Tagged

Saturday 7.20pm

A hamster in life's cherry bowl

Well, Pherenike has tagged me with this :-

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog (and include a visual illustration if you’d like).
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post.
4. Tag five more blogs with links.
5. Remember to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

And as someone who cannot resist a dare ( as long as it does not involve cruelty to anything ) I had to have a go.

It is not easy - sum your life up in just six words. But after two days and (one nights sleep) I feel I have caught the spirit of my place in the world. Should I explain it ? . . . . nah, I'll leave that up to you.

And who am I tagging ? Well two people I think ( it seems the five are not compulsory ) - Nicola, and Keriann.

A fragment

Saturday 8.24am

A single pair of head lights moves silently towards me through the pools of gathering darkness below. I lean back against the car bonnet and sip beer from a bottle, watching. From my vantage point on the side of this hill the horizon is a bright line ahead, dark ragged clouds cross the sky above and the colour is draining out of the land below. Dusk is just beginning.

The wind buffets me insistently, bringing the clouds closer as a fresh, clean dampness that I can feel on my face and hands. And see too in the droplets forming on my jumper. I shiver contentedly. All around is the quiet tearing sound of the sheep eating, always eating, and on the wind, a distant bird cry.

I feel . . . grey. Like the darkening land that I, even in my melancholy isolation am part of. And content as well. This is how it is. Other people live life whilst I stand on a lonely hillside drinking beer and watch the dusk settle in.

A fragment of a memory, more a feeling really. It was brought on by a single scene of a solitary whale leaping in a deserted marineland pool, in of all things, a car advert.

Dream big

Thursday 8.07pm

We have some guinea pig babies. Our youngest has been pestering his teacher to allow him to bring them in and show the class and this week she finally relented, and so today was the big day. This morning we bundled mother and three babies into a straw and hay filled cardboard box ready to go. Now it seems guinea pigs are quite highly strung and loud noises can easily (and literally) frighten them to death. So the instructions to youngest child were that the lid stays shut until everybody in the class is gathered together and quiet. Of course as soon as we arrived with a closed cardboard box every child that came past wanted to know what was in it. Eventually I got tired of telling them and made them guess. “ What is in the box ? “ says one small girl. “ Ah, you’ll have to guess” say I. She looked at the box. “ This is a clue “ says I again pointing to one of the pieces of straw sticking out around the lid. She looked again, then her eyes widened as she said with amazement “ A pony ! ”

I so hope she never loses that attitude, it is one we should all have – dream big.