When I was a teenager, I felt that I was caged by my parents, by school and by petty rules of society: wear suitable clothes, don’t smoke, don’t drink, be home by ten, that sort of thing. I rebelled, escaped from the cage and did my own thing. Later, I felt trapped by responsibility: earning […]
Tag: Haibun Monday
Sunrise Whispers
Yesterday morning, I woke up really early and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’d left the blind up in my study the previous evening and, just before five, peeking through the branches, the sun was a red ball hovering over the river. The house and garden were silent, not even a tweet of birdsong, but […]
Testament
Yesterday evening, I watched the beautifully made film ‘Testament of Youth’, which is based on Vera Britten’s autobiography of the same name. It follows her coming of age and blossoming into womanhood during the First World War. Vera Britten was one of the few women accepted into Oxford at that time. When her sweetheart signed […]
Walking with Jasper
I used to love walking with our dog, Jasper. He was a cross-breed Jack Russell and the funniest, most inquisitive dog I’ve ever known. He died on 10th March ten years ago. He was my reason for walking three times a day: in the morning before work, again in the afternoon, and a short walk […]
Lingering day…
is painted in pointillist shadows and shades. Light, fading with the last echoes of birdsong, clings to moon and stars. It’s a time when bats and owls swoop, skim and dodge in and out of branches not yet dressed in blossom or leaves, but pregnant with promise. silhouetted moon ascends from roof to ancient ash […]
Faith
It has taken over four years to regain faith in myself. Just before I retired from high school teaching, I was sick, exhausted, and unsure if I was doing the right thing. The plan was to finish a novel I started years ago before the pressures of teaching took over, so I enrolled on several […]
Poetry in the Music
I came to poetry through music. My mother was very musical and loved to sing. She had a broad taste and, instead of lullabies, she would perform popular songs of the day to get me to sleep, songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra; Harry Belafonte’s ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ (which reminds me of mum) and […]
Shades of Grey
Grey is how I saw the world in my early childhood: in monochrome newspapers, television and old photographs. It seemed as if two world wars had leached all colour. And then it returned in the sixties. My nan had a drawer in her bedroom dressing table which was full to the brim with black and […]
Ravensbury Memories
When I was a child, I lived in a town in Surrey called Mitcham, which is now part of South London. I remember it as a safe place. I knew pretty much everyone in the road where I first lived with my grandparents and later, when my parents moved to a small estate consisting of […]
Italics
When we were children, my husband and I lived in different blocks on the same housing estate and attended the same infant and junior school, where we sat in separate desks in a classroom where we were taught by a teacher neither of us will ever forget. She was grey-haired and stern, wore a twin-set […]
writing in north norfolk 