan reached her last resting place. Not many tourists, we figured, actually make that…
Roads to Joy 