The Sunday Posts 2013/ Old Man Thinking.

Oars, held still, drop

on black water

tiny roulades
of waterdrops.
With their little sprinkling
they people
a big silence.

You who are long gone,

my thoughts of you are like that:
a delicate, clear population
in the big silence
where I rest on the oars and
my boat
hushes ashore.

Norman MacCaig.

May 1967.

photo of Carcassonne by Alistair.

Exhale/Inhale

I step out into the garden, stretch and exhale slowly in morning air that holds quiet promise of coming Autumn. In the fields around the village farmers harvest their golden prize from summer near past. I walk barefoot to the apple trees and load the feeders for the birds and luxuriate in the feel of cool grass between my toes. It reminds me that I should be dealing with the garden before we head off for a short break at the weekend, back to France and that special place that's come to mean so much to me over these last few years.

I'd wanted to go to Languedoc for years and years before I ever got there. When I did I felt immediately at home, somehow completely relaxed and at peace. Oddly, I felt unexplainably relieved just to be there. I never said anything to My Lovely G, thinking it was probably just over reaction to that getting-away-from-it-all-on-holiday feeling, yet feeling like it was more than that too.


 A few days before the holiday ended we were sitting in the 'Bar A Vin', our favourite watering hole in the ancient walled city of Carcassonne, slaking thirst and letting the heat of the day drain from us as we recovered from a day trip somewhere that had included a hill climb beyond what the overweight middle aged me was comfortable with anymore. My mind wandered over the day: rivers we drove beside, tiny villages, narrow hill roads, treacherous paths and that withering climb to a Cathar castle ruined centuries ago perched high on its crag. And yet most of all my mind pondered on how familiar it all felt. How comforting it was to push the path down beneath my feet and walk higher and higher through an environment that should have felt completely alien yet instead was the absolute opposite.

I turned to G and said, "Y'know, I don't think I've ever been somewhere I've felt more at home than here - other than actually at home. I can't explain it. I know this is the first time we've been here but I love it. I really do. I feel such a sense of peace. I've been trying to dismiss it as some kind of daft holiday nonsense but I honestly can't. I absolutely love it here."

I glanced across the table into those mesmerising eyes and found I was being examined with one of those typically concerned looks I know so well.  I braced myself for a dose of reality.

"I know. I feel it too. I can't explain it either."

Back in the now I turn from the trees and the now full bird feeders tucked amongst the apples and head back across the grass to the house. At the patio door I turn and look back at the garden for a second, stretch and slowly inhale cool morning mixed with the scent of the garden. Autumn's in the air here for sure and the days will soon be growing short. I wonder how it will have changed by the time we get back. After breakfast I'll get out and mow the lawn, weed the borders and tidy down the drive for the last time this summer. Even though we'll be gone just a week summer will have gone by the time we get back. I'll be sad to see it go but glad to be back in France again.

My laptop isn't coming this time but G is taking hers so I may get a blog or two in, especially if I get the inspiration or some good photos. I have programmed in a couple of Sunday posts anyway to keep the blog ticking over.

See you later or maybe au revoir!

Listening to:

The Sunday posts 2013/ Blackberry Picking.

Seamus Heaney

1939 - 2013

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.


Photo - creative commons licence

It seems appropriate to mark this weeks passing of Seamus Heaney here.

Sorry for missing last week. Work is such an interference in life!    

The Sunday Posts 2013/Advice to a Son

Advice To A Son

Never trust a white man,
Never kill a Jew,
Never sign a contract,
Never rent a pew.
Don't enlist in armies;
Nor marry many wives;
Never write for magazines;
Never scratch your hives.
Always put paper on the seat,
Don't believe in wars,
Keep yourself both clean and neat,
Never marry whores.
Never pay a blackmailer,
Never go to law,
Never trust a publisher,
Or you'll sleep on straw.
All your friends will leave you
All your friends will die
So lead a clean and wholesome life
And join them in the sky.

Earnest Hemmingway
Photo by Alistair

The Sunday Posts 2013/Fetching Cows

The black one, last as usual, swings her head
And coils a black tongue round a grass tuft. I
Watch her soft weight come down, her split feet spread.

In front the others swing and slouch; they roll
Their great Greek eyes and breathe out milky gusts
From muzzles black and shiny as wet coal.

The collie trots, bored at my heels, then plops
Into the ditch. The sea makes a tired sound
That's always stopping though it never stops.

A haycart squats prickeared against the sky.
Hay breath and milk breath. Far out in the West
The wrecked sun flounders though its colours fly.

The collie's bored. There's nothing to control....
The black cow is two native carriers
Bringing its belly home, slung from a pole.

Norman MacCaig

When friends come to stay.

Edinburgh Tattoo 2013

Blogger Pal Indigo Roth is here with us again just now. He was here for a week in January and didn't seem put off by the weather so decided to come and have a look in some better temperatures. While it's nowhere near as warm as recent weeks and the wind has been more to the fore, we've had a few nice days.

 

 

It's nice to see familiar places through the eyes of someone seeing them for the first time. When we do have visitors we have a few places we always like to take them to see. At this time of the year it's Edinburgh in festival mode - we're leaving shortly to spend the rest of the day there - and this week we were lucky to get tickets for the preview night of The Edinburgh Tattoo. Our friend appeared to have a ball. At this rate he might be going home wearing a kilt!

 

Although I've had to work a couple of days I've also been able to spend time out and about with our friend. Luckily like me he enjoys photography and again, it's nice to see familiar places interpreted by someone else in their photos. Somehow it gives you a wider perspective when you realise they often see things you don't in your well known places.

Concentration.

It will be interesting to see how he views the crowds and places in Edinburgh today. I can hardly wait.

Lindisfarne.

The photos here are some taken over the last few days. Some of Indigo's can be seen here.

Shed made from boat, Lindisfarne.

 

 

Lindisfarne

 

 

Lindisfarne Castle

 

 

Fireworks Finale Tattoo.

 

Tantallon Castle.

 

 

Take care folks. See you soon.

Listening to:

The Sunday Posts 2013/Sink Song

This weeks offering is chosen by blogger pal Indigo Roth who's staying with us at the moment. {Strange that - I thought I'd managed to put him off  for life the last time he was here!}

I imagine he chose this because of all the lovely porage I make him - not the amount of porage-pot washery I've made him do, although you can tell what's made the biggest impression.

Scouring out the porridge pot
Round and round and round!

Out with all the scraith and scoopery,
Lift the eely ooly droopery,
Chase the glubbery slubbery gloopery
Round and round and round!

Out with all the doleful dithery,
Ladle out the slimy slithery,
Hunt and catch the hithery thithery,
Round and round and round!

Out with all the obbly gubbly,
On the stove it burns so bubbly,
Use the spoon and use it doubly,
Round and round and round.

Poem by J.A. Lindon

Photo of Indigo Roth by Indigo Roth {because the man loves a 'selfie'.}