All change

Fresh bed linen, cool on my skin after a hot bath, somehow makes the bed more comfortable. I curl up with my book and the fragrance of summer days.

Gratitude

The smell of Sunday roast evokes memories of home, wrapped in a warm nest of love, mouth watering. I ponder how lucky I am to have had that kind of childhood.

Happy birthday

Five year-old's party. A barrage of noise. Children gleeful at being let loose in a soft play area. Parents gleeful to have a few uninterrupted minutes for a coffee and a chat.

Pregnant grazing

Grey sheep enjoy grazing in the sunshine, eating for two, maybe even three or four. Their unborn lambs, visible as bulging sides, are oblivious to the vagaries of the weather.

Eating greens

I bite into a raw sugar snap pea. The intensity of the flavor surprises me, I can almost taste the vivid green-ness of it, the taste of summer in the vegetable patch.

Vegicide

Massacring beetroot in the kitchen, magenta blood drips from my hands. It looks like a crime scene. Out damn spot, out I say...

Enhancement

A swathe of fluffy white cloud sits atop the hills. Gilding the lily. Haberdashery for landscapes.

Lust for life

An exuberant puppy strains at his leash, desperate to sniff every single sniff and smell every single smell. The world is so exciting when you're newly in it.

And the living is easy...

The busking trumpet player sounds out the dreamy tones of "Summertime". The irony makes me smile. It's a cold and slightly damp Sunday in January.

A night off

My reflection in the hotel bathroom mirror looks slightly different. Tonight I am me, not mum.

Destination anywhere

A plane streaks across a blue sky, vapour trail dispersing like a woolly pipe-cleaner. I wonder about the passengers, all going the same way, but all on different journeys.

Mixed races

Sittting in a restaurant in the middle of Birmingham. I look around me and realise how much I've missed the cultural diversity of a big city.

Detective work

Toothpaste tubes on the bathroom shelf give away the identity of their owners by the way they've been squeezed.

The expert

On the river a pair of rowers pause to observe. The swan glides on disdainfully.

A flash of promise

The sun reflecting off the car in front is blinding. I don't mind. It's a reminder that the days will lengthen and become brighter, given time.

Fond of absence

No little red dot on my clock radio display. I can wake when I'm ready. Today my time belongs to me, not someone else.

People watching

Unseen, from the window of a first floor cafe, I observe the High Street on a Saturday afternoon. The sheer diversity of the human race always amazes me. It makes me feel very small.

Optimism

The smile lighting up my son's face holds so many of my hopes and dreams for the future.



I hope he can't feel their weight.

Home from work, the house is still, peaceful, waiting for life to energise it. I try not to move too quickly in case I wake it up.



The school run beckons. The stillness will soon dissolve.

Competing with the sound of the extractor fan,

birdsong, greeting the day.



It reminds me of Summer's early dawns.

Misspent youth

Listening to an old favourite album, not heard for years, takes me back twenty years to the smells of hairspray, dry ice and the nightlife of my twenties, when anything seemed possible.



I am still the same, just different.

Revealed

Last year's nest, its hiding place exposed now the branches are bare, sways gently in the breeze. Nature's way of rocking fledglings to sleep.

Dark chocolate with chilli...

... says the chocolate box menu. Too basic a description for something that dances a Tango of flavours in my mouth, all intense and fiery.

Fried egg

the yolk a perfect sun in a cloud of white

Pride

Gone is the anxious leg-clinging child.
Replaced by a child with the confidence to hurl himself headlong into the party, with barely a backward glance.

I must be doing something right.

Landscape painting

dawn steals across the sky, seeping into every corner, painting the day with its colour

Reclaimed space

Festive trappings taken down.
The faces in the photo frames have room to breathe again.

Procrastination

The still-to-do tax return menaces from the box file on the bookshelf.
I wonder what it would feel like to be more organised.

Back to work

Reconnecting with daily life.
Routine is comfortable, like old slippers,
but lacks the sparkle of a pair of party shoes.
But then, party shoes wouldn't be party shoes if we wore them every day...

The thrill of it all

I'm new to blogging but I'm rapidly becoming hooked - this small stone format is making me see things in more detail and they're flowing much more easily than I expected. I love the fact that people from all over the world are reading my little snippets and I have found that there is a frisson of excitement when someone I've never met or communicated with before leaves a comment on one of my posts. Thank you lovely readers! Isn't the internet wonderful?

Concentration

The inexperienced teeter onto the ice rink, all keen to avoid the humiliation of the domino effect

Five minutes more

I stretch languorously. Five more minutes. 08.15. The sound of a car passing outside. This time tomorrow that will be me.

Display until...

Christmas tree looks over-dressed on this January morning,as if it's stayed out all night and is doing the walk of shame

January 1st

Party poppers litter the floor, their innards spent, evidence of the new year's welcome