Yesterday was my second day of a hellish migraine attack. Today better but rather battered and bruised from the experience. Also decided to look for a particular photo of Paul. It appears so sharply in my mind and yet I cannot find it amongst all the photos I have and I am sad. So I start with getting rid of photos that have long gone past their sell by date. And find this photo of mock orange and Ladies Mantle, which is one of my favourite flowers for vases.
So what was the photo of? 2008 at Coat's Water near Swindon, someone mentioned Richard Jeffries the other day, and I had read three of his books, one of which was written around Coate Water.
I see in an earlier blog that I compared him to John Ruskin, of course Ruskin was an exhausitive writer on art, I even had seven books on his 'Modern Painters'. Here I make a terrible confession, I threw them out, it was almost deliberate but I saw it as moving on, but weirdly I still feel guilt. Hey-ho
That meeting led to many walks in the area. I was in the middle of a divorce, perhaps nearing the end and Paul and I both shared a love of Avebury and our meetings became more often. Moss came with us, slightly distrustful of course, it was normally just me and him and Moss didn't like strangers. He was a companion dog, very useful on long walks, he always just knew the way back to the car and knew how to keep himself safe from electric fencing and mad cows.
In all my reading of this time I was probably searching for a truth of whether nature is really alive. People get lost in books, I remember Nan Shepherd's book - The Living Mountain, I gave it to someone and I don't think they ever thanked me for it! MacFarlane had read it as well and he glowed over it but somehow my mind said that MacFarlane was just following in steps that had gone before
To find yourself as part of nature is not a public thing, though we write of it as such. The love we have for the things around is inborn, perhaps a spiritual part of us that responds, though sometimes I will argue it is that 21% of oxygen we breath that gives us that feeling of joy and well being, but then that is a practical person talking.
Below is Coate Water, not quite the vast exapanse that Jeffries remembered in his books of Bevis and Wild London but enough to write stories around and that is after all what we humans do as a necessity.
I am still in pyjamas but feeling better. Lunch was the risotto I I made yesterday for the others, and it was pretty good with a medley of vegetables and asparagus in it. We have a rota of cooks, Andrew 2, me 2, Karen 2, and you may wonder what happens on the seventh day, it is a free day to cook for yourself.
Glad to hear that the migraine is going away. I'm impressed you were able to cook a yummy risotto while you weren't feeling well. I hope you find that photo of Paul but at least it is saved in your memory.
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