Green

Saturday 6am

6am. The sunlight squeezed between the earth and a thick blanket of cloud just catches the treetops. The whole world is green. There is a wind too, warm and heavy with the promise of showers. Summer showers of big raindrops that briefly drench everything before turning to mist and silently return upwards and move on.

It must be 20 degrees already.

In Scotland it is 2 degrees and snowing. The world there is white.

Just lately, in the books I have read and the movies I have seen a message keeps coming across - it is all in the details but you must take a wider view of them.

There are patterns are forming.

The Christmas Fridge

I may not be religious but I do celebrate Christmas. Along with the New Year it is a mid winter festival, but whereas I find new year a time to look back upon the year that has been and plan for the year to come, Christmas is the time to celebrate now - the present moment. 

The world is such a beautiful place and we are so lucky to be here that it is good just to pause for a moment during life's bustle and enjoy it. And strangely enough I notice most when I look in the fridge. It is at this time of year that the family comes together and we all help prepare for the celebration. As we do so the fridge fills with extraordinary things like actors waiting in the wings for their appearance. As the meal begins we will all be lost in each others' company, it is that memory of the fridge that reminds me of what we have here, all of us, together.

My teenagers also spend a large percentage of their time looking in the fridge, but I am not sure they see it the same way I do . . .

The Hissing of the Summer Lawns

Thursday 8.45am 

It is forecast to get to 29 degrees today. Just now at a quarter to eight in the morning even though the nighttime chill still surrounds me I can feel the heat of the sun already pushing through, burning.

I am in the middle of our village, Havelock North. There is a distant hissing of water spraying the grass, the birds chirp and whistle, and the traffic quietly rumbles as everybody begins their day. As I walk past a cafe a hint of coffee fills the air along with the clinking of cups. The people are all isolated, distant, self absorbed as they think about their day ahead . . .

In the UK in the 60’s and 70’s package holidays arrived. Ordinary people could now spend two weeks a year somewhere more exotic than Aberdeen, Spain perhaps or Italy. Everything was arranged for you by the travel company, all you had to do was choose from the brochure, pay the fee, and turn up at the airport. For people like my parents who loved to travel but had decided to stay in one place for their children’s schooling, package holidays were ideal and every year my sister and I would spend two weeks by the pool or on the beach sucking in all the strange sights, sounds and tastes. We would leave Edinburgh paper white and along with the rest of our party return lobster pink, tired but inspired having had a small glimpse of what was out there in the rest of the world.

And that feeling from then of the sun already burning down through the morning cool has penetrated deep within me and stuck. It may only be like this for a brief couple of hours each day but it always evokes those childhood feelings of being on holiday, of having all the time in the world with no worries and a whole world of possibilities and new things to experience. It makes me happy.

Life is never dull when you make time for a cup of coffee and a cheese scone . . .