Someone else's garden

The sun is setting as I wander past a garden; the last vestiges of gold giving it a pleasant glow. There is a yellowy grit path and a patio where a watering can lies abandoned on its side. Of course it may have been blown over by the wind, although I suspect not. I'm tempted to go and set it right, in its place by the latticed fence that is currently causing patterned shadows to be displayed on the flagstones. I like things to be in their place. Nowadays people call that OCD, but I just call it being tidy.
     A few plants squat in pots along the wall, some doing better than others. One has definitely died. The sunlight catches on some daffodils, though, and diverts my attention. Across the path there is a patch of grass that needs cutting. A baby starling, newly fledged is ferreting for worms. Another swoops from the roof to join him, but misjudges and bounces off the netting around the trampoline. He flaps violently and shoots upwards again before landing on the fence.
     The sky is pale blue now and grey, wispy clouds are blowing in from the north and west, from the invisible coast, just beyond the horizon. The garden shivers and settles down for another cool evening. 'Don't worry,' I say, 'summer will soon be here.'

Like A Slinky On An Escalator

Another year around the sun,
Another season just begun.
Another minute on the clock,
Watching moss grow on a rock.

Another penny in the meter,
Drinking fuel by the litre.
Another wannabe world-beater.
Undone by Time - the great defeater.

But there is hope with which to block,
Another day life tries to mock.
Another race must still be run,
Another battle must be won.

Something Impossible

Can you believe in something impossible? Sometimes I lose the energy. I want to dream of a paper aeroplane that could fly from London to Paris, or that the sun would travel backwards through the sky. However, I am a product of my generation and my culture. Everything has an explanation and either there is nothing left for the imagination or imagination itself is now an impossibility.
     I have also reached the conclusion that nothing ever really ends, only changes come slowly, shifting the days and years and giving us memories. Stories too, dreamed up, have to start somewhere, and yet they build off many other thoughts and when they end there is always more that could be said.
     It is not the disappearing days that give importance to our lives; each one becomes an irrelevance with time, productive or not, and even changes when looked back on simply alter the route we take towards some greater impossibility, some mysterious goal. We must always have a goal, and why should that goal not be impossible? Some would say that what we have already done is impossible. Our very lives, imprinted with the marks of others are something that cannot be explained or fully understood but are of utmost importance.

Testament of (21st Century) Youth

I stood in the supermarket aisle facing the mountains of toilet rolls. Eighteen different varieties I counted. How is someone supposed to deal with that sort of choice? And that was after I'd spent thirty-five minutes trying to work out the positives and negatives of fifty-eight different varieties of cheese. Plus the delay it caused in my planned speedy-shop doubled when I was beaten to the checkout queue by someone with a trolley loaded up with what seemed to be about half the store. Evidently they'd given up trying to chose and just picked up something of everything.
     That policy works well enough I suppose, but it isn't so good in other situations. It's small wonder to me that young people (and I still just about include myself in that bracket) have little idea of what to do when they're older, given the huge range of options available. A choice made harder still, considering the pressure to get it right, if that's even possible.

In other news I saw today that schools are already beginning to ban oversized bows, being worn by surprisingly fashion-conscious young girls, while the debate on whether such items are merely hair accessories or symbols of power and confidence threatens to shut down social media (slight exaggeration). Given that I only discovered this craze on Monday you can understand why I was surprised by how fast this story was moving, but that's the world for you. People used to worry about it slowing down, but it just seems to get faster. I wonder if the testament of today's youth will be their ability to make it to the escape hatch before they become convinced they're merely players in some bizarre video game, in which the aim is to find the ultimate brand of toilet roll.

Serenity

Inspired by the song 'Quiet' from Matilda the musical.

Has it ever occurred to you that
If the world did not spin at one thousand miles an hour
We would not exist,
Or could not resist
The heat of the sun,
As we faced it day after day.
Although what would a day be without any night,
Or a night with no chance of seeing the light
Of a new dawn,
Sun rising, over some distant horizon.

It's really quite strange, but the world keeps on turning,
And sometimes it feels like it's hard to keep up,
Heart racing, heart burning,
As time flashes on.
I'm sorry, I know, this is quite hard to say,
In a way,
But it's true and there's nothing that we can ever do.
And it hurts my head as I try to consider
All the things that I have to consider each day,
So I pray, and I say,
Oh please let it stop for just once.
I can't stand the noise,
The rushing and shouting,
Is anyone counting
The vanishing hours,
Of a world that is whirling too fast.
There's no rest from this mess,
The distress of our personal quests,
And I'm running too fast
At some blank last moment,
And then at that moment
And just out of nowhere
And rushing towards me
I find coming at me...


Serenity.

When the world seems to come to stop, without really stopping. Just moving around me, like an ocean, and me on a small sailing boat.

Tranquillity. Amid all the chaos.
And all I can hear
Is the air
As my cares are carried away.

And there is stillness.
Peacefulness.
Like snow falling on snow; there's action but the action is soundless, except that there is something there if you listen, which you can, because in that heavenly place your mind is released from everything else.

And there in that moment, I find there is comfort,

Like I'm held,

Deep in the arms of the sun.

Two days in Snowdonia

Aside from crawling through the road works around Conwy (not literally) the drive to north Wales was fairly pleasant. I'd given myself two days to do as much walking in Snowdonia as possible, and I succeeded in hiking over 15 miles, including reaching the summit of the impressive mountain, Carnedd Dafydd.
     The weather was poor, and very windy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the steep climb up Pen yr Ole Wen. I had to cross the top, which had large patches of snow covering, in the cloud, but I found the cairn on Carnedd Dafydd, and my way back, without falling off the edge (obviously).

Pen yr Ole Wen; there's a path there somewhere.


The view south from Pen yr Ole Wen.

Returning to the car an hour before the Youth Hostel (Idwal Cottage - the oldest YHA in Britain, I'll have you know) opened, meant I had time to stroll around the tarn, seen in the centre of the picture above, and take a closer look at the frozen waterfalls, starkly white against the dark rocks (you can just about make out one of them).

Today I had ideas of attempting Tryfan or Glyder Fach, but while the wind was slightly lessened the clouds were heavier and lower and around 11am it started to rain. I'd headed up to the south side of Tryfan but backtracked and dropped down on the east side completing a circle of the mountain. I had another look at the north ridge but the clouds were still hanging around so I headed down to Llyn Ogwen and a boggy walk around it's father shore. Of course by the time I was back at the car and preparing to return home the clouds had lifted and the sun starting to shine through. Such is life in the hills.

Tryfan (without clouds on top) seen from Pen yr Ole Wen

 



 

A place like no other

There was a time when the earth was wild and waste. The land featureless, barren, silent; the ground baked hard by a relentless sun, while vicious winds whipped the seas.
     We could have existed then, in hardship, on dismal deserts. Surviving without living. Beauty unknown. But the earth brought forth plants, of a million colours, and the land was formed into moutains and valleys, with snow on the peaks and little rivers flowing down past pleasant meadows to golden beaches of soft sand, and the salty sea.
     Why is the grass green or the sky blue, or a sunset such a perfect myriad of reds and yellows? And is there anything more delicate than than a spider's web on a frosty morning?
     We are blessed to live in such a paradise and call it home; and if you offered me another option, I would, without hesitation, decline.