Tireless earth

Juggling the frantic schedules of work; house and school, I found myself, one family Christmas holiday, holed up in a hotel room unable to get myself out of bed. The nine- hour flight had finally sapped the last remaining vestiges of energy from my sorry being.

For me, that was the close of one chapter and the beginning of another.

Although living on a beautiful island, I had allowed myself very little time to appreciate the changes of the seasonal details in the tapestry of my life. Except, maybe, on one occasion when I had sat outside a beach hut with friends, admiring the full, summer moon shimmering in a hot, pink sky.

And so we moved, some three hundred miles west, to a place of childhood memories in which to seek a softer way of life. I chose a quiet spot, with a signature silver- birch tree in the garden. Where the vast expanse of cloud-strewn blue sky envelops you if you lie out under the sun; and cloaks you in the sparkly ink of night. Where the early morning sea mist and the gulls remind you how close you are to the sea; and where quite often the only sound is that of the early-morning cooing of the wood pigeons.

People still come and go. The constraints of time still feature in a necessary, if lesser way.  The moon is still waxing, trees are still blossoming, birds are still singing and the grass is still green(er) and growing.  The difference being that I now take the time to notice these things and internalise them into my far richer experience of this life on this earth, this tirelessly, turning earth.

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