Out with the Old, In with More of the Old

Poetry, and getting out a bit with the dog ... that's pretty much it for me, and the end of last year and the beginning of this reflected that.  

On Friday it was Silver Street Poetry, the fourth gathering since we found a new venue post pandemic. Our guest poet this time was Pameli Benham, but the show came close to being stolen by Cwtch the border collie. She was down to read 'The Sheepdog' by U A Fanthorpe, about the collie who stays behind with the sheep while the shepherds visit the new baby born in a stable, but at the last minute she had a bit of a panic about her ability to do a Yorkshire accent (she's from Neath in Wales), so the Northerner (who's from Barnsley) took over. 

The very new New Year has been poetry-filled too, for which I'm grateful, having finished my MA in Creative Writing in the autumn. Along with over 200 of my peers, I've signed up for Kim Moore and Clare Shaw's January writing hours, which I knew would be good, as Kim was my MA dissertation supervisor at the Manchester Writing School. Being between projects, I can write whatever comes, which is exhilarating and a bit scary all at once. I'll be missing some of the sessions, unfortunately, thanks to work and the rail strike, which will see me shuttling along the M4 a fair bit, but I'm not really complaining because the situation is the fault of the government and Network Rail, not the unions. 

Nevertheless, even though I'm making efforts to stave off the January doldrums, I still feel I'll have to seize every bright day that comes my way and make the most of it, to which end we spent an hour on the River Severn at Severn Beach this lunchtime. It was a joy to be out under wide skies in brilliant light.