I Miss Summer

I miss summer, with its sudden thunderstorms and endless light.

Hot, silent, still.

The grass crackles and folds and pales under the glare of a ferocious sun.

And then the rain gushes down in a torrent akin to a waterfall. As quickly as it started, an invisible tap turns off, clouds scudding away to reveal the bluest skies.

Endless deep contemplation in the vast azure.

Stretching over the world and into the distance.

Paling even as it speeds away, until it dissolves into ethereal nothingness.

Hours seem endless, meditation and reflection come with ease. Welcoming atmosphere. Gentle breeze.

I suppose there is a beauty to autumn too. Summer has to burn itself out, and bow to the change in season. Accept the rain, accept age. Accept that life must stand still after months of ravenous growth.

There is a beauty to lashings of endless rain, droplets light enough to dust eyelashes like the smallest jewels. Smooth conkers, waterlogged grass, windfalls aplenty. Trees become sparse, pale, and then explode in a plethora of colour.

Amber and saffron and gold.

The earth sighs and releases her deep essence. The aroma of life. Mud and grass and dying vegetation, rich even in their demise. Generous in their sacrifice. Nutrients seeping into the soil, waiting to sit through icy months, feeding the dormant seedlings that will once again spring to life when the earth turns her face achingly towards the sun.

I miss summer, I do. But I know that in order for us to have a summer, we must also have an autumn and a winter and a beautiful spring.

Image Credit

August’s End

For the first time in ten years, I find myself wistful that the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder.

Winter beckons her long, pointed icy finger, and this time I am loathe to follow her down her icy path of starry skies and crisp, foggy moors.

I don’t know what it is. Is it the fact that social distancing has made me anxious to be indoors around other people? Is it the fact that long, bright, heady evenings are now gradually departing, leaving sudden darkness in their wake?

I don’t want to welcome winter. I want it to be summer all year around.

On Sundays, people do nothing.

On Sundays, people do nothing.

Well, I don’t know what people do.

When I was a child, we lived in a hot country. And our Sundays were actually Fridays, because the first day of the week was Saturday. Weird, I know. But it didn’t feel weird when we lived there.

My mother was a powerful woman, emotionally. She is still. She could make magic out of misery, but she never hid the misery.

Some mothers cover it with a silken gauze, layers of kisses, gentle smiles and eyes full of pain, but my mother didn’t.

She sobbed in front of us, over things that were out of her control, and then visibly pulled herself together and took us to places and made us happy.

Every Friday, she organised an outdoor pool party, because there is really little you can actually do in a desert, especially back in the early 2000s, at a location somewhere on the outskirts of the city we lived in. She made it so all the families attending pitched in to pay for the daily use of a huge pool, surrounded by a garden with swings and slides and sandpits, a football pitch, and some tent-rooms for the adults to sit in and chat amongst themselves while the kids splashed in the pool under the hot sun all day. We ordered food in and dessert was a potluck of many sugary delights.

And because it was a hot country, we would go every week for most of the year, except a couple of months when it was ‘winter’ – except ‘winter’ was just mildly chilly at best.

We had something to look forward to, every weekend. And weekly school was thoroughly enjoyable too.

We had dreary weekends, of course, but nothing like I’ve experienced since coming back to live here. There is something to be said for the serotonin of sunshine, and the vitamin D of happiness!

In the UK, I don’t like Sundays.

Houses are smaller here.

Children are more cooped up, because they don’t play on the streets like they used to do in the olden days.

And there is little to do. Or too cold to do it. And people are not as social as they perhaps once had been.

Also, it’s true what they say about the UK.

It is perpetually grey.

It’s a country blanketed in dismal cloud and chill and dampness spreading its tentacles through the earth.

So it’s no wonder people want to stay in bed all day, and watch TV, and eat comforting foods like crackers and cheese and relish and cups of tea.

Smell the fresh air. It is good for you.

English winter is beautiful, don’t get me wrong. The days are so short, though, and lots of areas are so rough, but the countryside always maintains its wondrous glory, even with bare trees, it has an ethereal allure to it. Don’t you agree?

Letter to the Season

Dear Season,

I am sitting in a heated house while I write this. I am very much aware that many people don’t have heated houses, and the cold is so biting, that I feel guilty and undeserving of such a blessing.

It crept up on us, you see. We weren’t quite expecting it. Do believe me when I assure you that I am not attacking you in any way, whatsoever. You started off quite warm. I didn’t wear a jacket for two weeks straight, and oh, last weekend you were so deliciously warm.  You daintily shed off your summer garments, when they browned and frayed on the edges. Softly dropping them to the ground as you gracefully welcomed the inevitable change in your very soul.

But today you are cold. You breathe an icy breath on my toes, you whip through lush grass, and suddenly the blades look ominous and cutting. Where did your cold come from? Am I being too ungrateful in questioning it? Is it uncouth of me to expect warmth in the season of blustery winds and rainy days? You welcomed the storm, O’ season. You opened your warm arms, welcomed the ravaging winds, and now the air outside is biting and snappy, and sends us hurrying from one indoor place to another. Does it bother you that we no longer wish to revel under your skies? Or are you glad, Season.

I send you a shrug, O’ season. I see how people are bundling up against you, I see the shelves are groaning under the weight of all the goodies we are expected to hand out to children, I see the glamorous lights twinkling in the early evenings, and I send you a shrug.

Make of that what you will.

Good day to you.

Regards,

Lenora

Image Credit: Hazel Thomson Art

Muscle Mania

Iron Girl by Dani Jennings

 

We woke up this morning to malignant ice covering every surface. It appeared to have sprouted it’s frosty tendrils overnight, like some sort of arctic fungus, through roads, pavements, cars and roofs. The whole world was blanketed with a frosty white. The air was sharp with cold. The biting kind, that creeps up on you when you least expect it, and causes your fingers to go numb.

The ache in my muscles is raw.

Today is a rest day.

I have been going to the gym every day this past week. My clothes are saturated in sweat by the end of it. I feel pumped and happy, even though the pain is near unbearable.

I got up and pottered about, getting ready to leave the house. As I pulled off my pyjamas, and stood in front of the mirror under the harsh white light of the bedroom, I noticed how wobbly my legs were. They weren’t exactly shapeless, but in the mirror I could see that the skin was not smooth and tight over my muscles. There was fat in places there hadn’t been before, and the shape wasn’t as streamlined as I like to imagine. In fact, I realised that although I had already put in so much work, there was still a very very long way to go.

They feel amazing though. My legs. All my muscles ache and ache, I can feel them slowly tightening. So at the moment I don’t care the they don’t look that great. I am getting there, slowly but surely. I can feel it, that’s all that matters right now.

Tomorrow is Abs and Arms day!

My mother in law very kindly made me a sandwich and gave me a snickers bar to take with me,  the latter of which I slipped into my husband’s drawer when she left. Clean eating, I thought to myself, is the only way to see satisfying results, rather than only feel them.

 

On Bits and Bobs

The cold has settled in folks and the guy who replaced my windscreen today said he was “getting too old for this job’ whilst gripping a hot cup of tea and stomping his feet.

Teeth were chattering, mist was rising, people were just mounds of clothing and puffs of snowy white breath and grey clouds hung low in the sky, spitting out rain every few hours or so.

I didn’t do much of anything today but thought I would post a little sum’n sum’n.

I am still scrutinising Aphra Behn most intricately and she is proving to be a very tasteful writer.

P’raps I might write a less academic review after I have submitted this assignment! I could do with some lighthearted literary writing, as opposed to all these literary devices and analysis of themes. Themes can be so mundane sometimes, fellow humans.

Merry Winter, and Happy Munching!

Grumps

Time to get my fluffy socks and woolly jumpers out, because the sun’s face is buried under layers of thick cloud and the cold is beginning to seep through the damp wooden beams, slowly making its way under my skin. It’s going to be a cold autumn.

Anyone else feel that way yet?

Also, the shops are beginning to stock Christmas-ware shamelessly! Time for my grumpy Grinch-itis to slowly poke it’s black curly head out with a colossal scowl.

Also, I love the word ‘grumpy’! It’s so cosy and warm, somehow. Like a frowny day in pyjamas, warm blankets and an excuse to stay in bed while the storms rage outside. Grumpy is less serious than ‘irritated’ or ‘sullen’ or ‘surly’ or ‘testy’. It’s more on par with a gruff old granddad with a heart of gold. Who doesn’t like a gruff old granddad with a heart of gold!

Grumpy cat is the perfect image for how I feel about too-early Christmas goodies in the shops.