Being Outside More

Clusters of elderflowers are bursting out all over, lining the green cycle ways around Bristol. I've been reading about some of the folklore and superstitions associated with the elder tree ( Sambucus nigra )  this week and wanted to write something, but wasn't sure what. Then yesterday I joined a new writing group for women in a cool quiet library and all those bubbling thoughts seemed to want to be a poem. Here it is: The Spirit of the Elder Tree Summer has come crashing in early A sticky sweaty suncreamed heatwave But here are delicate white elderflowers, and a sweet scent on the breeze Maybe this year, I will pick blooms for cordial or champagne I say this every year And every year, I don’t She is maidenly right now, lacy like a bride With all the baggage that comes with a white dress Don’t fall for it girls Blossom promises but soon fades For the Elder tree carries the power of three The maiden, the mother, the crone Planted at your gate it keeps away evil spirits Right n...

Today is a bank holiday in the UK, once called the Whitsun bank holiday. One of those little bits of trivia tucked away in the brain that’s never really interrogated. The half-remembered poem by Phillip Larkin, hot weather and wedding parties on a train, vague recollections of working class families visiting the seaside (mainly based on my childhood reading of The Family from One End Street), half-formed images of May queens and girls in white dresses. The things we forget we know. On consultation with my friend Wikipedia I discovered that Whitsun is the seventh Sunday after Easter, and in Christian belief marks “the descent of the holy spirit on Jesus’ disciples” (which sounds vaguely uncomfortable to my heathen ears). The day after Whitsun was known as Whit Monday and was made a bank holiday in 1871, marked for 100 years and then abolished in 1971. The moveable nature of the festival was removed and it was then fixed as the last Monday in May for the more prosaically named Spring Ban...

After a slightly stressful start to the day involving a chemistry exam and a disappearing taxi, I really needed to retreat into the calm of one of my favourite places in Bristol’s city centre, the central library. I wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or alarmed by the damp handwritten notice on the gate which read: “Apologies. Due to a power outage, the library is closed until further notice”. Comforted because of its’ handwritten temporary-looking nature, as that should mean a brief closure, but then alarmed at the vagueness of “until further notice”. With the omnicrisis raging around us, a beleaguered prime minister, conflicts in various parts of the world, and as Radio 4 cheerily informed me this morning, an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a little bit of certainty would be very welcome right now. As I urged on the little cab icon on my phone screen this morning, casting up prayers to various traffic gods, one thing became very clear, independence is a myth. ...

A memory of being small, crouched down between blackcurrant bushes heavy with winking dark beads of fruit. The leaves over my head, a green cave. This space became my private playhouse on Saturday mornings when I visited the allotment with my dad, each gap between the bushes serving as a different room. I am alone in this memory, happy and secure, a contented small child’s certainty that this is the way of the world. Although of course, my father was in reality only feet away, digging, raking or considering his compost heap. During the week he would cycle ten miles each way to central London, where he worked as an antiquarian bookseller, spending his days with illuminated manuscripts on vellum, and incunabula, the earliest of printed books. The contrast between his weekday and weekend selves was acute. Other memories surface, exploring a neglected plot, overgrown with grass, or chasing my younger brother up and down the sunbaked mud path in the middle of the site. Care had to be taken ...

A damp misty start to a May bank holiday, but the rain of the last two nights feels like a relief after a dry April with no significant rainfall. I have been haunting plant stalls that pop up seasonally outside my local shops recently, treating myself to colourful bedding plants and interesting looking perennials that surely I can squeeze into my garden somewhere. When all else in life seems overwhelming, tend the garden. Watering my newly planted pots early in the morning or in mellow evening light has become a daily meditative process. The deal is simple, I give them good compost and enough water and they stay alive, each day I urge them on. This week it was petunias and antirrhinums from outside Bristol Sweetmart, precariously bungeed onto the back of my pannier rack ahead of the cycle home. The snapdragons conjure childhood memories of squeezing the flower heads to make the ‘dragons’ roar. Last weekend I watched my neighbours patiently weeding rogue ox-eye daisies, muscari and clum...