Scribblers Poetry group reunion

 

 

Poetry group reunion soon, hopefully.

Earlier this week I sent out an email to the small poetry group Scribblers, that has not been allowed to meet in our home since March 8^th 2020.

It was a dreadful blow at the time, when at the start of the lockdown, everybody, for the sake of trying to stop the Covid monster ravaging the UK further,

were pretty much forced to stay home and not mix with other people, making the effort for ourselves as well as others.

It has been a horrible experience. Sheer torture.

 

Eighteen ghastly months have passed by us as we struggled, in our different ways to get through this test of our metal.

Recently I had started to think, well yes……. Thank Heaven! Things are slowly changing.

Well at least I was giving thanks that there was at long last, at least a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Hopefully, you poetry lovers, have missed our gatherings, at least a little bit.

It has seemed to me like the end of the world now and again, and my own poetry writing has faded to a shadow.

None the less, I did manage to at least keep my diary page going on line, though in the end it drifted back to not much more than once a week.

www.dafbelt.blogspot.co.uk

Daf’s Diary.

 

I hope it did not have had the same effect on everybody else.

I have struggled keeping Instagram and FB going but particularly FB has been a battle.

 

All I have been able to do with help from my home brewed time-management scheme, was at least keep very busy indeed.

Keeping my head on straight has been painful, since I so missed our social life. Mostly gatherings with family and friends.

I was deranged enough before the plague season came along but never seeing the happy laughing faces of all my sprots friends in particular, dragged my humour to a dark place.

 

During a chat over our first, post Sunday run, tea shop stop last week, our dear friend Birgit, said that starting the poetry group again would be helpful in lifting the heavy damp mist, laying over my heart and brain.

Of course, she is right.

In fact, she sometimes wears a Tee shirt that states; “I am not arguing, I am simply pointing out why I am right!”

                                         Arundel castle beyond the wheatfield
 

 So that said, I set about writing to the group of Scribblers to see how they felt about making a hopeful date to meet?

I had given it a lot thought and suggested the first Sunday of the month as regularly as possible. 

Sunday July 4^th was put forward to see how it sounded for a start?

I promised that we would make an effort to tidy up our home a bit before then, since with nobody calling in by order of HM Government, I admitted to having become domestically idle and clouds a dust has been fluttering into fluffy piles in every corner. My apologies for being so poetically and socially hopeless during this time were included in the message and I did feel that I had made a move in right direction.

I begged for forgiveness for my all-round lethargy and promised that there would be cake.

Now it seems very likely that our promised date to see big changes will yet again be postponed due to the rising covid figures. I have my fingers crossed that tomorrow’s Covid statement will not move the so-called freedom date too far forward since the July 4^th reunion meeting is only three weeks off.

My gut feeling is that we will have to put that happy get together on hold until August 1^st. In my email to my friends I had mentioned that I would read something from a new book written by somebody I follow on Instagram. The book is; Loosely Tethered Venom by Luke Emsley, whose posts I enjoy on Instagram under his l_3_m_s_l_3_y signature.

I am a very traditional poet myself… I blame the parents as always, but also the marvellous Mrs Thomas who taught poetry at my senior school and also Miss Wiggins at the Little Theatre in Worthing all my childhood. I was in The Speech Choir at school. Both teachers sent us for exams and in for festivals. My mum was an usherette at the Connaught Theatre and I saw everything performed by Worthing Rep at least once. 

 Where I am getting to with this is that I think I need a bit more l_3_m_s_l_3_y and much more James Marchiori and his books, To my beloved Heart and The Black Bloom, he is a huge favourite of mine and I have read his work regularly. I feel I need to be dug out of my secret room full of sonnets and my deep love of fanciful but careful rhyme now and again.

So for now I will stick to my self-imposed rigged timetable of must does: I have been trying to learn some Italian with the help of Duo-Lingo on my phone. At least an hour, every single day is spent on that, sometimes more, sometimes much more and when Steve is not home for the day, very much more.

This is made more of a discipline with the fact that I write everything down carefully in a bit pile of A4 notebooks, with the thought that I will have the entire course in hand written book form whenever I want it, rather than just trying to learn a few phrases a day. I have really enjoyed that, although sometimes my eyes start to go round in circles. We still have a race in Italy on the horizon at the end of September and I hope to, at least be able to understand much more than the basic tourist greetings and needs.

I also have two needlework projects on the go and I MUST add at least two threads per day, this takes far less time than the Duolingo and is generally done in early evening.

Thirty minutes gardening just about keeps us tidy and is short enough to avoid backache.

I am sure there is no need to tell the people who know me well that I have daily triathlon training to make sure of, though that is not so hard to fit in since most of that is done early morning with Stephen. In this fine weather we have also fitted in a few sea swims as well as The Wave pool in Littlehampton,

I keep up with emails pretty briskly too, both mine and Steve’s.

Phew!

 

Nature study; animals, birds and humans

 

  When I was at school donkey’s years ago, one of the few lessons that I enjoyed was Nature Study. My parents helped nurture this interest on the walks to the park and if I was lucky, now and again a 3p ride on the number 4 bus up to High Salvington, or otherwise Cissbury Ring or Chanctonbury Ring, on the South Downs.

We live in middle of town in Worthing, close to the hospital but we would make the annual pilgrimage to see the Bluebells, Daffodils and Primroses etc.

 

Sometimes when both my parents were out at work, I would go to one of Worthing’s pretty parks and wander round on my own.

There was a gap between the end of the school day at 4pm and either parent getting home from work at around 5.30pm.

In summer I passed some of my time gazing at the flowers or doing cartwheels and handstands on the grass in a park.

In winter I would go home and let myself in with the key that hung around my neck.

Nobody thought anything of kids being left alone in those days.

Actually, my big (five years older) brother, was supposed to look after me, but rarely did, though he might sometimes be in the same park but playing football.

Neither of us let on to our parents and I was always happy off in my little dream world anyway and never bored.

We were both home and looking innocent when our parents got home from work on their bikes.

 

I still love birds and flowers, the sea, the downs and the woods.

These days, I have a bird feeding table and hanging feeders in my little garden and a while back I took pity on a sea gull that Steve and I christened Wendy-Wonky-Wing, because of the once broken wing that she can still fly with.

I have mentioned before that she first appeared begging for food with her quite horrible squawking baby that is a big as her.

I fed her at little cost, since I would throw her a sandwich filled with my cat food that, Miss Birdy’s had left and wasted.

She won’t eat anything that has been left out for a while.

I know, spoilt rotten.

Anyway I would pour some milk over the sandwich, and throw it on the garage roof for Wendy.

 

I had been doing that for a number of weeks, before one evening, when I was drying up the washing up, (No I don’t have a washing up machine, never seen the sense to it), when I nearly jumped out of me skin to see my next door neighbour’s head and hands at the top of our six foot high garden wall beside my door.

After the initial surprise, I went to the kitchen door and asked if he was looking for his little boys ball or some other lost toy.

“No” he said, “It just that I have had to take the car to be cleaned because of the seagulls who have messed all over it because you are feeding them”.

 

Not wishing to argue about it, I remained calm because this pair are always complaining about something.

To make him stop moaning I told him that I would not feed the poor crippled mother seagull any more, and that I am not wild about seagulls myself anyway but just felt sorry for it.

However, my thought was, that Littlehampton is a seaside resort and we live less than two miles from the shore as the crow flies.

Wendy Wonky Wing is not the only seagull close to us, and there are hundreds of them on the many chimney pots in our area.

 

I feel really mean not feeding her any more, but I cannot do with bad feelings over things that are very simply solved.

Wendy is still hanging around, but I am not feeding her or her noisy brat. Sad as it makes me feel.

 

There are still lots of other small, smaller, smallest birds that visit my bird table.

Wendy though cannot get into our tiny little garden she is too big and too awkward.

I wish I lived in the countryside but I don’t.

 

Big birds and little birds

wild flowers and trees,

sea views at the high points

butterfly’s and bees.

 

Try and be kind, it so much nicer.

When I was at school donkey’s years ago, one of the few lessons that I enjoyed was Nature Study. My parents helped nurture this interest on the walks to the park and if I was lucky, now and again a 3p ride on the number 4 bus up to High Salvington, or otherwise Cissbury Ring or Chanctonbury Ring, on the South Downs.

We live in middle of town in Worthing, close to the hospital but we would make the annual pilgrimage to see the Bluebells, Daffodils and Primroses etc.

 

Sometimes when both my parents were out at work, I would go to one of Worthing’s pretty parks and wander round on my own.

There was a gap between the end of the school day at 4pm and either parent getting home from works at around 5.30pm.

In summer I passed some of my time gazing at the flowers or doing cartwheels and handstands on the grass in a park.

In winter I would go home and let myself in with the key that hung around my neck.

Nobody thought anything of kids being left alone in those days.

Actually, my big (five years older) brother, was supposed to look after me, but rarely did, though he might sometimes be in the same park but playing football.

Neither of us let on to our parents and I was always happy off in my little dream world anyway and never bored.

We were both home and looking innocent when our parents got home from work on their bikes.

 

I still love birds and flowers, the sea, the downs and the woods.

These days, I have a bird feeding table and hanging feeders in my little garden and a while back I took pity on a sea gull that Steve and I christened Wendy-Wonky-Wing, because of the once broken wing that she can still fly with.

I have mentioned before that she first appeared begging for food with her quite horrible squawking baby that is a big as her.

I fed her at little cost, since I would throw her a sandwich filled with my cat food that, Miss Birdy’s had left and wasted.

She won’t eat anything that has been left out for a while.

I know, spoilt rotten.

Anyway I would pour some milk over the sandwich, and throw it on the garage roof for Wendy.

 

I had been doing that for a number of weeks, before one evening, when I was drying up the washing up, (No I don’t have a washing up machine, never seen the sense to it), when I nearly jumped out of me skin to see my next door neighbour’s head and hands at the top of our six foot high garden wall beside my door.

After the initial surprise, I went to the kitchen door and asked if he was looking for his little boys ball or some other lost toy.

“No” he said, “It just that I have had to take the car to be cleaned because of the seagulls who have messed all over it because you are feeding them”.

 

Not wishing to argue about it, I remained calm because this pair are always complaining about something.

To make him stop moaning I told him that I would not feed the poor crippled mother seagull any more, and that I am not wild about seagulls myself anyway but just felt sorry for it.

However, my thought was, that Littlehampton is a seaside resort and we live less than two miles from the shore as the crow flies.

Wendy Wonky Wing is not the only seagull close to us, and there are hundreds of them on the many chimney pots in our area.

 

I feel really mean not feeding her any more, but I cannot do with bad feelings over things that are very simply solved.

Wendy is still hanging around, but I am not feeding her or her noisy brat. Sad as it makes me feel.

 

There are still lots of other small, smaller, smallest birds that visit my bird table.

Wendy though cannot get into our tiny little garden she is too big and too awkward.

I wish I lived in the countryside but I don’t.

 

Big birds and little birds

wild flowers and trees,

sea views at the high points

butterfly’s and bees.

 

Try and be kind, it's so much nicer.