Emptying the parental home is a tough job. While my sister and her husband managed to pack up almost all the goods and chattels in a few days of Herculean effort, it seems to have taken me the entire summer to re-home the last few pieces of furniture.
I'm quite pleased, though, that out of all the things in the house, only one settee too old to comply with current fire regulations and one elderly bed had to be broken up and taken to the tip.
(The wood will be recycled into a composting bin.)
My parents bought the house in 1965, when I was two and a half years old. I can remember the six months it was in their possession before we moved in quite clearly, as my sister and I were taken over there often while they worked in the garden.
There's very little of the house from that time that remains unchanged. Two or three original windows ...
... the tiles in the porch ...
... and the original bathroom tiles, here with later tiles below them and the early 60s lemon bathroom suite that was my mother's pride and joy.
I remember my father sticking up the two diamond-shaped plastic hooks. My mother, in her ceaseless quest for cleanliness, wanted my sister and I to have a flannel each, which we were to hang on our own hook after every ablution.
Needless to say, that never happened.
Also, sitting on the 'dirty clothes bin' in the corner with my legs stretched out and my feet up on the airing cupboard door, reciting my 3 times table while my mother pushed back my cuticles with the rounded end of a nail file. (Ouch.) We hadn't been taught our 4 times table yet but I got as far as 4 x 4 by myself and felt very proud.
Here's something I don't remember. Under a piece of carpet in the cupboard under the stairs a piece of lino that is completely unfamiliar, and presumably an always hidden remnant from the house's pre-Harvey life.
And something I'd completely forgotten ... through a gap in the late 60s, built-in Sindy furniture, the original wallpaper in my parents' bedroom, which provokes a jolt of memory.
My boys, going on a final prowl with me, are on the look-out for forgotten treasure. This is as close as they will get.
The hardest thing to say goodbye to, for me, are the trees. It doesn't help that the cooking apple tree, the survivor of two that flanked the middle section of the garden, is growing forget-me-nots at its roots.
Dear tree, who never provided the handholds and footholds necessary for me to climb it.
And the tree I grew from pips taken from my grandmother's garden in Bishopston after her death, the twin of which Dru transported from the garden of my previous house when we moved to our current home.
And the tree my eldest grew from seed to achieve some Brownie badge or other.
I will always see you
The fruit on the third tree is still far too small, but I take a couple of apples from each of the other two trees to see if I can get some seedlings growing.
My father's long neglected shed at the always neglected top of the garden provokes a smile.
Quick, Mum, quick, there's a weed on the lawn!
Back in the house the clank of the front door bolts and the rattle of the security chain, as the last piece of furniture leaves the house to be upcycled by a friend of a friend in Portishead and my dead father locks up for the night.
A funny thing happens as I walk through the empty house. I keep expecting to see brown hessian wallpaper on one wall of the front room, and the burnt orange carpet that was another source of great satisfaction for my mother, but they are long gone.
Or the small, dark kitchen with its dark blue wallpaper, before my Uncle Gilbert knocked through the larder, coal house and porch to make a single-skinned 'extension', but there's just a glimpse behind the late 70s pine panelling.
And after the 1930s lilac floral wallpaper and the 1960s horsey wallpaper and the early 70s pastel floral wallpaper, a glimpse of my bedroom in its true colours, before my parents covered it with blown wallpaper and painted it Bluebell White from the Dulux range, following my relocation to Lancaster in 1980.
Blue blue electric blue ...
I must have had a premonition they were going to do that because here's what must be one of the first ever, pre-digital selfies, of me the summer before I left, committing a glimpse of its glory to the historical record.
The last two things to leave are my father's razor blade that he always left on top of the electric shaving point he never used ...
... and one forlorn peg left on the washing line.
The names in concrete will stay until the new owners block pave the drive ...
... but it's all there in my head, from beginning to end.
I'm aware of the extra-repetitive nature of these blogs lately. I'm not a great traveller at the best of times, at least not in the sense of covering huge distances, but in a normal year I would have gone on a few new walks and visited some interesting landscapes and historical places by now. As it is, the pandemic and, more recently, domestic duties have kept me close to home.
I
did make a journey to Nottingham at the end of last month to see
family, and briefly looked into the possibility of popping into
Lichfield Cathedral on the way, but the visiting hours for tourists are
limited to the middle of the day, so that was a non-starter ...
... and all I came back with was a photo of my sons and my sister's dog.
There's still the meadow, though ...
... and if nothing else, these blogs will serve me as a reminder of its seasonal changes and what a fantastic find and comfort it's been during these challenging times.
Clear view at dusk to Avonmouth
Right now it's heading for autumn (though it was still July when these photos were taken).
Red hawthorn berries
Cuckoo pint
Blackberries and bittersweet nightshade
There's currently a whole cosmos of my favourites, daucus carota ...
... or, if you prefer, a madness of carrots ...
.. but suddenly hardly any red soldier beetles, shagging or otherwise.
Meanwhile, while not pretending to be an expert in poo, scat or spraint, I believe a fox is marking his territory every few yards right around the path around the meadow ...
... and the birds who are wont to flock are flocking at sundown.
They're also moulting. I found this feather at the edge of the path and was delighted when my friend, Chris Palmer, identified it as the primary wing feather of an adult female kestrel.
I'd like to think of it as a gift from the kestrel we often see hunting in the evenings. As if the wonder of watching her wasn't gift enough.
Then there's the companionship of partner and dog ...
... even if I get left behind taking photos ...
... and the sunsets ...
... and the skies ...
... and sometimes the sunsets and the skies at the same time ...
... with a few carrots thrown in for flavour.
And sometimes it feels too apocalyptic to think of anything beyond the predicament we're in. You don't have to understand the maths completely to follow what those who do are saying, and which, in the absence of trustworthy government, I've been following, and it seems entirely likely that we will still be feeling our way out of Covid-19 this time next year.
In which case thank goodness for our local places.
Climate catastrophe has sort of dropped off the radar, thanks to the pandemic, though the situation is as urgent as ever.
Earlier this year I was honoured to be involved, with a number of other local poets, in Response to 'Rise', a cultural and arts engagement with the disaster facing humankind. It was inspired by the film 'Rise: from one island to another', which features poets Kathy Jetñil-Kijner from the Marshall Islands and Aka Niviâna from Greenland, and was originally planned - in the Time Before Covid - as a live event, as part of Fringe Arts Bath.
Obviously that couldn't happen, so the poems have now been recorded and, having been curated by Peter Reason, the former Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice, can be viewed here.
Even more importantly, the original film is here.
So please, put the kettle on, make a cup of tea and take some time to watch.
Greta Thunberg in Bristol, 28th February 2020
The hardest thing to say goodbye to, for me, are the trees. It doesn't help that the cooking apple tree, the survivor of two that flanked the middle section of the garden, is growing forget-me-nots at its roots.
And the tree I grew from pips taken from my grandmother's garden in Bishopston after her death, the twin of which Dru transported from the garden of my previous house when we moved to our current home. 
I will always see you
