holy grail… blackberries, strawb and chilli plant such a weird soggy british summer, damp squib, with wondrous bits!… everything a few weeks late… impossible to know whether it’s too early for blackberries or too late? schrodinger blackberries! huge swathes of Red ‘uns, mingled in with others coated in the grey, Rabbit fur fungus of disappointment enough for crumble… and a few for freezing for smoothies into the autumn… lovely …. but a brief update from yesterdays evening word burble, the actual harvest
oh! and early 90’s yha card… complete with passport snaps, havel on the back of a matchbox and a clutch of Paris metro tickets
lambent evening light… seaford head, the distant cliff, but a lazy peach smudge, daub thumbed across the horizon the sea, a softness, ease in and out of being through the stillness, from the dizzy far below, sound rises like wood smoke trudge crunch as a man makes his way home across the pebble shingle splatter scamper of the mackerel, tails fork tongue flicker across the water…. these sea speakings Blackberries and Hawthorn Hips, knotted Red and Black… fluffed, the firework fiesta of Old Mans beard hollow sonorous knell of a wood pigeon look! my head! lumpen huge as some easter island moai Hoa Hakananai’a… stolen away to languish, across the sea, snug smuggled within the British Museum home now… lacking much (anything!) to say… greatly liking words, enjoying the fruitful unimportance of it all…i consult the motto on my Rose Geranium Yogi tea bag: ‘let us be kind and compassionate to remove the sadness of the world’
i miss my purple wizards robe with the sumptuous carpet lapels
RP: Ha! Had forgotten about this one. I must have been struggling to draw your eyes x
indeed, nowadays you’d be struggling to even see my eyes, let alone draw them! you wuz alright at that art nonsense… free careers advice… mbe open a gallery or something? xx
Wolf Spider with Rose Bay Willow Herb, Thistledown and ermm i want to say Tansy, but its probably just some type of cheerfully deluded Ragwort bleaggh i mean Wasp Spider… have Wolves on the brain at the mo! i thought wow, that must be a wasp spider, without even knowing such a thing existed, google agrees… such marvelous gold hoops, even along its legs beautiful the subtle interactions of nature… the web all soft eiderdown with the wind blown thistle fluff… lost its sticky!… no self respecting fly is going to fall for that!… they’ve got myriad amazement fractal eyes… tho possibly a slightly squiffy one might think of it as a suitable place for a lie down? kind of feel for the spider, all that miraculous effort, ruined! it’s a bit like when you hang the washing out… and immediately boot a muddy football splodge against it… futile fussball chore! beautiful this morning up Castle Hill… i managed to cycle and then hop up the last bit, foot on the mend, but not not skippable about on yet x
Al: I thought at first this was a poem by you.. Great pictures
ha, sorry to disappoint!tho all words yearn to poetry, just a matter of jumbling them up in a beautiful ordersomething like ‘myriad amazement fractal eyes’ is clearly a thespian type, fallen on hard times, embarrassed to voice over a dog food commercial purely for the dosh x
tootsies… i’ve hurt my foot… nowt serious, i hope! just some niggardly bruising, probably won’t be skipping the light fandango for a couple of days was out jogging up the cliffs yesterday morning, you know how it is, plod pant, grumble and wheeze up the steepest section then, when a-top, time to exult in the view, out and away across the majestic ocean… except don’t… best to keep staring at the lumpen earth … clodhopper down a rabbit hole … presumably the one folk keep talking about nowadays? was pretty much as far away as you can get, so had to hobble, painful quick step home in time for work odd how i can spend 4 days at a festie leaping about like a loon with an absence of mishap… but 5 minutes from front door, caramba! reflect on what a spectacular joyous miracle our bodies are! only really acknowledged when they sporadically malfunction you may well perceive me as a slightly balding, impressively wrinkled fellow, marooned somewhere in middle age? yet actually a teeming throng of cells, bacteria and fungii, a harmony of the highest kit kaboodle! honed by several billenia of evolution we are amazement in motion. tis awesome brilliant to be alive! …. anyway watched princess mononoke (writing it is easier than pronouncing), what a fabulous film! suspect rest, telly and biscuits is wisest
annual august tomato snap ‘blessings on this harvest, this food… thanks to the earth goddess, Rose Gold which wells up from below… the sky god, White Gold which surges down from above… to the cooling Wind, the sweet sorrow of Rain’ these fruits are corporate saba* branded! thats possibly the oddest thing about this photo, not that i have a gorgeous magenta burgundy daisy tucked behind my ear, de rigeur, but that i’ve taken to parading around in this swish, fashionable grey trackie… well fashionable in 1976 anyway its lingered in the warddrobe for a few years, but now seems to be its season?!… *saba a company i sporadically work for, except they’ve changed their name at least twice, possibly three times since then …………… Tomato blight… bleagghh… one theme of the summer, some of my plants are infected… but most look like they might just creep over the finishing line into full fruit… probably half a crop? a preposterously soggy summer… everything else…. courgettes, beans are but fodder for the army of slugs, the nation of snails… oh tho the lettuces in the loft have done well …………… it’s been a fun, fascinating summer! lots of dashing about, enjoying things! like most folk, just haven’t felt to share anything much of it on here hope yours has been equally brilliant! just been down to sniff the sea, high tide, in the rain… it smells of ooh plumpness, sunday afternoons… and not suprisingly damp bedraggled dawg… rather beautiful really
‘Crash Bang Baswallop’… Berlin 1990 graffitiing, juggling on … and helping to demolish Die Mauer Tim, one of my best mates from uni, sent these photos of photos over the other week, I haven’t seen them since ooh 1990 the wall, obvs a dark, difficult scar in europes recent past… yet much in the turbulent, often joyful, spirit of those days, youthful hippies were allowed, nay encouraged, to clamber all over history… with hammers… astonishing changed the direction of my life too… within a week i’d hitched down to prague for the first time… and was living and squatting there for much of the next 3 years… hectic but beautiful times! x
fellow in a lurid tabard, frog shower cap (again)… and a tree …………………………… stewarding, sunday, buddhafield weekender…. a day of near perpetual rain, the whole smorgasboard gamut, full pelt raindrops through to the softest faze of drizzle peaceful on shift, sheltering beneath this majestic beech… a fallen down standing up tree!… once so tall, now so long! a world wind upended, 90 degrees, exposed roots, yet some still manage to wriggle down to push up branches… earth, loam juice to plump out leaves a peaceful place somewhere on the edge… ‘gate at the far end of live-ins, just above slope’, my snappy walkie talkie identifier i am an admirer of margins, sublime of the liminal… forgotten land, often the most fertile hogweed, on steroids, this vast british bamboo… coils of brambles, thick as my arm, spikes that gouge a liliputian within this world, overgrown, a writhe and tussle of senses, smells, colours, an orchestra… bindweed flower, a bright, white trumpet.. sweet woodbine, pong of honeysuckle ukelele? fennel as dendrite fractal… hairy moss like dirty bathwater stains the trunk of a tree… splurge of lichen mandala bend down, to see the lopped beech branches fashioned into the shape of an opening portal to another land, guarded by a single proud, vigilant nettle… gatekeeper realm of enchantment… this after, whilst on shift, long ambient chats with chantal… lucidity.. land of the fae, where colours are brighter, songs both more mournful, yet stirring this realm is always here, hugging us like a shadow… sometimes, at the midday of rational thought, clenched tight and close, almost invisible yet, in a wester-ing sunset light, it flickers, seems to stretch out far across valley, immense in landscape except, flip side, a world wind upended, here is but the shadow of there… yearn surrender, relax, lapse, fall back into the honeyed realm
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articulate beauty, the word, but a cardinal direction always with a playful warmth… teeter edge of pomposity, po faced, a man with both a moustache and a manifesto! ooops… woken up, head full of the jumble of word drool, just a brief jotting down, ha at my sisters, for some very pleasant rest, headed back to festie later this morning despite the gloop of mud, its been a laugh so far… many fabulous people… a chance to dance!… guess you gotta kiss a lot of frogs anyway… hurrah for festies, land, connection!
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reply to Al: totes! be brill to see you guys… ha, one year amma in kerala, the next a field of buddhas xx
bring wellies, obvs, forecast is good, but a quagmire of mud will take a while to dry out!
it’ll dry out… plus only half the number of folks, so won’t be too bad… tho always best to bring sturdy clobber as well as your sunshine frocks! x
Buttercup and Custard Sunshine.. out for a pedal… Currently the flatlands near pevensey… Or ‘Muttersup and busted funshine’, as flower gripped tenaciously twixt teeth. Yellow!… Except, natch, for hayfever red eyes x
thanks for all the birthday greetings!! hugely appreciated, seemingly winging in from every direction, pleasantly bamboozling, feel proper love bombed! was a lovely and super chilled day, sea swim and croissants… hanging out with daughter till the afternoon… then an ace compost workshop followed by homemade pizzas up at the community garden, loitering with more wondrous peeps hayfever was a bit rubbish…. but waaaay better than it used to be back at birthday glastonburys in the 80’s, ha it seemed to take forever to open all the pressies this year… tho i do have that annoying habit of insisting on being blindfolded, then having to guess what each one is, who its from… and even the colour… so little wonder it’s somewhat laborious i could probably spin a birthday out all the way till the next ones due? so if you’ve missed the rumpus… still plenty of time to add your blessings to the pile, ha xx oh and a few snaps from birthday photoshoot!… errm i mean birthday photoshoots are a thing right? its not just ego crazed me?
