After a lay off from the blog. And an industrious last few years working in central Bohemia. Buying a house, mowing my lawn and all kinds of other domestic drudgery.
 I have just returned from a swimming trip up in Scotland. Bathing in the Glen Brittle Faerie pools on the isle of Skye. And in the river Etive near Glen coe.
And I have been writing a bit of poetry too.
This poem is a look at what happens when the oral tradition is replaced by the written and recorded.

See What You Think.

Oral tradition brought to line.
Structured into geometric angles and loops
looping on lines, rhythms and rhymes
from ages before, an archaic prosaic,
quickly forgotten time.

The storytellers art, quantified and objective.
Homogenised, examined and taken apart.
Re-combined into lingual score
re-construed into print. quickly tran- slated
as the franca-de-lingua power planes shift.

Easier to censor than tales told, soft by a fire.
Eyes all wide as outside, elements and oceans
battle and clash..

Wide eyes follow as lips, shifting ideas,
exposing morals tell of
Dragons hot teeth or
Lions with wings.
Allude to the weakness of Pharoes
the double standards of Kings.

Powers greatest weakness!

It's human crave for applause
ignore all the flaws and allow our media masters
to draw for us..
Our own simple conclusions

present memory

On Sunday I went to the Tate modern. My Dad came along and he was interested in a short film installation by Alejandrlo Cesarco..
The Artists father was filmed and shown in a short loop of flickering film. He has just being diagnosed with a terminal illness.
My Dad had picked up the accompanying booklet and was keen to know what I thought of it all..
I have been diligently reading it and trying to comprehend..This paragraph contains the nub of the essence of the piece..
" The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceeded radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.
A sort of umbilical chord links the body of the photographed thing: light though impalpable, is here a carnal medium, a skin I share."
I love it

Alien life forms

Had another walk up the Pennine way. From Beckermonds up to Thwaite in lovley Swaledale.

Just south of Hawes, my son spotted these amazing jelly fungi.

Into the big country

Last weekend we whipped across the fens and ended up camping in North Norfolk..The flats of East Anglia are great for stretching the eye..The campsite was nice if a little too"Cool Camping"..
The beach at Holkham was as ever, sublime.. The wind was tearing down the North sea, parallel to Norway, five hundred miles later hitting the North coast of England ripping up the beach and twisting it into sandy rivers. The rivers were pouring into new dunes that morphed and swelled in front of us..
Amongst this Geological drama..Little Terns were nesting on the beach.. They never dessert their offspring. Often becoming the nucleus of a small dune in the process..
My Pal Fish said that it was one of the best things he had ever seen..

Chicken Tarka Massala

Spent the last weekend in Exmoor. Swam in some fresh water, following in the Rudder bubbles of Tarka. Particularly my old Friend the Lynn, up from Watersmeet. And again in the Taw estuary, near Braunton Burrows.
We followed a dusty hot track up onto the moor, to Shallowford, . The place where Henry Williamson lived for a while after WW1.
The hillsides of Exmoor are like a child's ideal farm painting. Lots of coloured cattle and sheep flecked with the odd handful of Deer. Very easy on the eye.

Blaze of glory

Had a glorious weekend. Spent a lot of time up at the allotment, watering..
The front bed is all planted up with Poppies, Sunflowers and two types of Squash..
Behind the shed I have put two posts, hung an old tatty hammock up and planted loads of Thyme, Lavender, Rosemary and Chamomile..It smells like a foreign place in the heat, a little liquoricey, Greek honey..I love it..
We walked Hairy Baz a lot down through the meadow, in the woods and up onto Parliament piece. The meadow is full of Buttercup and Speedwell.. I tried to take a picture of him.. It is far to tricky, he is always ablur in photographs..He is ace..