Tag: spring

The world is just a great big onion

There is a spring onion on the path to the church.

I’m not sure how it got there but maybe it’s a sign of spring.

I have visions of it having fallen from someone’s rustic basket as they made their way back from the community shop.

Maybe it made a break for freedom in a sort of stop-motion animation in the style of The Herbs, the children’s television programme by Michael Bond and starring Parsley the Lion, Dill the Dog, the rather fat feathery owl called Sage and those cheeky little Chives belonging to Mr and Mrs Onion, along with a bunch of other herbal characters.

In this episode, the Chives catch a cold.

And to think as children we were captivated by this show. Still, it helped me know my onions (and herbs) and I can still sing the song pertaining to each character.

I’m Dill the Dog, I’m a dog called Dill…though my tail I’d love to get, I’ve never caught it yet!

I’m Bayleaf, I’m the gardener, I work from early dawn, you’ll find me sweeping up the leaves and tidying the lawn…

I’m Constable Knapweed, and I keep law and order. I watch to see that all is well along the garden border.

The spring onion on the path to the church is silent though, probably embarrassed at being named after a season which can’t make up its mind if it’s coming or going.

It was fine earlier this week but now it looks like we’re back to winter again.

I fully expect to find winter greens waltzing along the path the next time I go that way.

See you later in the week.

Love, Maddie x

* The world is just a great big onion / And hate and fear are the spices that make you cry, oh, baby / And the only way to get rid of this great big onion / Is to plant love seeds until it dies, uh huh (woo!)

Mr Blue Sky

The sun came out yesterday.

It was such a momentous sight and feeling – that blue sky, the light bringing pizzazz to the flower border and the warmth chilling even the coldest of hearts.

The daffodils seemed to be laughing with joy. The hellebores were positively gloating.

The roses said ‘prune me, prune me!’ and I managed to fill up the garden waste bin with ease.

The dogs chased each other round the garden and then lay, exhausted, on the chippings on the path, Edgar popping up only when he thought I might have a biscuit to share (I didn’t).

And, then, today, we’re back to normal, with grey skies, driving drizzle and worldwide horrors taking centre stage.

It’s the kind of Sunday- in this part of deepest Dorset at least – to listen to the gentle tunes of Cerys Matthews and Guy Garvey on BBC 6 Music.

Ian Dury’s just struck up Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, which has to be a good sign.

According to the weekly weather forecast, Wednesday’s looking promising.

In the meantime, I’m putting off putting away the winter woollies to make way for the palette of spring, which was one of my jobs today. It just seems too soon.

Anyway, have a great week.

Love, Maddie

Fade to grey

Earlier this week, it felt like spring had sprung.

But now it’s recoiled and we’re back to winter again.

Slightly warmer, milder, but drizzly rain and grey, grey skies.

I’ve always been surprised that grey seems to be an on-trend colour for interior design and fashionable for work suits. Is it still? If so, I have no idea why.

For me, grey equals dull. It summons visions in my head of concrete tower blocks on a wet day, tarmac roads awash with surface water hiding potholes the size of Brazil.

Grey is the colour of unhealthy pallour, ashtrays, taps, the ubiquitous ‘silver’ of most people’s cars and knitting needles.

But, then again, I have streaks of grey at my temples which some people would pay good money to have put into their hair. And I’ve just bought a White Stuff grey gilet in a sale which goes perfectly with pink and maroon and is the antidote to feeling cold in the house.

So, horses for courses – and grey mares at that. Spring will suddenly arrive and bask us all in its beauty and we’ll forget what all the fuss was about.

This week, I’ve been mostly filling in grant application forms (grey-ish), putting off a major editing job (far too grey), going to a matinee of Hamnet at the local cinema (surrounded by grey-haired people), attending a meeting about an exciting exhibition (red) coming to a town near me and watching the deeply disturbing Channel 4 docudrama, Dirty Business (definitely my colour of brown, but not in a good way). If this doesn’t shake up the water industry like ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office then nothing will.

Uncomfortable viewing. No shades of grey in this series, all very black and white, and told and acted in a way which the audience can follow easily but with increasing dismay and anger. The scale of the scandal of untreated sewage pumped knowingly into our rivers and oceans is monumental, especially when set against the fact that profits come before public health.

Dirty business indeed.

And still it goes on. Something must be done.

I’m not sure how I got from grey to the devastatingly beautiful Hamnet and then to sewage pollution, but that’s my week so far. How about yours?

Good morning to the snowdrops

Saw these this morning and I just had to stop to say hello.

They didn’t respond but I think they were pleased to see me.

For some reason, I was whistling Let ‘Em In by Wings, which sent me down an internet rabbit hole when I got back home, as I wanted to find out the significance of the names of the people Paul McCartney was welcoming through the door.

I knew ‘Phil and Don’ were the Everly Brothers, the Amercian music duo so beloved of my two older sisters back in the day.

‘Martin Luther’ I got (King rather than the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation) and ‘Brother Michael’ was clearly Mike McCartney, who, as Mike McGear, went on to become a member of The Scaffold, well-known for the hit song Lily the Pink.

The others I figured were members of the extended McCartney family – ‘Auntie Gin’ etc – so was genuinely surprised when I learned that ‘Uncle Ernie’ was a reference to The Who drummer Keith Moon, who played the disgusting and depraved character of that name in the film version of the rock opera Tommy.

(I just looked that up on YouTube and wish I hadn’t.)

I did wonder how Martin Luther King and Keith Moon might get on with each other. I thought Auntie Gin might be a soothing presence and the Everly Brothers, I hope, would have something harmonious to say about it.

You can find out more about Let ‘Em In here, on the unofficial fan website, The Paul McCartney Project.

It is said you should learn something new every day, which is the one good thing about the mobile phone because I use it for all sorts of trivial fact-finding missons.

Well, you never know what questions you might get in the next pub quiz.

Have a great week everyone.

Love, Maddie x

Spring is in the air

After a grey, grim old day yesterday, we have blue skies and signs of spring here in West Dorset.

There’s mud everywhere and it’s squelchy underfoot but the many puddles are reflecting the changing of the seasons.

We’re not there yet but it won’t be long.

On my morning walk, I glanced up when I heard the corvid call of rooks building nests in the tall trees in the copse.

And then a deer scuttled through the undergrowth.

‘The longer days are coming,’ said my farmer friend as he came down the hill from the community shop with his newspaper under his arm.

“But I fancy the daffodils are a bit early.”

I met a man in the lane who I thanked for his expertise in the community pub the other night when our very own Celebrity Farmer and his sidekick regaled the gathered throng with tales from their escapades on the Channel 4 show, Hunted.

(They should have done Bake Off.)

The man in the lane had provided his sound and vision expertise for the talk, which was just as well because the place was packed and none of us would have been able to hear it otherwise.

He told me he’s going to be at the village hall next weekend to help when I put on an archive film show as part of a project recording the memories of older people born and bred here in Lush Places.

It’s people like him who quietly get on with helping others who are the unsung heroes among us.

The international stage is a frightening place and there are personal situations all around where people are suffering.

But to be dragged down by all of that means the extinguishing of hope. We have to celebrate the small big things that make a difference.

I thought about all the volunteers in our pub who are keeping it going while we interview for a new manager. I thought about the volunteers in the shop who man the till.

The people who run the village hall, the people who keep our lovely church up and running, the people who lock and unlock the gate everyday on the multi-use games pitch, the people who listen to children reading at school and those who give up their time to look after our communal open spaces.

So many people, in small and big ways, doing their bit and keeping the community from coming unstuck.

To steal a well-known slogan, every little helps. And it really does.