I have no idea what to call this but…
May seems to be one big panic attack and oh thank goodness, an owlet!
“Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos were lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor and shouting 'All Gods are bastards.” ― Terry Pratchett
Hello dear readers… I feel I need to give an apology for writing so little this month, May has been/is always crammed with garden chores hindered by inclement - weather, end of the year ‘resumés’ and a general, hair-pulling-I want-to-run-away panic because I simply don’t have enough hours in the day to accomplish the necessary. Result; my journaling has suffered the consequences and both my husband and son tell me, separately, they are not rabbits.
Friday evening and three days off was a long, slow sigh of relief…
The second week in May passed in a blur of birds in bikinis birds and bikinis, a Mother’s Day project involving 25 seven year olds, scissors, tweezers, glue and pressed wild flowers… (don’t ask it was chaos) and the fruitless task of trying to persuade my fifteen year old son that 30 minutes of revision is not even close to sufficient minutes to take in four years lessons on six different subjects.
It’s too late now of course…
Enter the owlet all wisdom and calm…
But, how can we be only six weeks away from half way through another year already and only four from Summer Solstice and only two from my sixtieth birthday which I am damn sure I asked to be put on hold!
It’s all very random again…
As Mondays go, the one I woke up to last week filled me with optimistic high spirited hope.
I am occasionally overcome with a feeling, a prickle to the back of the neck, or goose flesh for no reason… am I being watched? Whilst walking this is entirely possible, a hare or a deer hidden in the undergrowth of brushes and briars, reassuring itself that this particular human is not a threat to it’s existence. These watchers wait quietly and patiently until I pass before they move on, assured of my harmlessness to continue with their foraging, mating, protecting - whatever it is they were doing. Whilst gazing into the cupboard in my bedroom, trying to decide whether to wear winter clothes or summer clothes - or both because the weather is confused as I am - before breakfast on a Monday morning though, never.
At least, almost never!
“Our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom,”
So says naturalist Sy Montgomery, I was alight with a shade of something - perhaps not brilliance - that I couldn’t fathom. Until I peered through the dawn light to the barn window opposite where, sitting quietly, watching me intensely as only owls can, was an owlet, a shade of something that carried me through the day. I am happy to see him, happy to know he is there. Happy to know that for the fifth consecutive year a family of owls1 have nested in our barn.
And, astonishingly when I returned nine hours later, he, excuse the pronoun I cannot belittle such a beauty with ‘it’, was still sitting, statue-like, in the exact position I’d left him.
Well hello again little one…
I had to go to a public place this week. Not the local supermarket or the farm shop which pretty much outlines in their entirety my usual haunts other than school. Nope, this was a public swimming pool accompanied by sixty-eight excited seven year olds - I detest public swimming pools. The noise, the lingering odour of sanitising chlormines, I can feel the prickle of poison seeping into every pore of my skin before we even pull up outside - I wonder briefly if I’d be missed should I just sit very still, feign sleep maybe.
I step from the coach, the chemical aroma of chlorine greets my nostrils like a punch in the face. I stagger into la suite which is a twenty minute melée - we only have forty-five in the water - consisting of clammy legs and arms clamouring in a communal changing room barely large enough to bend over with three dozen young girls all trying to change without showing their nakedness to either friend or adult, forgotten towels, fighting with the obligatory rubber swimming hats that are truly the most impossible things to pull on if you happen to have long hair - three dozen girls have long hair - lost goggles and tinny screams as they walk through the, again obligatory, freezing showers. Then shy giggles in front of the boys who are patiently waiting alongside the pool with a suspiciously handsome and very bald Maitre Nageur who berates us for taking so long. I bite my tongue with difficulty and treat him to one of those very English ‘fuck you’ glares which he doesn't understand because, well, he’s French, I try again a French ‘va te faire foutre’ glare, he understands perfectly.
The girls take their places in line with the boys, two immediately burst into tears and I seize the moment as probably my one and only chance of avoiding chlorinated water touching skin and take them both over to a bench. My colleagues glance over at me, I know what they are thinking, I know that look of envy - they dislike this part of the school curriculum as much as I do.
I successfully calm one - she is more worried about how she will dry her bottom length hair than getting in the pool - she joins her group but the other is terrified. No amount of cajoling or reassurance will entice her one step closer to shimmering turquoise liquidity. I am not going to force her and in so not doing, avoid the glassy chlorinated bath also because, of course, she cannot be left alone…
Ouph… as we say in French!
Ouph didn’t last.
Friday was filled with all those Mother’s Day cards, a whole day of fiddly manipulations of tiny flowers that disintegrated the moment they were touched and hearts and mini envelopes and sticky fingers with said flowers and hearts stuck to them instead of card -
you would have loved every second!I return home, grab my camera and walk into the evening. The frustrations of the week dissolve into sunbeams escaping from behind low clouds weighted by warm evening air and static. Thunder rumbles across the hill as I skirt around the barley, I feel it in the souls of my feet vibrating through the eons of bedrock as if a geological giant is waking. Across the fields to the west another storm is raging, I have about ten minutes grace…
Thank you for reading A Hill and I I love that your here on this very stormy Sunday evening.
What I have loved - As you can imagine, I’ve had little time for reading amidst the chaos of the week and neither my owl photos or my words can compare to
in his beautiful recounting of a meeting with A Prince of Darkness at Sunrise - read on, let the magic envelope you…
Last year I named these owls as Screech Owls, on further research this is incorrect. I believe this to be a Tawny owl.
Never apologise for writing little, Susie. Every word you pen is gold.
How utterly delightful to have an owlet sitting there, watching and waiting and no doubt totally at peace in where it is. Perhaps it, too, looked on at you and nodded internally at the passing Susie, grateful that you have offered it this barn.
"the fruitless task of trying to persuade my fifteen year old son that 30 minutes of revision is not even close to sufficient minutes to take in four years lessons on six different subjects" -- I couldn't help but crack a wry smile at this, sorry. It makes me think of my own students, who perhaps have similar feelings of what and how much constitutes "revision".
Poor little girl! I'm glad she had someone to stay with her and make her feel safe ❤️