Category: writing

Autumn Act One: How Pleasant the Pheasant

The fields are back to brown.

They’ve been churned and turned and set to sleep

Their crops are all cut down

And there is a frost upon the hardening ground.

Around the pitted edges there lie

The scattered leaves of autumn

And above my head in impossibly blue skies

Birds circle and fall

Chase and call

Fill the air with their croaking cries.

These patchwork pieces that form the quilted land of my home

Are not lost to life these dying days

But are filled with nature’s bright displays

They are the grand ring

And I watch upon the centre stage as the actors all march in.

Here he comes

The most colourful one.

A rusted coat of feathers shimmers from puffed out pompous chest to the mottle on his back

As he flaunts his flamboyant robes of gold and black.

Stretching from his still and starched white collar, his neck of purple and deepest green

Clashes with his red and ruddy cheek

And adding to this eccentric pallet; the yellow of his beak.

He struts

A gilded walk of pomp and poise.

He barks

A grating and ungainly noise.

But it is all bravado and pretence for at the slightest sound

He stops wide-eyed and statue still then huddles to the ground.

Then spooked by nothing more than wind through trees or falling leaves

He bursts forth with a flapping flush

A flap and flurry, a feathered hurry

A chaotic panic and fuss.

But when no threat or danger seems to come

Cautious and embarrassed now he decides the show is done

And so calls forth his court of harem hens dressed in brown

Demure and meek these ladies bob and peck the ground.

They follow in a line behind as he leads them from the floor.

Act one of autumn’s play is done; I applaud but want for more.

 

 

The Burial Plot

The poem I am posting here is one I wrote inspired by the debate around pylons.

I live in the county of Suffolk, a place I think has beautiful landscapes in part because they are so open you can often see for quite some distance across fields, nature reserves and coastlines.

It was as I was travelling from my old house on the coast to the one which we were renovating in a small village in the heart of Suffolk, that I would pass many ‘Bury not Blight’ signs stuck in fields, front gardens and along rural routes and would also see the pylons to which they were referring.

I find myself very torn on this subject. I worry deeply about what we are doing to this planet; the amount we take out of it and just as much the non-natural things we bury back into the ground and sea. It concerns me that, things we do in the name of progress and for the future, could relatively quickly become obsolete and another move that we may regret in years to come.

But I have wondered on occasion what the views around the county would be like unbroken by the giant metal structures that are everywhere now.

I am very lucky to have a wonderful view from my home over fields. Until recently they have been slightly obscured by electricity cables that run through the back of all the gardens on the road in which we live. These wires did not bother me; but a couple of weeks ago they were taken down and it was as they were being lowered to the ground and the view opened up fully to me that it brought to mind again the ‘Bury not Blight’ debate.

This poem is not a comment in either direction on what we should or shouldn’t do. It was merely inspired by the signs and the structures I saw on my daily commute. I remain ambivalent on the issue.

At the time of writing this poem, the pylons I passed daily were set amongst rape fields – hence the reference to feet in yellow and green. I was going to take a picture this year to accompany the poem only to find the crops had been rotated and they stood amongst other produce. Luckily a good friend of mine had a picture that fits ideally and she has been kind enough to let me use it here.

So here it is.

The Burial Plot

The iron men stand.

With feet dipped in yellow and green

Into the brown earth below, their toes they bury deep.

Regimental lines span across the land.

Hard to attention, as giants they stand.

Their job; to hold in outstretched limbs the lines of power

And over our heads a whisper passes every second, every minute, every hour.

They did not march onto our fields

An invading force to make us yield.

We must accept and think again

And know that we invited them.

We hate those ugly grotesque statues.

We detest their bodies that spoil our views.

We scorn, deplore, we curse and scour

Anything but admit that they are ours.

Could we go back to before they were here?

Would we go back to more simple years?

Knowing inside that we would not

We scheme and make our burial plot.

Bury them.

Bury the metal men.

Where once their limbs pierced through the ground

We will tear up the earth and lay them down.

Bury them.

Our aged ideals will lie with them.

Once they were progress, proud acclaim

Now we long to hide them as if in shame.

It is time, we say, to reclaim our land.

To pull them down, every last metal man.

And in deep trenches we will cover their heads.

And there they’ll lie, beneath our tread.

Bury them.

 

Pylons by Lo IMG_0758

Many thanks to Ilona who has lent me her picture for this blog. You can find her on instagram under loney_j and you can find me there too under missjennymaywrites

Fantasy cast list for The Unusual Disappearance of Mr Spavin

If my first novel, The Unusual Disappearance of Mr Spavin, were ever made into a film – here is my fantasy cast list for the main characters we meet in the book.

Mr Spavin – Peter Sellers

Mrs Spavin – Steve Pemberton

Jalo Strorn – Steven Mangan

Norbert Melvin – Julian Rhind-Tutt

Mickey – Aiden Turner

Roz – Glenn Close

Ms Sweeny – Amanda Redman

Kit and Kat – The Olsen Twins

Mr Pharcy – Reece Sheersmith

Margaret – Dawn French

Flo – Jennifer Saunders

Danny – Christian Slater (in his ‘Heathers’ era)

Eve – Devon Aoki

Sparks – Anthony Michael Hall (in his ‘The Breakfast Club’ era)

Dave – Dwayne Johnson

Geoff – Mark Gatiss

Mickey’s Dad – Ian McShane

Mrs Scratum – Celia Imrie

Whitney – Sheridan Smith

Ted – Tony Gardner

Fierce Pierce – Jean Claude Van Dam

Star – Sally Phillips

 

Bunting, Beer and Bales

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It’s odd, isn’t it, how full technicolour memories can be evoked all of a sudden often from a small and unintended catalyst. I was making a skirt recently and as I was cutting out the pieces it crossed my mind that the left-over bits of material would make rather nice bunting – and bam! There I was immediately transported back to summer fetes and folk festivals.

Yes, it’s true – I am a folkie – and not your modern nu-folk type either but the proper old crusty version. I’m talking tankards on belt, socks and sandals and finger-in-the ear singing to classic folk tunes that invariably will have a ‘fol-iddle-i-ay’ in there somewhere; and of course, real ale.

Growing up I did not see my childhood as unusual in any way but looking back now I realise perhaps it was – and I wouldn’t have it another way. We generally spent our summers in a field somewhere in the UK and it was camping at its most unglamorous. For any festival goers you may think that porta-loos are not much fun but at these folk camps, things could be a lot worse. For you see, every person attending would be allotted a team for the week or two there and each team would take on different duties. If you were lucky you would be in the kitchen (a kitchen in a marquee I must add) and although it might mean peeling potatoes for 200 people at least it didn’t mean you had drawn the shortest straw of all – which was to dig the campsite ‘toilet’ and when the events were over – fill it in again.

These folk camps and festivals though were part of a huge and colourful tapestry of people, skills, events, music and so much more that filled my formative years. Where else other than folk events would you get to meet Clarence, a friendly dragon, who collected donations by having pennies dropped into his mouth and who fought off the mean and nasty horses that would chase (in good spirits) young children. They were places you could learn a new skill or share yours with others. For instance, I remember making simple versions of jig-dolls (jig dolls were made with loose limbs and stuck on a horizontal stick to be bounced upon a flat board in time to music) out of wooden clothes pins – simple things perhaps but maybe they were simpler times; certainly this kind of activity provided a lot of fun for us as children. Even washing clothes at folk camp had an up-side. Once you had washed your items in a plastic bowl (probably the same one you used to wash your camping plates and cups in too) on the wooden trestle tables, then you could have a go at using the mangle. No, I am not ancient, nor were we transported back in time, but at folk-camps in the 80’s you would often find a mangle.

Music and singing are a huge part of this world too. We may all roll our eyes and laugh at some of the really traditional ‘folorum, folay, fiddle, dee,’ etcetera songs, and rightly so in some cases, but there is a lot of beauty too from the words, to the harmonies and the music accompaniment. At one of the folk festivals we went to every year down on the Kent coast, in amongst the grockle shops in the small seaside town, there was a pub where there would be singing sessions and they were magical. The place would be packed and the swell of sound made from a mass of people singing and harmonising together was really special. My favourites were often the sea shanties (a type of work song that accompanied the men working on sailing vessels helping them to keep time together hauling on the ropes and such). I don’t know why I love them so much but always did and to this day they can often bring a tear to my eye. There is one in particular which my granddad used to sing that I cannot even get through a line of; both because it is a beautiful song but also because the memory of him singing it is so strong and I miss him very much. It is called ‘The Farewell Shanty.’

Both sets of parents and my grandparents on one side are, or were, in folk bands and so from an early age my siblings and I learned the fun of stripping the willow, casting out and ranting our way through barn dances. On the subject of ranting (a highly energetic dance step widely used in clogging) I confess that I do in fact know how to clog dance, although whether my brain and feet would keep up now I am not completely convinced. I have done my fair share of clogging through streets accompanied by the much maligned sounds of the accordion and melodeon taking it in turns with the local morris teams with their sticks, hankies and bells all watched by either amused, bemused or frankly uninterested crowds. Rather quaint and embarrassing for some people perhaps but I only need to hear a jingle of bell, clomp of a clog and the wheeze of melodic bellows and I am instantly transported back to fun days out as a child.

Street fayres and summer fetes were key in this celebration of English eccentricity and I loved them. They meant summer, sunshine, bunting, crisps, music, dancing, table top sales, straw bales to sit on that made your legs red and itchy but smelt so wonderful. They meant sweating in raincoats (for this was England and it is always a decision between getting wet from the rain or getting wet from the sweaty mugginess of wearing a water-proof coat), hog roasts and ridiculous games such as wellie wanging, crockery smashing and of course – splat the rat. For those of you who have never had the delight of this last game it was simply a toy rat (often made from a sock with buttons for eyes and a shoelace for a tail) dropped into a piece of upended pipe and you paid your pennies to be given a stick to try and whack the rat as it appeared out of the other end of the tube. I’d take that over any pixelated phone game any day!

I suppose I may be looking back through rose-tinted glasses. As I became a teenager I became less enamoured with it all, not through embarrassment as some may think but more because it was such a present and normal part of my life it was almost boring – there is nothing more tedious for teenagers than what is just normal at home. But I am finding that as I get older I am falling back in love with it all again. I suppose you can take the girl out of folk but you can’t take folk out of the girl.

 

In light of this blog I have made a mini row of bunting available to purchase here tinyurl.com/zemn53e – and there will be more to come.

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Plant, Wait and Hope

Today I have been throwing CDs in a tree and cutting up an old ballet skirt and attaching it to sticks. No, I have not gone mad, although you may be forgiven for thinking that may be the case. But rather, am currently desperately trying to save the food we are growing from the various birds, bugs and beasties that are perusing our garden menu.

My husband and I are having our first proper foray into growing our own fruit and veg; other than some tomatoes in pots and a few French beans in a trug (for which I will never be allowed to forget that I broke a sweetcorn fork when making holes in the bottom of said plastic container).

One of the reasons we bought our new house was because of the size of the garden and the potential it offered. Due to extensive renovation needed inside, we didn’t get a chance to pay the garden much attention until this year and so now we are at the beginning of what we hope will be a long and fruitful (pun absolutely intended) journey.

But my word – there’s a lot to learn.

We were lucky in that there were already a few fruit trees at the bottom of the garden: a cherry, a very young pear, an apple and two plum trees and even some greengages which I did not identify until they bore fruit. Whilst cutting down a hawthorn and an elder tree I also uncovered what is looking likely to be a red or black current.

But, unfortunately the state of all of these was not so great and the produce very little. The one success was a Victoria plum tree, from which I made several jars of jam but that, sadly, was the only crop we were able to make use of. The wasps got the greengages – the very few there were of them, the starlings mine-swept every last cherry –just before they were ripe, the other plum did nothing and is showing signs of severe aphid damage, the apples grew to small hard lumps before turning brown on the branches and the pears much the same. (Poor old pear took an extra beating early this year when storm Katie brought next door’s fifteen-foot trampoline over the fence and on top of it.)

The only thing that seems impervious to bugs, beasties and weather is the rhubarb – which is unfortunate seeing as neither of us like it. We managed to pawn huge bag loads of the pink stuff onto friends last year, so much so that it is rather less wanted this time round what with several freezers still holding the end of last year’s offerings. I have already had to cut a large amount a couple of months ago and not being able to offload it, turned it into rhubarb and ginger syrup – which I did manage to pass on – thank goodness.

By dint of books, the internet and questioning my more experienced gardener friends, I am learning how to give these trees and bushes the TLC they need and as such have pruned, thinned, cleared around trunks, cut off ill looking leaves and given them encouraging pep talks whenever am doing so – goodness knows whether I’m speaking the correct lingo – I never even got the hang of French!

It is a rather counter-intuitive feeling seeing a branch laden with fruit and purposely picking some of it off, but as I am doing so I remind myself that it is for the greater good. All the same, I can’t help feeling a little anthropomorphically mean about picking off the smallest and weakest fruits so the tree doesn’t waste its energy on them.

We have rather wonderfully been given a present of a new greengage tree which has been planted in much hope and with promises to it that it will be very well looked after.

But what is completely new to us and therefore seeming more exciting, are all of the vegetables we have planted ourselves and brought on from seeds to what are now identifiable foodstuffs. Although too early for most to yet be eaten, we have been (possibly overly) enjoying being able to pick our own lettuce for salads and sandwiches – never has lettuce been so revered as ours!

But the excitement and pride is having to share space now with worry and frustration as we are beginning to see some of our vegetables being nibbled. Beans have been disappearing overnight and carrot tops have vanished without a trace.

And so this is why my previously stated behaviour has begun. The cherry is now, rather prettily in the sunlight, adorned with old CD’s glinting in the sun’s rays in an attempt to ward away the birds. I have used the netting from under an old ballet skirt to make panels of easily movable fencing and old net curtains to make individual wigwams for the next trial of beans in a desperate bid to not lose the whole lot again. The carrots are now glamping with their own individual plastic bottle cloches, bug catchers are on standby and our fingers are tightly crossed.

If you have any top tips for bug and pest control do let me know, preferably without resorting to chemicals, although if the next lot of beans get completely munched I may be in mind to change tack. If I’m feeling generous I may give up some beer to slug traps and will then keep an eye out for any drunkenly bawdy singing birds who may have snaffled some booze-soaked gastropods.

It being our first year of growing I am sure we will make many mistakes along the way. I have learned an incredible amount already but the more I know, the more I look around and see what needs to be done. But we shall persevere, after all, if you can get such a good feeling over lettuce – imagine what a butternut squash could do!

The Novice Gardener

 

Unfinished jobs and a missing tea cosy

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Why is it so much more appealing sometimes to start a new project than finish off all those little ones that can lie, incomplete for days, weeks – years even?

I have a pair of trousers that have been giving me an increasingly irritated polite cough to catch my attention for a few weeks now. They need a hole mended – it is an easy job and yet, despite having had my sewing things out several times since knowing they needed repair, they have remained untouched.

It would only take me five minutes so why I haven’t just cracked on with them I can’t quite fathom, but I am sure I can’t be alone in this type of behaviour. I know someone who has been waiting for their window sill to be tiled for so long now the whole room is under consideration for a revamp. The more people I speak to the more it seems that for some reason, a lot of us do the same.

I know I am a terrible one for not being able to concentrate if I have a new idea I want to try out. It’s as if I need to exorcise the thought before I can carry on with anything else. I have tried ignoring ideas when they crop up and carry on with the more mundane need-to-be-done things, but it’s like they sit at the back of my head poking me over and over gently but insistently until I give in and pay them attention.

I have been a bit sofa-bound lately due to some medication making me rather useless and so this was the perfect time to do some of the gentle jobs – like hand sewing a hole in trousers. I set myself up on the sofa with my sewing kit (in a lovely old leather suitcase I bought at a car-boot sale) and a few small things to do.

I made myself a pot of lemon and orange tea but – where was the tea cosy? I could not find it anywhere. I have a feeling it has fallen behind something in the cupboard of doom (our name for the kitchen cupboard bursting with all those useful things that you accumulate but have no easy way to store) and for the life of me I didn’t have the energy to have a go at sorting that out.

Well, there was only one thing to be done then, wasn’t there? I needed to make a new tea cosy before I could get on with anything else. And so I did – the trousers huffing at having to wait a little longer.

On the subject of knitting and unfinished work, my mum and I, both have-a-go knitters over the years, decided a while back to try and make the same cardigan. We had a lovely time picking out the pattern and choosing the wool and set about the project happily together. Then, as it does, time and life got in the way and the knitting was put aside and spoken of regularly but never brought out into daylight; that is, until a week ago when I thought now would be the time to resurrect it. 

Finding it stashed at the back of my fabric cupboard I decided that, seeing as I hadn’t got far at all and also not feeling entirely confident I knew exactly where I had got to in the pattern, I would undo it and start again. It went well, I was forging ahead and then I came to a point I felt mildly intimidated by. I announced to my mother that the project was back in hand but that I had come to a sticking point. A couple of days later, after digging hers out from a forgotten corner she came round for us to tackle it together. 

“Why did we choose this pattern?” She asked. “Because we thought it would be quick and easy,” I responded which, considering it had been over a year since we bought it all was rather ridiculous. It turned out that she had last downed tools on hers at the same point I was now stuck on and I’m proud to say we figured out the next step together. We must make sure we crack on this time – otherwise, at this rate, it will be a few years before a finished product is actually produced.

And so, I suppose, I should now really just get on with those trousers – but I might first nip into the garden to pick the rhubarb before it takes over and then, of course, I will need to do something with it and, with all the time I’ve had to sit and think lately, there are a few new ideas I would just like to try first…

I’m hoping there are others like me, I’m sure you are out there. Do let me know if you have an unfinished project too – it may take my mind off those trousers which glare at me every time I walk past them.

 

Garden Nemeses Top Trumps

Whilst up to my elbows in nettles, and not for the first time, I found myself playing a sort of Top Trumps in my head. The game being between the plants in the garden that had rapidly become my least favourite.

Having moved into our new house last year, it is only recently that I have been trying to gain some control over the large garden that I feel had been left by the previous owner to run riot for quite some time.

There are areas that have been relatively easy to salvage but equally there are parts that have become so overrun that that they are proving quite the battle. I comfort myself with the thought that while they are wild and not the most attractive to us humans, at least they will be a good home for all sorts of bugs and beasties.

It quickly became apparent who were my arch nemeses and in no particular order they are: brambles, ivy, nettles, hawthorn, berberis and holly.

Now, of course, I don’t actually believe that any plant is inherently evil but there have been times when, prickled, scratched and stung once too often, I could almost believe that there was some kind of insidious attack plan against my person held by these species. Which is my least favourite seems to entirely depend on which one has made me swear the most that day.

Brambles, hawthorn, berberis and holly are notable for their skin piercing qualities and I think from my close encounters I find the Berberis the most painful. (I was shocked to find, when perusing the aisles of a garden department, small berberis plants sitting innocently for sale without so much as a mention of their spiky danger. I can’t help feeling these plants should come with a warning and perhaps a stipulation to only be planted where no human will ever want to go.) I have to confess, pretty flowers and leaves aside, these were earmarked as ‘to go’ before we had even moved in. Currently the stump of one (after very careful and yet sweary and painful removal) has been covered by carpet and rocks – which small cat has rather taken to as his outdoor comfy spot.

For sheer garden domination it comes down to the ivy and brambles (although there are places the nettles are having a good go at spreading themselves). I have come across some of the biggest legs of bramble I have ever seen – many metres in length. Not only do they send their limbs way up to tangle in trees but where they set down again they re-root themselves before heading off once more underground and back up.

The ivy, although possibly covering larger areas with its myriad shoots tangling above and below the earth and entwining up and into everything it encounters – at least does not hurt. So despite pulling out armful after armful of ivy, I think the brambles win this category.

The hawthorn I don’t actually mind – as hedging. It is the unexpected and frequent appearances that pop up here and there that can give quite a stab. The holly is easily workable where you can see it, but again it is the unseen surprise that gets you; old, discarded leaves hidden amongst the undergrowth and leaf litter.

The nettles are mostly a pain just for how quickly they grow – and how tall! They are actually quite easy to dig up by the roots and I have discovered there are more types of nettle than I previously knew of. We have the standard green which gives an almighty sting from fresh new leaves, and yet others that must be more docile as they don’t appear to sting at all (either that or I have become so used to the stab from everything else I just don’t feel them). We have the good old purple dead nettles that I leave for the bees and after a quick look on the internet I realise we have yellow dead nettles too – rather wonderfully also known as Archangels in the herbalist world.

But I feel I should acknowledge the upsides of some of these too. Having far too much to do last year when first moved in, we let the brambles be as they were at least yielding the opportunity to go brambling* in our own back garden – indeed we are currently eating jam made from some of the blackberries that I picked last year.

*Brambling, a term my fiancé uses to refer to ramblers picking blackberries.

The nettles I am planning to have a go at drying and making into tea. The holly will make a nice decoration at Christmas and despite believing that they ought to be cordoned off with multiple warning signs and perhaps a klaxon when getting too close, the Berberis was at least pretty.

Nothing in nature is inherently bad – I just don’t want everything that’s there in such abundance and so I shall continue to don at least one pair of thorn proof gloves (although I have not yet found a pair that actually are – insert Berberis swear and rant here) and continue to rein some of it in a little.

And my post gardening ritual shall continue: a cup of tea accompanied by plaster tape, a needle, antiseptic cream and tweezers for quiet contemplation and the de-thorning of hands. And arms. And legs.

Top trumps pics and stats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bread, High-heels and the Inheritance of Hands

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A couple of years ago I began making my own bread by hand and it has now become an at least twice-weekly event. People often ask, “Isn’t it really hard to do?” and the answer is no.

However, I have recently made an addition to my bread making routine which I haven’t yet come across in any books; high-heels.

At 5’3” I know I am not actually that short but it is just short enough to find standard kitchen worktops just a couple of inches too high.

To give bread a good knead it is better to be able to exert some downward force and I found that I was always standing on tip toe whilst doing so. Making bread can be a bit of a work-out in itself but doing so at the same time as standing on your toes makes the experience rather more wobbly.

After joking many times that I should keep a pair of heels in the kitchen – not only for bread making but also to access the shelves in the cupboards (sadly just the lower shelves, the top ones are still out of bounds, heeled shoes not withstanding) – I eventually did it one day.

Now I can be found wearing my wedges whenever making bread – regardless of what else I may be dressed in. That’s right, I may be in my pyjamas getting an early loaf started, or in my comfies, having a relaxed day, but whenever there is the making of bread – there will also be my heels.

Making bread at home is something my mum always did. There is a running joke in our family that you could build houses with mum’s bread as it is dense and solid in the way that only true wholemeal bread can be. But, we loved it as children and we love it now.

It is the thing that will always be comfort to us: mummy’s bread – preferably with marmite.

It was the go-to food when we were ill, when we were running in from an after-school sports session and needed something to fill the gap before tea – and as we got older, it was the thing consumed late at night, giggling and in overtly hushed tones when we had staggered in from the pub.

I was terribly bullied at school and I remember on occasions when I came home in a not so good state, mum would either have or get some bread on the go and would encourage me to take out some anger and frustration by pummelling the dough. This was a great distraction for me at the time, if only for a short while, but now I believe that bread making, along with all cooking and baking, is best done not with anger but in a happy state of mind.

Many times, food made when ill, tired or angry has just not turned out well at all and I do believe the mood in which you make something can have an impact on how it ends up.

I am very lucky now to be able to make my bread overlooking our garden and often get treated to a good deal of bird watching – my current favourite visitors being the pair of wrens that I have seen many times hopping about the pots on our patio.

As I am kneading the dough I often reflect on how I have my mother’s hands and how she in turn had her mother’s. They are not pretty hands, they are not slender or delicate and never have prettily painted nails. (I try sometimes but invariably I have chipped, imprinted or got something stuck in the varnish within minutes of it going on.) But, they are working hands. Caring hands.

For my three sisters and I, our mum and our grandma; hands are for doing and creating, they are for caring for people, digging the garden, creating fun with paint, glue, needle and thread, they are for living. And I love them.

I haven’t always loved them, as a teenager I used to look in a kind of intrigued envy at the delicate gesticulations of people with slender fingers, small wrists and the tiniest of rings that could slip easily onto any finger. They were fascinating to me and I used to long for the same – usually when desperately trying to get a ring off a reddening giant knuckle that I had dared hope would fit.

But as happens so often, as you get older you begin to appreciate things in a different way. I can still feel the touch of my mum’s hand on my forehead when she comforted me as a child when ill in bed. The skin may have been rough, but the love conveyed could not have been more gentle. And I hope that my hands give as much care and love as they did.

When I come in from the garden with my fingernails full of mud and my skin prickled and scraped, I know that they have done a job and one that will either result in something yummy to eat or be a beautiful thing to look at.

And when I cook and bake I will always be reminded of my grand-ma and cooking with her in her kitchen with the old Formica table and how there was always porridge cake (my family’s name for flapjack) to be eaten and copious jars of fruit bottled in the pantry having been picked from the garden.

Hands and bread making – just two things that have been passed on along the female generations of my family – but, I think I am the first to introduce kitchen heels into baking. I wonder if it will catch on.

 

 

 

 

A Poem for Gardeners in Spring

This is a poem I have written for anyone who feels that urge at this time of year to be getting out and about in the garden and start to clear things away after winter and get ready for the coming year. It is for the hard battles ahead; the fight against weeds and the ever increasing number of jobs to be done. But it is just as much for the exciting times when new life begins to rise up.

 

Defending the borders – Jenny May

 

In the cool air of early morning

I stand.

Stretch my eyes towards the horizon

And I survey the land.

The battleground lies bathed in approaching sun

I shield my eyes to what’s begun

The drone and hum

Summer comes

The ritual continues as it has always done.

Just as we slow and sleep through winter months that make us lazy and hide inside,

So too does life beyond our walls, wait and bide its time.

Then spring arrives

And we come alive

And raise up our battle cries.

Over are the wary glances

Eyeing up who will take their chances

Who will be the first to show their hand?

Will I crack or will the land?

I have scoured the earth over past spring days

To see green darts of life give way

They crumble soil aside as they rise

They breathe new life and stretch to the skies

But these are not the enemy

Nor the bursting buds upon the trees

It is those that lurk below

And veil their moves by starting slow.

They creep, they crawl, they spread fingers wide.

They linger and loiter and know to hide

To wait until I turn my back

Then they shoot forth with their attack.

I gather my weapons to me:

My spade, my fork; my armoury.

I have dressed in muddied clothes of battles past.

My boots are strong to protect and last.

I step out and my patrol has begun

And so it starts under strengthening sun.

Summer comes.

The ritual continues as it has always done.

Nature conflicts with men.

These are my borders

And I will protect them.

 

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Hello

Hello and welcome to my blog – a place where I will share with you my writing, poetry, thoughts, musings and creations from my desk overlooking the garden – with possibly one or two keyboard additions by the cats.

Just over a year ago I happily began a new life by leaving the desk job I had been in for ten years and moving, with my fiancé and our two cats, to a house in the Suffolk countryside, well, we moved in six months ago after nearly half a year of renovating – in which I learned many new skills, developed good arm muscles (subsequently lost again) – and acquired far too much knowledge about all the different types of damp you can get in older houses.

After spending my whole life answering the question ‘what do you want to do/be?’ with, ‘I don’t know,’ I realised that actually I did know but had never dared voice it in seriousness: I am a writer – always have been, always will be but I think I never felt that saying so would be taken as anything but fanciful and so, like many of us, I just got a job, because that’s what you do, and fourteen years later could stand it no longer.

So here I am.

As well as being a writer I also enjoy creating things with fabric and wool and will share with you projects I am undertaking – my aim this year is to conquer crochet – which has so far left me infuriatingly baffled.

I am a founding member of a local book club, YeahBooks! And will let you know what we’ve been reading – perhaps you would like to share your thoughts on the books we have read…?

And as if that wasn’t enough to talk to you about, I am in a three-part close harmony a cappella group called The Kettle Girls, about which you may get the occasional paragraph or two, particularly about the songs I have written for us to perform.

So that is me and what is to come: words in songs, stories, poems, spoken word, short fiction and, of course, this blog. And cats. I’m sure there will be cats.