Fungus on a tree stump

Steve got up before me and announced her was off to Bristol. I roused myself after a bit of poetry writing/rewriting and carried on over breakfast, before eventually settling down to some work. I felt I’d missed a couple of hours this week and wanted to make up. Of course as soon as I turned on my emails and phone I realised it was all going to take a bit longer than that!

Got some laundry done: dried in the sun and wind! . Had a legal chat about my late mother’s affairs, then carried on working until I could eventually shut down every work-related device, and turn to my own life admin. What a terrible month financially: I bought tickets for the Ledbury poetry festival and the Green Gathering in July; Musicport festival in October; not to mention having to pay for the dental hygienist about three months in advance. I’ll have to move that appointment, too.

Was just setting off for a walk when Steve arrived home. Decided to go for a quick trot around the cemetery both upper and lower parts. John Marjoram’s grave (see Monday) has a wooden marker post now, of a rustic nature. What a dear man, I am so glad I can visit his grave as often as I like (my mother's grave is in the west highlands of Scotland). So many of the Quakers I met when I first moved to Stroud have passed on now. I once turned up at a Quaker meeting just as it was ending, as I’d forgotten that the clocks had changed! Another one was held outside the USAF base at Fairford, Glos, just before Gulf War Two. In the hour-long silence, we heard the drumming of a woodpecker. It feels important to remember this, in a week when the UK newspapers seem bent on urging us to prepare for War. (I have to admit that I wouldn’t know what to do in the event of a missile strike. The last information I received was about how to build a home fallout shelter in under four minutes, in 1983).

Anyway, enough of the gloomy talk . Woodpeckers against war, I say! If I think hard about dates,I can put in a link to the Wool against Weapons march https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/4653353
https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/4654695