Postcard - No 8

March 28th 2024 - from directions to duets

In watery dusk, trees are bathing… (FR) Dans un crépuscule aqueux, les arbres se baignent...

Hello dear ones,

Is the week treating you kindly?

I am wishing days away again, my daughter is returning home for Easter for the first time in over six years… I am so beside myself with excitement I don’t even mind the three days of rain we are forecast!

The week is passing slowly though, despite all efforts otherwise…

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From directions to duets…

Two meetings on Monday afternoon; the first runs on so long it flows straight into the second creating a three hour jig around educational constraints in an attempt to find an easier route for two students in need of so much more than is on offer. We leave frustrated, without conclusion, a hasty redirection - as if that will cure every question of self doubt in a young girls head - a comforting smile of job done from the hierarchy not reflected in eyes that don’t hide their boredom. I will never understand.

I don’t have the emotional strength to be effective at this work. Nor the power to change all that’s wrong with the system running it. But I love my work.

The week begins like this. Uncertainty of self and direction, solace is necessary.

I play hide’n seek with a woodpecker in the chestnut grove - probably a lesser spotted woodpecker although it looks very like a ladder back - a youngster but not fledgling. It appears injured as it hops an odd dance behind a young chestnut tree, then again to the next peeping out either one side or the other to spy on human intrusion. I try not to intrude. I am too mesmerised by its behaviour to intrude. I take a step closer, it peeps to the left and disappears again. I take another and it peeps to the right. We repeat… I am barely two meters away and make the most stupid of human mistakes and reach for my camera. It hops away to another tree and the game begins again. We play - it plays, I watch - for many minutes, until there are no trees left for it to hop behind and both of us feel the dilemma. I, the temptation to take another step, it in the question of flight. But open field lays before us and it, having a far more acutely tuned system than I, makes its decision in milliseconds, wings open, a few hops and it flies, weaving its way along its own wavy up and down flight path leaving my wondering mind to understand the play I’ve just witnessed.

I find small solace in this delightful duet I don’t understand. Also in the gently haunting way the sun set makes the trees look as it dips into the lake as I stop a while to wait for the mallards.

Solace slips away with the sun when on returning I find a mutilated young badger in the lane. A possible road kill but unlikely. Skulduggery needs to be upped a notch, for which I will make no apology.

The weather is devilishly cold still.

Only two days are left to navigate before I can hug you. There are lemon yellow cowslips on long legs dancing among now fading to rose lungwort. I gather just enough for your room. They wait as I do…

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I have finally caught up with ‘In Judgement Of Others’ by

Eleanor Anstruther

which has been a nostalgic07 trip down memory lane for so many reasons… a novel written for a friend with the preface quite simply

“It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”

Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit

You will find the link to the first chapter below… Eleanor does not disappoint!

1. Committed

Wishing you all a gentle glide into the holiday weekend…

With love