Passing Cloud

 

                     

Gazing at clouds couldn’t be more harmless

If only because we do it alone,

The benefit is that it’s not charmless

Time spent in wonder, to love or atone.

Scurrying clouds encourage reflection

of our deepest concerns, worry and fears

frivolous face in fluffy complexion,

dark memory that once brought you to tears.

Whatever hides at the back in your mind

may be turned over and flipped into place.

Revisit gently, to your self be kind

as you treat others with genuine grace.

Just a shadow in one ominous cloud;

Hold fast to a life of which to be proud.

Passing Clouds

Sitting next to my husband in our VW Caddy van as he drove almost to Dover and back yesterday, we got well stuck into the audio book we are listening to making the journey in heavy traffic on a holiday weekend must easier to bear. We 5 hours of it read we still have 28 hours to go!

My husband says that I must have been a snail or a tortoise in another life because I like to carry everything I might possibly need with me where ever I go. Yesterday I had picked a big soft bag and apart from my phone of course, I had thrown in, a notebook, (writers of any kind always have a notebook), then the instruction page from the pattern envelope of my next dressmaking scheme, also a tea towel enfolding everything that would enable me to carry on with my current embroidery work and keep it spotlessly clean at the same time should we grind to a halt in the traffic.

The work time drive for Steve though, gave me plenty of time for cloud study. Most people take gazing at clouds without a thought; sometimes they make a little entertainment and sometimes they coincide with your own concerns and stretch the imagination further than a casual glance.

With the addition of my daughter’s young dog Jeffrey, who is around half a year old now, I am often seeing bounding puppies in the sky and there were several of those up there as we made our way along motorways. Then clear as crystal, up popped Kermit with that harmless dopey grin below those big buggy eyes. At one point we were caught up on a huge interchange where there had been at least four cars involved blocking up the access roads, although thankfully, there did not appear to be and casualties just groups of people all on their phones looking harassed and it was during that hold up that I saw a dead alien laying across the sky, that I would think was my mind reminding me how close life and death in fact are.

So maybe our hopes and fears as well as what makes us happy, all figures into what you may see up there. Al that may account for the regular appearance of Sharks, Alligators in my passing clouds when travelling to triathlon races with open water swims.

Tangled Web

When we arrived for our morning exercise, we were momentarily disappointed to see that the two women we had encountered the other day, who had been unable to control their more than happy to be un-disciplined, pair of dogs just getting out of their car. Thankfully they remembered us too, since they muttered together and then went off for their walk in a different direction.

We chalked up another excellent 8 mile run that had within it, so the Garmin showed; a Best 1 kilometre and a Best 1 mile and we knew   exactly where the two overlapping run records occurred which was toward the end of the run and that too is good.

After we have finished our morning runs, we walk it out a little way and that was when we passed this amazing spider web and were able to get really close to it so that we were able to see the spider, who was quite a sturdy guy, wriggle back into his astonishing silky man cave at the back of the centre of this most impressive web. It looked like a see-through D-cup brassiere with two roomy compartments, as well as a cunning hidey hole in the centre back. A master builder of an Arachnid.

 We didn’t have time for any other sports activity today because Steve had small shipping load that had to be collected today from an antiques dealer in Kent eighty miles away. Steve asked me if I wanted to come with him, just for a change of scenery, in case I had cabin fever!

We have been listening to Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett on Audible whilst we have dinner each evening but it is such a long book that we have barely scratched the surface and I had said to Steve that we needed one of our old long pre-lock down journeys to get through it. It is almost 41 hours in duration. Well, we knocked nearly five hours of it out today and I have to say that it is riveting stuff and certainly shortened the time spent in the heavy traffic on the motorways.

By the time we got home and climbed out of the van, I was momentarily a bit stiff and as I grunted that information to my husband, he remarked that he was impressed that an Olympic standard fidget like me had sat still for so long it must also be a new record.