Driving home, I noticed some signs on gates near to the hospital. And there was a poem.
"When I was a kid I wished no one could see me."
The experience of Becoming Aware of Existence.
Clouded memories, sensations, images and background noises,
Recordings make from a few feet from the earth.
Exhaust fumes in nostrils, the discomfort of deckchairs.
From this body that clings to me, through eye sockets I'm observing,
As strangers survey a city from upper windows of a tower block.
As a child my brother Peter and I spent the summers with
grandparents, each couple having us for a week at a time.
My father’s parents lived a practical life. Granddad was very good with his hands. We spent hours in his shed making all manner
of wonderful toys. Viking boats, shields
and swords.
One hot summer day, with parents, we sat outside on the patio for tea and Grandma’s millionaire’s
short bread. The patio never seemed to
make sense to me. Far too avant-garde an
affair for my grandparents. My grandmother kept dead ends of soap in a plastic
container, and grandfather shaved in the kitchen sink with a small mirror. This patio comprised of two hemispheres,
located about 12 feet apart, each accommodating only a few people perched on chairs on
the uneven surface. Two groups were formed, facing each other across the divide, like
political parties fronting each other in parliament.
Years later, I pondered this incongruity and puzzled it out. As youths, my father and his brothers
had a table-tennis table in the garden.
Soon they had created two hemispherical bald patches on the lawn, and
Granddad was sent out to find broken concrete slabs to make amends for the
damage. Years later no one thought that
the next generation would be left perplexed.
This is my metaphor of how the younger generation is left puzzles over meaning of existence. Some things are
explained. Other things are left to be worked out through deduction.
And back to our Sunday walks....
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| Purple stamens |
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| Contemplative Liz |
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| What Joanna could see from my shoulders - Nosley Hall |
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| Through the grounds of Nosley Hall |
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| A Leicestershire vista |
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| What Joanna saw |
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| Nettle colours |
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| Floral Swan |
