I just got back from an evening spent in pleasant company reading a script for a play we are doing. It's called 'Scenes from a Memory' and is connected with Dream Theater - for further elucidation if you see the Bats website, www.thebats.co.uk. It could well be very interesting when performed which the society is doing in November, hopefully at the world renowned De La Warr Pavillion (sadly I find this particular style of architecture to be hideous but as I love acting I bear with it!). I am not auditioning for it though as I am taking an over-winter break. I have been in two plays and I'm stage managing Blythe Spirit this month. I simply don't have the stamina I used to have and with the Morris dancing as well......plus a whole pile of other stuff of course.
I have enjoyed my long weekend as much as if it had been a fornight and am returning to work tomorrow refreshed and relaxed and ready for new challenges - ok so tongue is definitely in cheek here, hey ho. Only another seven weeks until my next holiday, already counting the days.

Written for a friend on his 60th birthday

Tick tock
Sixty minutes for lunch
He sits at the bar
A frown contracts his brows
His fingers slide across
The ridge of the glass
He stares unblinking
Into a cool pint of memories
Sixty years for life
Tick tock

I just got back from Morris Dancing and boy am I kernackered. I must have walked a hundred miles at the very least today. Ok well slight exageration but it is a lot. Must get my scooter on the road!
I thought everyone would like to know my melons got bigger, that is, my melon has got bigger. It is straining against its support, whoopee.
I got very excited today when I got an email saying I had earned myself £14 for usage rights to one of my photos. Yeah, yeah I know that isn't a huge amount but I am a small scale person and little things excite me. If you get excited over small things of course the scope for getting excited is increased, exponentially. That said, woo woo payday tomorrow!!!

Eyes now propped up with matchsticks so bed-time...............

The mask slipped
Imperceptibly
I should have seen it

But I saw Heaven
Painted in kisses
And whispers

Blithely with guileless smile
I walked on clouds
Of treachery

Snaking tendrils
Of deceit
Shackled my dancing ankles

I tried to fend off
Clutching hands
That pulled me from the mud

Freed but weak
I sit on the shingle
Catching clean breaths

Mud on my shoulders
Glitters in the sun
As it smiles on the fool

Actually I'm still looking for one!

Last night I was out in the garden with my cats until it was too dark to even see properly. I've spent a few evenings out in the garden cutting out the deadwood from my fruit bushes and sweeping with my new broom - hey perhaps there's a metaphor there somewhere. A year down the line I am still in the same place doing much the same things and sometimes I'm sad, sometimes frustrated, sometimes buoyant, sometimes positive, but most of all I am trying very hard to carry on being ME. They do say life begins at forty and perhaps that has an element of truth in it.

This is one I wrote last year...

I am glorious summer.

Sitting on a bench on a December afternoon
The light is fading and the year is dying
I am not December yet though
If age is kind to me I am June or July

If age is kind to me I am June or July
My December has not come yet
My light is not fading and I am flying
Sitting here today I am glorious summer

I had to buy a new garden broom today because I brushed the head off the old one. I must be sooo strong..

Night

Where do you go to at night in your dreams?
Is it silent and black and alone?
Do you wake with a feeling of sadness inside?
Do you reach for a hand and find none?

Gully, what a day.
Oh dear I am sorry for that, it was worse than pathetic.
My feeble attempts at wit are famous more for their feebleness than their wit.

I have been seriously neglecting my gardening duties lately - well the rot set in last year when I was otherwise distracted. I have tried to attend my beautiful piece of land with the diligence and care that I had previously bestowed on it but my enthsiasm for most things is taking time to return. However I did spend a short while tidying my pocket-sized greenhouse. I have several melon plants (kindly donated by my sister) and they have been abundant with flowers but up until quite recently failed to produce fruit. BUT - I now have a melon!! WOO WOO. It requires support of course but is not yet big enough for used bras (not that I am boasting - the fruit is only walnut size as yet). I had a wonderful crop of sweetcorn which was demolished during my week in Edinburgh by.......not sure, either foxes or badgers....., and my melon fruit makes up a little for the loss of corn.

A wee garden ditty.

Flower Bed Chums

Lavender and Rue by disposition
Will tolerate juxtaposition

I like the little two-liners because I am basically lazy!

This is the week that sees me (a) helping my son move into the flat he has just bought and (b) waiting for my daughter to get her GCSE results. Suddenly my babies are all growed up. What happened to the snotty noses, tiny fingers and high pitched giggles. Well at least I don't have nappies to change I guess. I feel redundant though, I don't think any thing else quite tops motherhood for me.
So what a great time for my husband to decide it's time to have a talk about 'us' and whether there is such a thing. Mm. Maybe come back to that emotional rollercoaster when this one is finished. My son was born on a Wednesday and it is Wednesday today hence the title. He took me to see his new flat yesterday with a few essentials, that is a TV, some wine and a microwave! Aw bless.

I wrote this for his birthday...

Little Jem

May, the month he came to me
Back in 1983
Wee and tiny, all brand new
(Now a hulk of six foot two)
Big blue eyes and button nose
Tiny fingers, tiny toes
Little Jem, a precious chap
Curled up neatly in my lap
Now he lifts me off my feet
And dumps me on the sofa seat!

He does of course think I am deranged and peculiar. I think he's probably right!!

It is raining very wetly today and it wasn't when I set off for work so I wore flip-flops and they are just not much fun in the rain. So I am forced to say that this particular Monday is a bit pooey especially as it was back to work this morning after a delightful week in the north. At work they had changed the telephone system completely while I was away and nobody wanted to explain how it worked so I just ignored it to start with. BUT.......I am back home now with a cup of coffee and some chocolate rich teas.
So have I got a poem for the day..........erm..........hold on....back in a bit

Oh here's one from after playing Titania which seems like a million years ago but is only about a month!

Titania’s Dream

On a summers evening I have been seen
Lying barefooted on a bank of green
In silvery beads and fine muslin dressed
And around me sweet singing fairies pressed
My eyes tightly closed and buds in my hair
And there were bubbles, bubbles ev’rywhere

This is my poem for today.............

A Little Honey

I watched it slip
A drip
Of honey from your lip
Onto the tip
Of your chin

I saw you begin
To grin
As honey trickled in
To the wisp thin
Hair on your face

Welcome to my mad, mad world. Today I ate 6 jaffa cakes.