I’ve just returned from a short stroll down our lane in the cool of the evening, to see the glorious harvest moon rising from behind the trees over a pale shimmering field of oats. Like a ripe apricot as it first appeared, and surrounded by a faint halo…
Category: words
Like yesterday, today began dull and misty, the low cloud blowing from the sea, and the oat fields shading from dusty golden yellow to grey as they vanished into the distance. Spattering mizzle (mist and drizzle combined) released a long-forgotten scent of damp vegetation, after months of dry…
(With apologies to H E Bates for traducing the title of his much-loved novel!) I’ve just returned from a long weekend in Bude, North Cornwall. We were blessed with nice spring weather most of the time, and made the most of the opportunity to explore the ravishing coastline…
Most of my posts are on a particular theme, but it occurred to me, as I wandered around my nearest town – Lyme Regis – that despite having done the same several times a week for some years, there were some oddments and visual scraps that defy categorisation,…
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. – William Blake, Auguries of Innocence In my rather small lockdown world, a walk on the beach at low tide…
It’s a common myth, often disputed, that the Inuit have many more words for snow than in English, and Bill Bryson, in his At Home: A Short History of Private Life tells us that in South America, there are many hundreds of potato-related words. English is widely accepted to…
“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own.” Adam Lindsay Gordon A wild night left lots of algal debris and wind-whipped seafoam on the beach at Lyme. I’d actually gone to see if there was a good sunrise…
Several wild windy days have started shaking apples from our two trees, which is good news for wasps, ants and small rodents, but less so for us. I’ve just started picking now – the Egremont Russets are starting to come away from the twigs fairly easily. This means…
Taken as I did my daily walk before tackling the weekly shop in Seaton, “limpid” was the word that immediately sprang to mind as I gazed at the calm blue sea. The sea is often clearer here than at Lyme as there is less sediment from the cliffs,…