Waiting For Spring

Outside the rain is lashing against the windows. The sea through the rooftops is white capped and irritable. A small tanker is holed up in the lea of the land. My latest book is finished and with an editor. Now I must wait

Winter has been ferocious, endless, sodden and here we are longing and waiting for the late spring. The cliff tops are still closed and brown with few green shoots emerging but the gardens are alive with Camellia and Magnolia trees with swathes of late daffodils lighting up the grass.

Yesterday, the sun shone in a clear blue sky that made the day icy but delicious. I am unable to garden at the moment as I have my arm in a sling so I take off to look at all the wonderful gardens around me.  Frustrated by the limitations of what I can do with one wing I turn to all the things that bring me joy and a quiet continuation each day. The beautiful local pottery bowl and mug I use every morning made by  local potter Lincoln Kirby-Bell. The fallen magnolia bloom I found yesterday, blown by the wind into a rhododendron bush. Looking at my tree ferns out of my sitting room window. The sound of the school bell and the sight of small children scurrying past the kitchen window towards the small school. Lying, reading in a warm bed as the rain hits the window.

The euphoria of finishing a piece of work can be replaced by sudden doubt and dark thoughts. Concentrating on small everyday things is like a small meditation on what has value in our lives and makes a whole life, not just a body of work. Something us writers holed up in a room with our imaginations sometimes forget.

Smart phones with good cameras now give us a canvas that need no words to paint and catalogue the seasons and our part within them.