Hi

Welcoming committee...
Lots of seals chilling until someone turned the tap on and the tide rushed in at such a rate the seals couldn’t swim against it. They tried for a bit and then shot back like torpedoes ... having a bit of fun, I expect. Then the stronger, bigger ones, led the push out to sea. It looked like a huge effort and a serious workout.
Heading back there was an avocet and a spoonbill fly past.

I simply hadn’t joined the dots. It was 10 years ago that I was down here for the last Jubilee. I hadn’t realised when I made arrangements with M&R to house sit for them whilst they go on holiday. I’m looking across at mum and dad’s place which has been gutted by the new owners, second homers that have enough to send the children to Eton.
An empty, hollowed out, lifeless, shell of the past.

The journey wasn’t too bad although I got to Appleby and realised I hadn’t done a covid test and went back thinking I better had. Then there were notices of long delays further down the A1 so I went off piste via Boston Spa, where I was relieved to find conveniences and check maps for an onward route via Tadcaster. I enjoyed listening to some good radio, an excellent programme on the role of the Poet Laureate and a downloaded ‘Private Passions’ with Richard Holloway ... with his excellent description of a Bishops convention feeling like a version of Nuremberg and his realisation that what had been his lifetime calling was, in reality, in our flawed human world, a version of dogma and certainty and became the point when he decided to leave the church and embrace a life of uncertainty.

This poem of the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage’s, had me in tears. I felt that if I was face to face with BoJo it would be the only, and most fitting, thing to say ...

The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash - Simon Armitage

Through the hospital window she said to me
she’d forgotten the name of her special tree,
and forgotten the name
of her favourite bird.
Through the hospital window I mouthed the words:

the song thrush and the mountain ash.

Through the hospital window she asked again
why I stood outside
in the wind and rain,
and said she didn’t understand
why I didn’t want
to touch her hand.

The song thrush and the mountain ash.

She said she liked
the flowers I sent
but wondered why
they had no scent,
and why the food
had lost its taste,
and why the nurse
had covered her face?

And why the gates of the park were shut? And why the shops were boarded up?
And why the swings were tied in knots? And the music...why had the music stopped?

Through the hospital window I called her name
and waited a while
but she never came,
then I saw reflected in the glass
the song thrush
and the mountain ash.

The song thrush and the mountain ash.