YOU ARE SNOWDROP. I AM ROBIN.

 Your dangling skull fixates on the damp path,

Rooted yet restless, nipped by a node of green,

Trapped in last year’s leaf loam from the cherry tree.

You are Snowdrop. I am Robin.

Across my dancefloor you throw your chubby shadow.

I hear shrill thrill from your syrinx

Part carillon, part weeping.

You are Robin. I am Snowdrop.

Why dance, pale nodding prisoner of the old soilways?

Why sing, blood-breasted fugitive from the rusty kettle?

Apart we know no tie or truck, one with the other.

Together we are heralds of the hopes of spring,

Pearls on a thread of joy sewn through the frozen earth

Birthing winter’s slow melt into blossom and blessing.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

“You may call it ‘brown’ but I call it Burnt Umber.”

The things we come out with when we’re kids! Cute stuff. Cringeworthy stuff. Stuff we can’t remember saying, except from tales told about us by grown-ups years later.

I produced the piece of pedantry quoted above when I was about six. Our neighbour, a man in his forties, fresh home from his shift on the railway, had casually remarked,

“That’s a nice brown you’ve got there!”

when he saw me enthusiastically using my new watercolour paints to depict the bark of a tree. I loved daubing. I adored words even more, even then. Loved the shape and texture of the sounds. Loved the feel of saying stretchy vowels and delicious diphthongs that made special patterns and flavours in my imagination.

I was such a polite kid, too. I wouldn’t generally say ‘boo’ to the proverbial goose. But I knew when there was a fantastic magical proper name for something, especially when it rolled mysteriously off the tongue like this “Burnt Umber” then I sure as heck was going to say it.  And encourage others, including adults, to join in. Enter our neighbour.

I look back in horror to think how priggish and precocious I must have sounded. My mum assures me the neighbour laughed like a drain and wasn’t at all offended. He knew I wasn’t a cheeky kid as a rule. It was just that, being me, I’d learned by heart all the special exotic-sounding names on the labels in my new paintbox. Raw Sienna. Ultramarine. Cobalt Blue. Yellow Ochre. Vermilion. Burnt Umber.

If something didn’t already have a marvellous moniker, I wasn’t averse to making one up for it, either. I would go on errands to the local Post Office to purchase a “Post Lauder” as it was in my head when I asked for it at the counter, or “Postal Order” as the rest of the unenlightened populace called it. “Terrid” was my infant mangling of “terrible” and “horrid.” My cousin assures me that when I was little, I used to insist the small rectangular block of wood at either end of our piano keyboard was, and I quote, the “tisstop”. Don’t even ask. 

Somewhere not very deep below my placid exterior, even now, the voice of that pintsized pedagogue and would-be word-wrangler is still biting its tongue. Most of the time. Nearly sixty years later, the memory of the “Burnt Umber” controversy incident still has me blushing brighter than a brushful of Cadmium Red!

NEW YEAR'S RESOLU...OH, TO HECK WITH ALL THAT!

I struggle at this time of the year. Not so much with the shiny, squeaky new beginnings. More with maintaining a regular regime built on those rose-coloured fresh-out-of-the-box intentions. 

At the start of a new year, my heart rebels against the traditions of diary keeping, resolution making, to-do list mania. By just about now, I miss a day, or several days, a week, and suddenly, the perfectionist in me feels it's getting left behind on the starting blocks! Then the problem’s doubled with every passing day. The more I feel I’ve missed or dropped the ball while playing 'keepy-uppy', the more overwhelming it seems to get 'back on track'. Crazy but true! I should resolve to do better this year, but there I go again. It’s those darned resolutions that seem to press the pause button on forward motion!

It can apply to all sorts. Diary entries. Blogging. Arbitrary targets. The more goals I set, the less I feel inspired. I'm one of those who thrives on wiggle room. Not least in writing. What about you? I find the ideas that get me buzzing come unbidden in the dead of the night, or after an hour in the silence, off piste, off the map, off the timetable. 

Socrates, now. He didn't think much of writing. (Sorry, Soxy boy, I know that's an outrageous oversimplification!) He never wrote down his thoughts. It took his pupil Plato, among others, to commit his master’s words to paper and hand them down to future generations. Socrates said (or was it Plato putting words in his mouth?) that writing things down leads to forgetfulness. For me, regimented writing, the diaries and the spreadsheets, just because night's turned to day or there's an r in the month, kills my vibe. Once pressure is off, I can gladly and gratefully scribble away at any hour of day or night. 

Not writing things down? No. Never going to happen. How do inspirations get processed and passed along if you don't record them somehow? Even when you have a Plato to your Socrates, you’re dependent on the one who curates your content and on what they think you said. Socrates had his Plato, so we know him principally that way, by pupil proxy. But at best, it's going to be lost in translation, whispered from lip to ear round the circle in a Victorian parlour game, emerging as something barely resembling the original.

Unlike Socrates, I can’t imagine not writing. It’s my preferred way of relaxing, of challenging myself, of finding out what I actually think or feel or intuit and then sharing it, connecting with others. I have no plans to stop, even if I could! 

I enjoyed every second of writing my first novel, editing it, typesetting it, getting it out there, blogging about its background and genesis. I enjoy sharing it. I enjoy the feedback. I love that people enjoy it, or get frustrated at or enchanted by one of the characters.

I'm enjoying planning my second book, the writing, the letting it all coalesce and mature. Then come the expectations. As soon as you realise other people are hanging on the hope of a sequel, the pressure is on, like the unwritten diary page or the missed appointment. We need to hang on mindfully to the truth that every word we write is first for ourselves, then for others if they happen to choose to read it. We really need to stop concerning ourselves, as writers, as humans, with what others think, or demand or expect. 

Just breathe, one breath, then the next breath and the one after that.  One step, then the next, one foot in front of the other. One word, then another, then the one after that. For the sheer joy of it, always.

Sometimes, we feel the pressure to match or compare one piece of writing with the next. Maybe we need to let go of wanting the present moment's project to rival anything, but just to let what we produce become exactly what it needs to be, precious in its own right. Able to be graciously marinaded in the edit or fed without regrets into the shredder.

As I coax my characters through their story arcs, piecing together their universe, it’s as if I don’t want to let them down. The same with each poem. I want them to be everything I desire for them, like children. Yet, like children, I know I just have to bring them into the world, love them, nurture them and let them go, toddling out into print so they can be friends with people who haven't even met them yet. 

A  daily straitjacket, especially now my energy levels are so variable in chronic illness, sometimes trips me up or freezes me out from the fires of spontaneity . This year is going to be different! (Was that a pesky new year resolution, sneaking in, there?) It’s down to me, calmly staying present, being very gentle and kind to myself. Are you planning to give yourself the same TLC this year? Be your own best encourager. Your own cheerleader. Go on, why not? Don't be so hard on yourself. Failure isn’t an option. Precisely because nothing is failure, unless you label it so. This year, dear one, don't punish yourself. Rip up the calendar if you need to. Just never let your fire go out!

DREAMING OF ULTIMA THULE

FORGETTING

SINGING ONLY STILLNESS

She stands as the crack of light
Between darkness and day
Not editing herself
Letting fears sob and unknot inside her opening heart
Letting her silent survival outpace the tread of doubt

Till suddenly there is peace
Where it has waited, always, quivering,
Muffling the gibber of plans and resolutions
Crowing crowds under the gasp of fireworks
Heckling bells, the shuffling off of yester

Rooted in this rainbow now,
Meets herself face to faceless,
Where the robin's ribbons
Of shocking silver song
Echo eternity
Singing only stillness

THE WELLS OF WHENCE

ENLIGHT

DISSOLUTION (Roche Abbey, 1538) - a poem

Disbelieving

On hands and knees,

I crawl, shielding

The hum-bright hive,

Tilted honey spilling unspoiled

Bees trail a curling Kyrie

Up between linden’s fingers

Disbelieving that they would

Until they came

A storm of the king’s sending,

No pilgrimage of grace

Tripping me out of my habit

La belle Roche,

Melts into pewter, stone, timber, lead

What will become of me?

I lick my fingers

As the sword descends,

Taste only honey, blood,

Thyme from the shadows of the kitchen-garden.

Refectorium

Buzz and banter

Swims into silent

No stone unturned

Into rectangles of hollow

Mapped matins and misericord

Long since sung.

BLUE MONDAY

You for whom Monday dawns bluely

Not blue of gentian, of cirrus-combed skies,

Not cornflower, powder, periwinkle,

But bottomless blue bruise of ice,

Of frozen feather in a fox’s footprint:

I will stitch you a cloak of comfort in Arnolfini greens,

Swaddle your sadness in robes of amethyst,

Wrap your sorrow in sun-warmed apricots and ambers,

Dry your tears with tissues of cadmium and canary,

Warm your heart with carnelian and coquelicot reds.

I would not see you blue

But if that is where you must be for now,

I will walk out across

This fragile crust of slippy-sided blueness

To hold your hand

Under the frozen brow

To wait with you

For rainbows.

WRITING DOUBLE DARE

"Write what you know!"

Writing advice we've all heard.

But what if you don't really know what you think you know? You know?

Here's an idea.

Write what you dare!
Write what you dare to imagine!

If we never dare to write while clinging by our sweaty fingertips to the edge of what we might never be sure of, stomach churning, naked to possibility, how will we really know anything, anyway?

Living's a risky venture. Writing sometimes has to kick away the stabilisers, if we want to grow, exhilarated and incorrigible, into the writers we were born to be.

Write what excites you, challenges you, expands you, pushes you to your limits.

I double dare you!

MOTHING MOTTEPHOBIC

Small Dusty Wave (Idaea seriata)

Mottephobia: the irrational fear of moths.

My phobia of moths goes way back, to this childhood incident.

Now I'm working on overcoming my mottephobia through my camera lens. Through curiosity. Through my stubborn determination  to refuse to be deprived of moths in my life forever more.

This summer, I'm even starting to do mothy things with sheets, torches, sugaring and wine ropes I never ever dreamed I could steel myself to do. Even opening a window with the lights on in the evening has been a no-no for most of my life!

The following poem squeezed its way out on such an evening of lying in wait for the whisper of wings.

Female Bee Moth (Aphomia sociella)

Let's sit suspended in this burning dark
Moths mutter and barge in watch-spring arc
Kidnapped wings
From nectareous things
Sheets running rivers of fluttering light
Retina flexes to flatten night.

Still heart-deep primal phobia
Shrieks headless panic under buddleia
I tense transfixed, pinned corpse on card
In the melting dusk of my own backyard
They blunder through gaps 
Between stratus and star
To the flames of our fears 
To wherever we are.

White-shouldered House Moth (Endrosis sarcitrella)

WAITING FOR WINGS

Up in the attic with the window ajar in implausibly glacial late April.

A wafer of ice has made sorbet of the bird's water dish and the bee-bath. I shatter it when I'm out scattering mealworms, filling feeders, dispensing lard and suet. Back up in my den I nudge the window wider. The chill's going to be worth it.

This morning I'm listening for something special.

I'm waiting for wings.

The Red Arrows are staging a fly past from RAF Scampton. Scheduled to pass over Robin Hood Airport at Finningley quarter of an hour later, they're flying east as far as Humberside Airport before heading back to Scampton.

Aircraft out of Doncaster regularly cruise low over my roof, at hundreds of feet instead of many thousands. Thrilling yet unnerving. Imagining their wings against this stainless blue sky, anticipating the rumble as they soar over, was what set my fingers notching the window sash onto the latch.

Through the open glass can I hear goldcrests zithering in the conifers over the road at the old farm, rippling further off in the grounds of the Grange. A chaffinch is doing his impersonation of a cricketer running up to the wicket to bowl a spinning googly, the fall of notes at the end of his trilling phrase bouncing down from the Ash tree through the budding leaves. Greenfinch tops the linden, whistling nasally in long coils of whoop. My ear catches the cross tutting of Blackbirds fighting over supplies of sustenance on the patio. Dunnocks are flying off the handle. Robins are in a song contest knockout against their rivals with a medley of their hits where the lyrics always sound like "Do you know who I am?"

There are already babies to feed. I've not seen any in feathery person yet. I only know because their parents' gathering outweighs their grazing. I'm hoping the frosty night hasn't taken them by surprise. You can't throw on an extra heated blanket when your bed's a few twigs in a draughty hedge.

I never do see the Red Arrows, after all. The clock hands sweep past the moment of their homing. The planes must have headed out to the coast and back without darkening these inland skies. The tilted roofs with their aerials sucking signals from the sky, the telegraph wires swinging liquorice skipping ropes in the playground of nippy air are satisfied with the sunshine.

With the window open, I can see sparrows giddying along the eaves, inches from my upturned eyes, skippy shadows fluttering, overwound clockwork automata driven by the ceaseless chivvying of their hungry youngsters from their playpens in the roof.

I think I got the best of it.

I know I did.

It was worth the wait.

I witnessed the wings that make the future brighter.

Young Wood Pigeon - more wings to watch for in Spring

ONE INTROVERTED MIDDLE-AGED SINGLETON'S TAKE ON VALENTINE'S DAY

What does it mean to me to be an introvert, middle-aged and single on Valentine's Day? Much the same as it feels to be the above on any other day of the year to be honest! I'm not one for labels!

Maybe a few years ago when I still had a functional womb, I had a few wistful wonderings. What about my unborn children and grandchildren I will never meet?

 I would have liked my mum to know what it would have been like to have had grandchildren and great-grandchildren to gather round her as she grows older. I know how blessed they would all have been to know her. How her wisdom and good sense would have made them stop and think when they were making life's tough decisions. How her dependable faithfulness would have lightened their lives whenever they talked with her. I know they would have met love in her company, because I do. That mother/daughter relationship, my best and most trustworthy friend, to me is something of more enduring influence in my life than the intense but too often briefly burning flames of romance and passion. 

I know many who have lost children they adored, others who have never met the beloved little one they were waiting for, or who have endured the heartache of not bearing the children they lovingly planned. Compared to their acute pain, my musings are just what-ifs and maybes. I constantly remind myself just how fortunate I am.

Now, this side of menopausal, I am at peace with my inner singleton. Not just given the conclusion that this is a dark world into which to bring brave new lives. No – because I still love this quirky, unbelievably beautiful, precious and fragile world. I hope if I had met my Valentine, we would have been able to share wonder and hope with our children, gathered them close to watch the Sparrows in the hedge, the sunlight bouncing off frosty fields, to recognise the music of the chittering outrageous Dunnock, to love and value the comical antics of Magpie and Squirrel and become champions for those who can't stand up so easily for themselves. To help them know their indoor from their outdoor voices, to treat others with loving respect, courtesy, compassion and empathy as a given, whoever they meet.

I have met my Valentine in a way. 

He's been hidden in my heart all my life. 

I've had the privilege of introducing him to family, friends, readers, the world beyond my heart. 

He is Bram the kindly, tender wildlife-whispering marshman in my books. Bram embodies everything I would have loved in a partner, and to me he is as real as flesh and blood. Not without faults, not without weaknesses, but a beautiful soul, that is my Bram. Thirza in my books is the personification of my genes and ancestry, myself embracing the other. In some ways Bram is her temperamental opposite yet her soulmate on life's journey. They are both aspects of my own spirit. That is my Valentine coupling in the realm of imagination. It is my joy to be able to share them with the wider world through words that offer their reality robed in fiction and fantasy.

Sometimes it's lonely to be uncoupled. 

I am the shadow that walks unlinked. 

But I rarely if ever feel lonely unless I glimpse myself as others do. If we glimpsed ourselves constantly that way, I suspect it would often end in tears (or giggles!) even though Burns averred it would be a gift to see ourselves as others see us! I try to focus my love and caring where I can to wide circles of friends, family and strangers. My relationships as a singleton are the kind that don't really need one day a year to trumpet them. They are beautiful background noise that lullabies and strengthens. 

The worst mauling you will ever get from me is a nip from my inner pedant, my geeky nerdish knowledge of relatively useless facts and words. But I will always endeavour with my peaceful Enneagram Type 9 empathy to make sure you don't feel bested, belittled or patronised, even though I sometimes can't resist my Enneagram wing 1 impulse to challenge you subtly when I think you're factually wrong, or if you're ungenerous with somebody you perceive as different or lesser that you.

It's sometimes unnerving to have to think through things when my compass is instinctual rather than reasoning and the ability to ask for help is never the first option for me. I do learn a lot, though, that way. Not always as quickly and seamlessly as I'd like. Mistakes are powerful teachers, even if we squirm at the embarrassment of making them. I mask and move through that embarrassment by laughter, getting safely alongside those who, left to their own devices, might have turned those blunderings against me. Even at school, nobody could bully me for long. My smile and self-deprecating gentleness gave the bullies no way to get a satisfying grip or a rise out of my reactions. In the long years since the schoolyard, my learning curve has risen by fits and starts, as I strive to find ways of being bold enough, courageous enough to speak out and stand up for every underdog with whom I can readily identify.

Often I'm flooded with a momentary feeling of being alone in a confusing, frighteningly hard world of people. Some days I feel my creativity is simply "peopled" out of me. A profoundly introverted soul who has made a living of challenging my introversion, I often find myself "all peopled out." 

A woman once startled me by saying, after a presentation I had done:

“Where do you get all your self-confidence?”

The fact I remember her words shows how hilariously far that lady was from comprehending my true inclination to hermithood! 

No. It's a weak excuse to say my creativity is "peopled" out of me. It's an aspect of writer's block that has been much discussed in literature about creativity, including Julia Cameron in her excellent "The Artist's Way". I can and do regularly overcome it. What is true, for me, though, is that doing the people thing takes an enormous amount of energy out of me. My first thought in almost every situation where I am meeting other people, even if I know them well, is 'where is the endgame here? When can I escape and be by myself again?' Nobody ever guesses, so I tend to find myself even more "peopled"!

In my youth, I did most of my writing at the dead of night, when people were kept at bay by sleep. More recently, chronic autoimmune illness means I'm denied the luxury of burning the midnight candle without consequences. I am mystified by those who feel bereft when they can't be chattering with people. My own deep heart-joy is when I am alone, preferably with nature, or when I am writing, with books, music or learning some new thing that stimulates my thoughts and my ability to weave these new insights into my words.

So is my ideal Valentine really myself? 

The old song says: "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." I do need people, very much so, but maybe not in indigestibly mammoth portions! 

It doesn't always come easily to love myself, essential as that is. I have struggled with this in the past as so many of us do, not least those walking through life as a faith journey. As I mature into middle age, I find myself less and less able to gulp down platitudes and alienating ways of seeing others, or to tick the box of unbending doctrines like some nodding dog. It makes me feel diminished to try to shrink this messy marvellous world and cram it into a straitjacket with sharp unyielding seams. The upside to that so-called disillusionment is that it leaves healthy room for new perspectives that may prove nearer to the truth. The truth of love is even more important to me, as vital as breathing. It leaves more sweet space for supporting and valuing other people without tumbling over the tripwires of bigotry.

So these are my introverted middle-aged singleton's reflections on the day dedicated by history and card shops to Valentine. On social media, people are either embracing the heart and flower memes that abound at this time of year, or angrily rejecting them as smacking of stereotypes and shallowness. Meanwhile this unique oddball's here trying to spread the ripples of a calm pool of love in which anyone and everyone can bathe without drowning. That's me and maybe one of my missions in life. To help people see they are all special, truly loved in ways they haven't even dreamed, but yearn to discover.

In the end, writing this, I see more clearly just how much I am loved too as the earth caresses me in its cloak of serendipity and shadowy sunshine. That reassurance will last so much longer than a bunch of wilted roses on this day that celebrates the ways of the heart.

Writing as sculpture: finding and freeing the treasure hidden inside the rock

Writing feels to me a bit like carving a sculpture: it's as if I'm finding and freeing the treasure hidden inside the rock.

First come the seed ideas, the months of thinking and dreaming about my characters, their lives, their situations, the plot, the research that may never make its way into the finished novel, but which is the solid grounding reality and background to everything. That's the stone.

Then second, once it reaches a tipping point where all the elements are in place and I can no longer resist the writing, comes the first draft. That helps me see clearly the seams and fault lines of my characters, the shape and flow of the plot, the dovetailing strands of the story as I chip away. Now I can make full eye contact with the characters I dreamed up, hear them speak, smell and taste their world more vividly than before. That's the sculpting.

Then comes the editing, editing and re-editing which I love. It's like the tumble-polishing of the whole piece, murdering my darlings, killing dead adjectives, spotting typos, reordering, throwing it out to my faithful proofreaders to savage and sniff out the impurities and howlers. That's the smoothing.

Once it's published and out in the world with the readers it was born to meet, my writing can then be enjoyed and explored by everybody from their different viewpoints, preferences, angles, looking at the crystal with all its different facets, each reader taking away something different from my story. Such a privilege and joy when some are unable to look away until the end, getting what they need from the book I sculpted, perhaps treasuring it as a favourite read to return to again and again, each time getting something different from it.

I'm currently having such fun immersed in the sculpting stage of my second novel, which sees my heroine and hero from "Goatsucker Harvest" going into deep waters, dangers and wildlife dilemmas in a Humber Keel off Yorkshire's Holderness Coast and the sea cliffs and caves around Flamborough Head in the 1850s.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please let me know by commenting and please feel free to share your own ideas and experiences of writing and reading.

Thanks for stopping by!

You can find me on Facebook Twitter and Goodreads



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"Goatsucker Harvest" going global

Humber Keel just like the "Thistle" in 'Goatsucker Harvest' on a Yorkshire canal

Createspace have just told me that "Goatsucker Harvest" will be available in paperback in Canada within the next 30 days, as well as UK/USA/Europe. So if you have friends or family in Canada on the look out for a good read, can you let them know there'll be a new historical fiction fantasy title set in Yorkshire in 1855 on Amazon.ca for them to enjoy in paperback as well as om Kindle? 

Had my first Kindle downloads from Germany and Spain over the weekend. Intriguing! Can't wait to get more feedback from the worldwide audience! 

We writers would be nowhere without our readers.

New and old faithful readers alike, welcome to my fictional world!

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.co.uk (UK)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com (USA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com.au (AUSTRALIA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.fr (FRANCE)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.de (GERMANY)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.es (SPAIN)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.nl (NETHERLANDS)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.co.jp (JAPAN)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.in (INDIA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.ca (CANADA)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.it (ITALY)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com.br (BRAZIL)

Goatsucker Harvest on Amazon.com.mx (MEXICO)


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