WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

  I am Bombus ruderatus , son of a murdered mother, husband to a feisty woman with a sting in her tale, and together with my cousins we are the humble bumble bees, and we will have our revenge in this life.+   You will recognise me as the aerodynamically challenged insect that bounces from flower to flower.   Draw near and I will tell you a tale that began aeons ago but nears its climax in these modern times.   When the world was young, we all lived in harmony. We the pollinators sipped on the nectar that the flowers offered as payment for our insemination services. The fruits of our labours culminated in sweet honey to feed our colonies. The fruit lure that swelled and encased the pollen impregnated seeds attracted the animals which fed upon the life-giving food, and they in turn dispersed the seeds in their dung or as an agent of locomotion, moving them from one place to another. But then the monkeys came. They pillaged the flowers and fruits indiscriminate...

    The theme for this particular section of the session was ‘cutting something out’.   For no reason that I can fathom, the first thing that came into my mind was a clear memory of my Dad using his walking stick to hack away at long strands of bramble which were encroaching onto public footpaths.   I suppose really it is more of ‘cutting back’ than ‘cutting out’, but what’s a bit of semantics among friends?   Thinking about it now, I should have just supplied my Dad with a pair of secateurs – or perhaps that would not have been so much fun! Cutting Back the Bramble   Thwack! Out struck the cane, the staff, the walking stick with the curved handle. My father’s big hand securely grasping the base of the curve. Thwack, thwack. Take that. Cut it back, thwack it back. Thwack the woody stem once, twice, thrice Until it yields. Cut, thwack, cut it back, Clear the path. Make way for walkers, For pushchairs, For bikes. Cut back t...

  A bright, clear night; the moon rides high. Thin clouds racing past the shining disk which scans the landscape with pale intensity. Passing over limestone country, the Hanglands are below. Part of John Clare’s lost Heath; now an oasis in an arable land. Clare, versing in his head, walked from Helpston to be alone in this green space. Escaping from villagers who thought him strange - a lunatic!? Tonight, the moon tracks a car following the road Clare took one hundred and fifty years before. Head lights challenging the moon’s gaze; it stops by the path to the Heath, No longer a green lane; one hedge grubbed out to extend the crop. The moon lights on two people emerging from the car, escaping from a noisy party. Like Clare - they too want to be alone. Nearby, a little owl picks up beetles fallen from an overhanging oak, a badger scratches and a deer barks. The two young people thrill at the night sounds. Then, still listening, hand in hand, they quietly tak...

  My head is filled with the deafening roar of shingle being dragged back’n’forth, helpless and willing, in the raging surf slapping and sliding towards my feet. And as the pull of the deep contracts, I could sink into the glistening and dazzling sparkles of the thousand shiny black and opal agates.  But while I’m transfixed on the rolling and crashing, Buster has locked his eyes onto something moving, a dark shadow lurching through the waves, breaking the surface of the water only some thirty feet away. Smooth and proud and powerful.  It disappears and we are left searching the white, greens and turquoise blues of the waves. Buster is barking, noiseless in an even louder chorus of chattering shingle, his eyes have seen it before mine. And there it is. A sheen of grey flashes in the sunlight and then a playful flip of a darker tell-tale tail. A humpback whale. He’s inviting us, teasing us and we are such easy prey. I follow Buster and break into a run along the water’s ed...

  God peered over their glasses. ‘Can I have a word please?’ Francis had known there would be repercussions. He swallowed the rising feeling of trepidation. But hadn't God delegated his authority – left the entire matter in Francis hands? It was all very well observing things from afar in Paradise. It was also all very well having 800 years of experience and the title of Patron Saint of Ecology and Animals but that didn't prepare anyone for a visit to Earth.   Glasgow 2021 to be precise.   Taking on the climate crisis that could end the world   - with a bunch of overworked, tired world leaders reeling from the shock of COVID, hosted in the country that voted for BREXIT to boot ( although Scots might disagree). God just hadn't realised the enormity of the task they'd assigned to him. Francis tightened the rope around his waist and hitched up his habit - mentally preparing himself   for God 's disappointment and the inevitable dressing down. He silent...

  The air warmed by the earth beneath, rises lowering pressure on the land; the air over the sea remains cool and dense, higher pressure than anything inland. Aura, mountain maiden, warm-soft rippling, you play the crowd, lifting, caressing, then slip away, untouched, as we turn to your dance. Boreas of the Sarmations, Notos of the Nubians, Eurus of the Indians, Zephyrus at the gates of Africa; ancient bones of I2-point wind rose, life-breath of the Gods. With pressure difference high moves to low, sea to land to equalise, creating sea breezes fro sultry summer days and beaches cooler than our inland fields. Capricious summer winds shovel in and out of Bieggolmai's cave, til brightening Argestes, cloud-clearing, cheers sailors, homeward bound. World-wide the winds respond, as sun's rays, direct striking equator's belt with slanted angles glance at polar lands. Now rising equatorial air (low pressure) draws air circulation from colder poles. Feng Po Po riding through the clo...

  Light leaks in levers out reluctant sight-severing shadows clinging to the night. Like leaven lifting lumpen dead-dark depths of deep time secrets, sheltering from the piercing eye of truth. First filtered rays coax earth-fast shoots, waking to warmth, reaching up to greet the sun- source of exuberant light. defining day, month by month, sufficient for millions of plants and trees to stand tall and grow. From this light, black dissecting those that love the dark must hide and rest, conserve, repair - for in the darkness, too,  comes healing, restoring strength, new season's rising. And in the depths, new knowledge is gained, garnered for growth, understanding is revealed, in a cycle of gift and loss, light' absence welcomed for its promise of life begun again. Paul Middleton Image Belona Greenwood

  Over the 40 + years I have spent observing insects, this I have learned… It is invidious to judge anything by appearance, but some insects will never look attractive in my eyes. B ristletails, earwigs, cockroaches, and many flies fall into this category, while the beauty of other insects draw me to them like… well, a moth to a flame. Fortunately, I am no longer mottephobic, or afraid of moths, an inconvenient condition my mother unintentionally gave me when I was a child. Neither do I have entomophobia, a more general phobia of insects. Instead, I find them fascinating both to observe and to research.   I have also learned that I am never going to see every species of insect, given that they account for over 90% of creatures on the planet, the most diverse group of living animals and the largest biomass among terrestrial animals. Entomologists estimate there are over 10 quintillion insects (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) or about 200 million insects per human at any give...

  Late November leading into early December the air around us seemed to have something in it, a new presence. The air was no longer invisible. Particles coated in the thinnest of gossamer sheaths of cold, gathered and created this shimmering grey white blanket of fog floating, or rather hanging.. not in the air, it filled the air, it was the air.  Still. No wind. Only me moving through freezing water all around me. Stroking my eyes, my cheeks, even my teeth. Tiny beads and droplets find resting places on my beard. There’s cold creeping in between the layers of my clothing with every step, with every move. And there’s a taste. Faint, delicate and only just detectable on the tongue. But it’s there, tantalising and teasing. Then it hits with the memory of frozen lakes high up in the mountains, high up in the silence of the sky, high up so the ice and cold clashes with the bright dazzling light of the sun that looks as if it could be touched. It’s as if the cold has carried this f...

By (Anonymous, for Ferrante Imperato) - http://www.ausgepackt.uni-erlangen.de/presse/download/index.shtml, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9172105 In my study there are many favourite items. Books I have treasured since childhood stand cover to cover with brand new editions, some I have still yet to read, for if I have to acknowledge just one vice, (and I have several) I am a self-confessed book junkie. The mere glimpse of a title leads my mind down all sorts of imaginary pathways, new ideas, new journeys, greater understanding of a subject or merely escapist tales of fantasy. The anticipatory thought of opening a new book and inhaling the smell of fresh print, and the touch of pristine pages, as yet unturned, adds a whole new sensory and tactile dimension to the book reading exercise that online text can never convey. Second-hand books also have their own unique persona. Perhaps stored in slightly damp surroundings at the rear of an old book shop racke...

  I was walking Akerman Street, the Mow Fen of Litelport fame, sited in the Domesday Book, deep in thought about how the ground beneath my feet belongs to no-one. That the infinite pleasure of seeing into the forever is to me, a gift. In those moments my world became a fine place to be. I know much of this landscape but have never written how I feel when I’m alone under the artist’s sky, in the poet’s dreamscape. Easterly blasts of wind took my breath away and deafened my thoughts so that I could no longer hear myself breathe, feel only fear building up in my limbs so that they were heavy and lifeless; the gale thrust me backwards dragging me off my feet as though claiming it for the soil. I am small, insignificant, a strange visitor to this place. But I could not, would not turn back. I quicken my pace to the hypnotic rhythm of leather on gravel. My shadow ahead, the one I would never ensnare alerted me to longer shadows catching up behind. I had heard about the black dog of t...

  One of my favourite possessions is a basic utilitarian object: a sixty year-old glazed stoneware rubber tapping cup. When Dad gave it to me a few years ago, I was delighted. Others might see it best used as drainage in plant pots. But to me it is a remarkable object: aesthetically pleasing, a reminder of my childhood, and an object that speaks resoundingly of colonial power and the rise and fall of a lucrative industry that changed an entire country. So much significance for such a modest object!   Dad acquired the cup in Singapore where he was posted by the RAF from 1959 to 1962 to develop aerial reconnaissance photographs towards the end of the Communist insurgency of 1948 to 1961. This was the happiest time in my parents’ marriage. A third daughter and a son were added to our existing family of four, and we enjoyed all that RAF life offered. As often as he could, Dad would take us into the countryside to see wildlife and the local people going about their lives. Fam...

  On this day 58 years ago the hardest winter in living memory set in and continued until March. Icy blizzards created a complete white out and temperatures barely, if ever, rose above freezing. In those days, blizzards failed to close schools, whereas now the merest flurry of snow grinds the nation to a halt.   To me, it seemed that life carried on as usual, despite artic conditions and deep snow drifts. My dad and mum still went to work at their hairdressing salon in Chesterton, passing other vehicles abandoned for weeks by the side of the road, conked out through engine failures, or stuck in drifts. There was however, one near miss tragedy when my sister and I were traveling with mum and dad along the frozen A10 approaching Milton, and I heard dad say, “Look at that idiot trying to overtake in these conditions.”   Then mum cried out, “He’s going to hit us.” I became aware of a dark transit van skidding broadside from the opposite carriageway across the centre of ...