Ignoring Brexit… or Why be Political when you could be Normal?

‘After Brexit’ and the English weather is as it ever was – nostalgically these two look out across the Thames towards Parliament… (photo BBC News Getty images)

Indeed, why? As I (mis) quoted Janette Winterson’s autobiography title (‘Why be Happy when you could be Normal?’)  on my January Authors Electric blogpost. (An Amateur looks at the Art of Poetry, scroll down to find it, the group publish a blog every day on there).

So, ‘all work and no play…’ My blogging has gone a bit that way… you, the Reader, may think ‘far too political’ and give up – you, a follower, may stop in your tracks, and vow never to come here again… But wait, here is the real(er) me… with the things I enjoy!   And ‘after Brexit’ I intend to continue enjoying them… whatever the weather (and at present the local water meadows are under water…) 

Robin singing to defend his territory – or simply enjoying a spot of sun on an otherwise grey, damp, morning with

One of my favourite walks is a visit to our local nature reserve, trying to catch on camera the plants and wildlife… Robins are the commonest birds there, and several have become friends with regular visitors… Just before I met the Robin, this Jay swooped down to ground level and  began turning over the left-over autumn leaves, and  pecking up any insects it could find…

Crowds gather to view the flooded water meadows

And now for the ‘lake’ which develops every winter, and this year has surpassed itself… rather sad for us observers, the Teal who often migrate over and inhabit the lake in the winter months have been put off by a huge invasion of seagulls – and also, possibly, by the number of lively  dogs being walked on the water meadows, who leap joyfully into the water regardless of the cold!

 

And of course, back in the nature reserve plant life is stirring, snowdrops just coming out, just a promise of spring, and many varieties of fungi – these (below) are Elf Cups, (measure them against the ivy leaves and see how tiny they mostly are) pointed out to me by a very sharp eyed friend on a wonderful sunny morning… 

and over on another blog, a writer friend has just reminded us all that we should build much more play into our lives, lest we become world-weary women… when life escalates into being  too political, it’s all too easy to forget that! More nature walks, fewer earnest discussions… so I’m drawing this to a close and going for a cup of tea and a biscuit… then more thoughts about the follow-up to The Labyrinth Year…

Writer’s retreat – 2

Writer’s retreat: creativity and ‘procrastination’?

Still I have not begun to plan the 3rd novel in any detail … the merging or not of the Mullins family saga, and an unfinished piece from 2002 may work … but then again, it may not. Procrastination would be putting off the decision: this is plain waiting on what the decision might be.

The importance of spending time doing something else, somewhere else

The Wedding Cake

Meanwhile, we have been travelling. Back and forward in time. There was the family celebration, and a journey to the North East. Family wedding is a place for meetings, re-connections, informations and speculations. 

• We met second cousins we’d never met before …
• We reconnected with those we’ve kind kept up with … how much had we all changed?Underneath, are we the same?
• We gathered and exchanged and updated information: where do you live, what do you  do… what will you do…?
• We speculated: who looks like whom?  Do we all match? What is the genetics here: the relatives who all go back to Charles Henry Wheeler and Maria Sakilariou, who married in 1873 at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St Sophia in London through their son Alexander … and the name (Alexander) is still passing along down, from my grandfather to my father, to my cousin (the bridegroom), and my son Alexander Ben …

It was a grey day, the day before the Summer Solstice. In honour the occasion, the sun appeared almost last-minute, late afternoon, and everyone relaxed.

All very appealing to the fiction writer, this exchange of news over time, and possible futures, and how lives pan out … and where they meet and where they come from (Charles Henry from Hampshire, son of a harness and saddle maker, Maria from Tinos, Greece, lady’s maid to Euphrosyne Cassavetti, of Constantinople and Kensington).

• We enjoyed, we celebrated, we ate and we went our ways … Family Saga reality show carefully recorded for future viewing … We took a day exploring the area, and the countryside and a walk in the late evening sun.

  

  Summer Solstice Evening Walk near Durham

Sharing time with friends

And then, back home, there was a meditative walk with friends, (‘the family you choose’ – is that a quote?) 

• There was our Franciscan friend, who lead the walk. And the friends who turned up: all of them the least expected: one back from California, one a busy Mum almost straight from the surgery to the meadow, and two who’d read about our group and come along to find out more.
• We walked and read and thought about St Francis’s Song of Creation, and the sun and the moon were both there, white clouds floated in a wide high evening sky, joggers ran past and couples pushed babies in buggies … we stood on dry ground where in very wet seasons a lake forms and migrant widgeon over-winter in hundreds. And there was a poor stiff stoat lying prone on the allotment, symbolising how all creation eventually returns to the earth.
• And we sang Francis’s Song.
• I took no pictures, which is unusual for me, and was a deliberate kind of discipline.

The light bulb moment

For some reason, today the idea, the link, the merging, slipped itself into my brain. You could do it this way, with those characters …

Meanwhile, hoping to read widely while on holiday … more wild and woolly creepy crawlies to blog about later! (Be prepared for caterpillars, and snails …)

On the Wild Side: the Writer’s ‘Retreat’

A Writers’ Retreat?

Into the Wilds! Woodland path, Oxford

Being ‘too busy’ is bad for creativity: I awarded myself a writer’s Retreat.  A retreat from writing. To re-group the creative mind: to paint, bake cakes, encourage the garden.

Book Reviews are on hold.  I’ve joined the 30 Days Wild project  (http://www.mywildlife.org.uk/30dayswild/)… as anyone who’s read Baby, Baby or The Labyrinth Year will  know,  Jenny and Daze investigated wildlife as children, and so did I …

Probably un-clubbable like most writers, I do actually believe in joined-up-ness. As in joined-up projects, community activities, and making creative connections. It’s fiction-writerly thing: joined-up-ness yields plot. Getting back  to really looking at nature is joined-upness with my childhood, having once been a child!

And after giving my computer an upgrade … could  use another retreat from that techie, not  writerly, project. After several days working on, and adjusting to, the upgrade, I’m back with the Wildlife.

The MyWildLife Project – 2 walks and what’s in the garden

The idea is that as many of us as possible get outdoors studying and relating with the natural world. They suggest many ways and your own choice: own choice for me is being out there to record what I see photographically, then do a bit of research to find out more.  

Here’s the results for the past week: be prepared for creepy, crawly, things …

Oxford Evening Field Walk:

Wildflower Meadow

Fields and wooded paths run along the back of the University Parks, Lady Margaret Hall, The Dragon School, and Wolfson College, towards Marston Ferry Road. The paths run beside sports fields and a farm, and are edged with a huge variety of wildflowers and grasses.

• Slugs:  I was photographing a bee on comfrey, and nearby sat a large black slug. Our

  

  Black Slug, Arion Ater, hermaphrodie

  garden slugs are usually tiny grey/white (British, and dangerous to plant life) or big and brown/orange (continental recent-ish newcomers, less of a pest). Joined-up-ness: I decided to take more than a destructive interest in our black slug and looked up Latin name and details (see right under photo).

• Their vile mucus (quote Wikipedia, It is somewhat difficult to wash off) as well as helping them move along, is a defence.  Apparently it stinks and tastes so horrible that they have few predators, and unlike snails, have never been added to the human menu, though hedgehogs well eat them. Bring back the humble hedgehog … we used to see them around here.

• The wooded path home, lined with sycamores, filled in a knowledge gap from when I was a kid and observed how susceptible sycamore leaves are to an acne-like rash of small scarlet pustules. I used to find these creepy and never researched them. Joined-up-ness:

  

  Red galls on sycamore leaf

  this time I’ve looked them up and discovered they’re “galls’” caused by a mite (official name Aceria cephaloneus). The females lay their eggs inside: the developing mites live inside them. (So what exactly is a mite? A bit like a tiny tiny spider which bites? Mites: ‘small arthropods belonging to the subclass Acari and the class Arachnida’ (Wikipedia)

• Masses of wild flowers are out in June. Ragged Robin was a great find, I haven’t seen it around

  

  White deadnettle

  

  Ragged Robin

  

  sorrel

  

  Purple Veitch

  here before.

• Bracket Fungi were found on the trees.

East London Afternoon walk:

This was in Wick Wood, Hackney, a wood planted about 20 years ago on what used to be playing fields to provide a wildlife habitat, right beside a raised section of the A12. Two gatekeeper butterflies were flying around and settling on beech leaves.

Gatekeeper, Hackney Wick Wood

• The undergrowth – blackberry bushes – are flowering and come July/August anyone in the know will be able to pick berries and make jam.
• Here’s a bee in one of the flowers: sadly not a worker making honey but some species of ‘bumble’ either solitary or maybe, as we found on another walk in Oxfordshire, a member of a ground-based colony living in a hole (possibly abandoned by rabbits or dug by a dog).

  

  Bumble Bee on Blackberry Blossom

  

  Blue or prickly comfrey (S. asperum)

  A clearing had been cut in the wood, and a hedge woven from branches. It’s probably part of a schools project. In Oxford it would’ve been made from the willows which grow everywhere here, but I’m not sure what had been used for this one.

• Wild flowers were woodland types such as these blue comfreys which grew at the wood exit. The trees were mostly beech, there was an avenue of planes (good London trees): as this isn’t a natural wood, these trees were probably selected to grow happily in a polluted environment.

Yesterday’s observation and more to come …

(made seated on the grass as suggested in the Notes, and while eating a bun):

• A large green, iridescent, beetle, busy eating the nectar in a rose… This seems to be a Rose Chafer, well known to eat petals and nectar. The larvae live on rotting wood and compost (maybe in our compost bin?)