WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

  Photo by Nicolas Solerieu on Unsplash I stood by the pond in the woods. A silver circle of shimmering light that I visited often. All about me was constant change. Newt eggs sealed in their leafy pitta bread cocoons, each leaf carefully folded by the female newt to safeguard the ovum from desiccation and the attention of predators.   Over time the larvae develop until hatched but even then, the change process continues with feathery gills providing the thin but extensive surface area through which oxygen is absorbed from the surrounding water. Lungs develop and eventually the juvenile newt can leave the pond to breathe air direct, no longer a prisoner within its benign watery gaol. Many insects transform through the stages of egg, larva, pupa to adult. If only science can learn how to replicate the entire regeneration of organs and limbs, much human and animal suffering would be a thing of the past, but paradoxically more time money and effort are expended on finding ne...

  Antonin Danek Were you always there, awaiting my acceptance? For deep-shield darkness is where it all began and in an incremental dawning, I came to know that all I ever really wanted                                                                                                                    was for you to stay. Did I even have a choice as writhing rhythms, pulsating, took hold,                                               ...

  Photo by  FitNish Media  on  Unsplash After the disastrous no-deal Brexit of early 2021 that disrupted imports and caused an alarming spike in food costs, our Parish Council took emergency measures to improve local food security.   The village has always had a strong community spirit, so there were many willing hands to help transform every inch of available land into productive community organic gardens. A decade ago, the view from our house was of Parish Council-owned land, mostly laid to closely-mown grass but fringed with lime, birch, and apple trees. Two deep rows of mixed daffodils between the trees, a patch left unmown for bee orchids, and an out-of-control hedge of brambles completed the picture. It was peaceful, green but lacking in biodiversity, and little used. Today, I join other villagers to weed, tidy, and harvest the bounty from the community garden. From the start, we constructed a method of rainwater capture and distribution so that supple...

Klemen Vrankar 'Tell me about your childhood.' they say. They will be disappointed, they always are, as there isn't much to tell. My childhood is a jumble of brief snippets of memory, tricks of the light, illusions of the mind. I try to remember more to please them, but all that remains is a patchwork of pain.    My father towers over me his arm raised 'Well what have you got to say for yourself?' Nothing, I can say nothing, words evade me as I am terrified into silence. One day I will tell him exactly what I think, but not yet, I am still too young to vocalise my thoughts effectively.   In the bath, I submerge myself beneath the water and feel the peace of the tepid silence that surrounds me, a different feeling to the silence commanded by my father. 'Children should be seen and not heard', one of his many doctrines that enforce my need to scream and shout in protest at the unfairness of the world. 'She could be so pretty if she stopped scowli...

  Photo by  Eugene Mykulyak  on  Unsplash Autumn Equinox apparently. Yesterday the phrase kept being spouted on the radio, on the television and smiling journalists seemed to think it was laden with special meaning for everyone. Magical. Mystical. Certainly a mystery why they kept repeating it over and over. I’ve felt the light lowering and clawing back its golds and ambers to throw somewhere else far away on the other side of the planet. As it pulls back, the elements around me seem to be reaching for just one more moment of comfort; the bricks in the garden walls glow and mottled charcoal shadows of leaves and branches paint themselves on the canvas of red, brown and creams.   A ring-collar dove lands with a noisy flutter and dances along the top of this terracotta stage. A little beige two note Fred Astaire with his eye on the acid red berries of the Rowan Tree that is showing off its fruit in the early morning glow. Will Fred never learn a third note? ...

Aged 4 to 7 years My map begins in a crescent with dog-walking and garden race tracks, cricket pitch and wrestling ring; with hidden dens and secret hedgerow paths, leading to undiscovered lands two houses up the road.    Aged 8 to 13 years We were not especially close in our younger years, there being some years’ difference in age, but my elder brother and I spent a lot of time together during holidays following his hobby, which was fossil collecting. I was useful to him as a carrier of samples, labels, bags and pens – and lunch.   He was useful to me, although I did not always appreciate it at the time, taking me to places and terrain I would not otherwise have encountered. He taught me to “see” the ammonites, belemnites and gastropods which littered the broken shoreline; I imagined the Jurassic seas which spawned them; I wondered at the beauty and variety of form as we split open rock after rock; to scour every detail of the stones which formed the field walls as...

    We were young once, you and me. I remember your birth. Torn from Mother Earth’s womb, yours was no clinical beginning. Crude rapacious machinery hungry for each gobbet of soil clawed at the ground, loading the topsoil to leave behind hillocks of sand and gravel which became my playground. A make-believe battleground for war games, an assault course to hone the leg muscles. A cycle track long before BMX bike parks and mountain bikes were thought of. A source of ubiquitous fossilised belemnite’s   calcitic guards strewn randomly like stone bullets in the aftermath of some apocalyptic gun battle. We even used the sand to make cement.   When Gaia’s waters broke you were the product. At first stained brown with frothy, dust laden bubbles, but as the sediment settled you changed to a crystal-clear life-giving resource for many. Your waters flowed from south to north then west. Steep sided but narrow of channel, your silver bright surface sparkled and twinkled i...