One of the glories of England’s quiet shires is the patchwork of little country parishes each with its own church and churchyard, many of them national treasures. Come and see ours and find out how mistaken Philip Larkin was!
Welcome to a Jurassic swamp with dragons in the deeps and dinosaurs hiding in the grass. A child sits watching with open-eyed wonder. It’s the stuff of children’s fiction. But it’s real and better than any made up story or computer game. There are things going on in that garden mini pond that are guaranteed to catch the imagination of any child. Not least our granddaughter. Then all of a sudden, as if from nowhere, out crawls a monster breathing fire and looking fierce. What prehistoric creature is this?
Continue reading “Creative Imagination in a mini-pond”
What draws the crowds to the Lake District? If you’ve ever been there you’ll know. But leave the car and the tourists and start climbing into the fells. You’ll soon find yourself alone walking where Wordsworth walked and sharing his thoughts so beautifully expressed in his poetry.
Keats’ ‘gathering swallows twittering in the skies‘ have gone and last week I heard the plaintive call of a chiff chaff, a sign that other migrants are on their way back south, to warmer climes. We’re left alone to contemplate with the sad autumnal song of ‘the redbreast whistling from a garden croft’. We feel we’ve been watching summer’s ‘soft dying day‘. Continue reading “Michaelmas – angels unawares”
A Listening Heart 