Although the Autumnal Equinox isn’t until September 23rd, Autumn has arrived. The rowan berries are brilliant and gleaming, in wind wild enough to bring the leaves down in swathes. Oh hang on, you leaves, a little while longer! The nasturtiums are fantastic too — such value for money these glorious little flowers, yellow and orange and red, They spring up every year without seeding or feeding. They love late August sun and I love them.
It’s a strange thing, the human response to natural beauty. I wonder what purpose it serves, what evolutionary logic has brought it into existence?
Meanwhile, this lesser mortal continues to create little artefacts. My mother’s narratives about her grandmother’s family (my great-grandmother and great-grand-aunts and uncles) is on its way out to to various people. There is a date error on the first page (my author mother spotted it immediately, although it escaped through all previous drafts) and a layout error later. But the cover is lovely and the content is a delight.
Who’s in the Next Room?, which comprises lyrics by Thomas Hardy as well as new work by four Dorset poets (Paul Hyland, Kate Scott, Catherine Simmonds and Pam Zinnemann-Hope), is at the printers about to emerge. Alan Dixon came up with a fabulous print for the cover — a real cracker. At the same time, Kate Scott’s individual pamphlet is at first draft stage and I have started work on some new Samplers. Isobel Montgomery-Campbell is first in the group. . . .
The Samplers hold so few poems that they’re lovely to work on. Each individual poem has to make its case irrefutably. There’ll be new PoemCards too: two are at the printers. More are waiting for their illustrations to be done by Annie-Ellen Crowe’s great-great–great-grand-daughter, Gillian.
The new website is nearly ready to get kicked into touch. Not quite. . . . The biggest thing is changing all the customers from the shop over.
At college, (my other job) it’s the start of the academic year. New students will enrol this week. Today they’ll be apprehensive, and the wind will make them even more restless. But what could be better than paper, books, new things to learn and company to learn with?