A catching up blog, where have the last weeks gone! This time last weekend I was walking around Alderney http://visitalderney.com/–my first trip to a Channel Island for more celebrations for Bev’s birthday, specifically to search for Andy Goldsworthy’s eleven rammed earth stones -http://www.sculpture.org.uk/AndyGoldsworthy/. The weather was kind, we found ten stones and the site of the one that’s been washed away and I recommend the Trislander prop travel experience. Alderney has a fascinating history with remains of Hitler’s Atlantic wall, post Napoleonic British fortifications, all with great names –my favourite being Frying Pan Battery. I now have lots of pre poem notes and (hopefully) the beginning of a sequence of poems.
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My middle of the week event was a poetry reading at Kingston University organised by the Kingston Readers Short Cuts Poetry Competition. I already knew that two of my poems had been chosen for their 2012 pamphlet but, wow, complete surprise, one of them, Unstitched, was given first prize in the adult category. A lovely evening, so nice that several friends came along to support me. We celebrated in my local, The Plough with chips and wine –you can only do that once! I’ll post both poems on the Mole Valley Poets website soon, meanwhile I’m proudly giving the pamphlets away to anyone who passes!!! Seriously, just for a minute, the success has really helped to motivate me, and I need that especially as I start another Poetry School on-line course Poetry and Politics.
My end of the week activities included a visit to Somerset House –more sculpture http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/crisis has details of a small exhibition with some thought provoking pieces, all to be auctioned for the homeless charity Crisis when the exhibition ends.
The ice rink is full of spring blossom of different sort to what we’re presently enjoying on the trees. From the entrance I thought they were skulls and half pelvises but that just shows how our, well certainly my, discipline background never really leaves the mind, London was at its best on Friday. I managed to do a real section of the Thames Path walking along the south bank –straight through Blackfriars Station now but previously a diversion on some ordinary streets. The riverside was a very buzzy mix of those fresh from work and visitors, young and not so young, the amblers and the joggers.
Finally, in this catch up yesterday Sue, Cecilia and I walked from Staines to Windsor, another 10 miles of our TP project walked in stunning sunshine so I now have a t–shirt tan. Our route took in Runnymede, great views of Windsor Castle and some willow trees in their full spring dress … a colour made in heaven. Just wonderful to be chatting with friends about constitutions, celandines and the culling of Canada geese alongside the beauty of the Thames in somewhat unexpected March sunshine -and so healthy. Makes up for the previously mentioned chip supper.
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