Whatever gets you through the lockdown, or A year up the meadow

It's been a year since I finally walked along the footpath over the top of the local golf course with Son the Elder - having been driven off at the age of ten by an angry but factually incorrect golfer - and discovered the meadow with its hollowing oak, sunsets and views to the Severn estuary, the little wood at the bottom, and Charlton Common beyond. This encounter was to transform my experience of lockdown, and possibly also the Northerner's (though he is less prone to magical thinking than I am) and also our dear Ted's, who missed going to new places and smelling new smells, but who nevertheless had somewhere beautiful and interesting to spend his final months. As for our new dog, Cwtch, she has little idea what constitutes jaunting, but she whimpers with excitement when I turn up the lane and loves running between us and keeping tabs on us as we irritatingly refuse to stay in a neat herd. 

First encounter, 5th April 2020

Apart from autumn when we didn't go up there that often, owing to having had our hearts broken by a certain dog, I have a huge collection of photos through the seasons. I'm going to post ones of the oak tree, which I think might be my most important tree apart from my grandmother's apple tree, especially since we also lost the ash tree from our bedroom window just before lockdown.

Moon rising, 6th April 2020

7th April 2020

Daybreak, 16th April 2020

Sunset, 2nd May 2020

To be frank, there are a lot of sunsets, this on 6th May 2020

12th May 2020

7th June 2020

12th June 2020

Summer solstice, with the sun is setting at its furthest point over the Welsh hills.

Ted wasn't that interested in sunsets himself, 11th July 2021

28th July 2020

30th July 2020

8th August 2020

11th August 2020

The empty meadow, 5th September 2020

Autumn equinox 2020

26th September 2020

4th October 2020

10th October 2020

3rd November 2020

22nd November 2020

A new puppy wants to GET DOWN, 22nd November 2020

Moon rising, 26th November 2020

Cwtch finding her feet, Winter solstice 2020

New Year's Eve, 2020

New Year's Eve, 2020

21st January 2021

6th February 2021

10th February 2021

26th February 2021

The sun is setting in the meadow again, 26th February 2021

3rd March 2021

7th March 2021

17th March 2021

Spring equinox 2021

24th March 2021

Forever Ted

19th July 2020

About Black Beauty and Boxer

I got my car twelve years ago, the week my then husband departed for pastures blonder. I'd passed my driving test 20-odd years earlier, just after we'd got married, but I hadn't driven since and in the intervening years, I lost all confidence that I was any good at anything. I couldn't even look at it parked outside my house for the first few weeks. 

Then I got my dog, Ted, and used him as an excuse to go out driving to new places for long walks. I learnt how to be single and a dog owner and a driver all at the same time. I soon realised I was quite a novelty in the poetry community ... a poet who doesn't need a lift. It meant I could make up for all the lifts I'd been given by kind-hearted drivers over the years, even if they weren't the same people. What goes round comes round. 

We all aged ... Ted, the car and me, but they did it at a faster rate than I did. Ted died last September, and now it's time for me to get a newer car.  

I was at work when they came to take my silver Astra away. I'm glad I wasn't there to see it loaded onto the tow truck. If anyone had told me twelve years ago that I'd grow to love driving, I'd have thought them mad, but as long as I don't have to reverse, I do enjoy it. And I loved my old car, one of the last links with my old dog (being full of his dog hair and sand from his paws), and would have kept it longer if I didn't have to make long journeys to see my mother and my daughter. 

It's with a guilty pang that I realise I didn't take many photos of it on my journeys. It wasn't picturesque, unlike Dru's Moggy which is often in the background or even a focal point of compositions. This photo was taken in Deerhurst on the banks of the River Severn solely because the Morris Traveller next to it wasn't Dru's. (And is even more not Dru's now she's driving a red Micra.)

I also feel guilty that when I was prompted to take a photo of it, it was usually because something ignominious was happening. This was at South Mimms services back in 2015. Son the Elder and I never did get to Suffolk for our long weekend. 

This is one of the last photos: in the background of a picture taken at Mud Dock car park when Cwtch took us for a walk down there a couple of weeks back. Easy to see because it was so empty. 

My new car was registered in Bangor and seems to have spent time in Wilmslow, Cheshire and Westbury, Wilts, until I spotted it for sale in a dealership in Newport. For some reason I have a habit of likening the life stories of inanimate objects to the plot of 'Black Beauty' and in the case of this car, Bangor was Farmer Grey's farm where Beauty was born,Wilmslow was probably Squire Gordon's Birtwick Park, where Black Beauty was so happy, and Westbury stands in for Earlshall Park, where Beauty is a carriage horse until a drunken Reuben Smith causes him to fall and scar his knees, whereupon he is sold on. Although my new car doesn't have scarred knees, I can't help feeling it's come down in the world a bit. I'm probably kindly Jerry Barker, the cab driver. 

As for my old car, I'm trying not to think of poor Boxer at the end of 'Animal Farm', but it's hard not to. A better way is to think of it being recycled, as we all are in the end, I suppose. 

The Moon and Larks Ascending

We needed a change of scene - in as much as that's allowed - so popped across town to Ashton Court this afternoon, and actually managed to get stuck in traffic for ten minutes on Redland Hill. Just like the good old days. 

It was so lovely to hear several larks - my first of 2021 - as soon as we exited the car in the top car park. They probably weren't quite as pleased to see Cwtch cavorting over their nesting site, but it can't be helped, dogs will be dogs. 

The light was stormy and sunny and spectacular, as has so often been the case this month, and it was lovely to encounter William Blake in one of the copses.

The moon was rising with the larks, the sun was just starting to sink ... 

... and I loved revisiting some of the old oaks and ash trees, which are just beginning to show signs of leafing ...

... apart from this one. Though there was the faintest of rainbows on the horizon. 

Cwtch was so pleased to be there she danced a gavotte, and soon we can take her a little further afield. Can't wait.