The Word Cloud

Hi there, I haven't posted here before but I figure that I might as well start now.

At the moment I'm intending to enter into the Pratchett contest, but this could easily change.

Anyway, on with the story;

Chapter One:

I don’t really exist, at least, not in the way that most people do. I certainly live and breathe, I occasionally go to the cinema and walk the dog, I do the normal things that most people do. Yet there’s a part of my life that ensures that I’m not really like other people. And that is that everything I do, from butter my toast in the morning to clean my teeth at night has plausible deniability with the government.

Which means, more or less, that they can entirely and on the slightest whim, deny my very existence, despite any evidence at all to the contrary, including my actual physical body.

As you can imagine this presents me with a number of problems, not least of which is the curious feeling that my life is simply impossibly expendable. After all, if you can totally deny someone’s existence then it is all the easier to actually ensure that they no longer do exist. Then there’s the fact that it disproves one of the more reliable that old sayings, ‘I think therefore I am’ which is all well and good in theory, but in my case not even thinking proves I am, not when the government can say I’m not.

Then there’s the problem of relationships.

It is almost impossible to actually commit to a relationship where one might possibly not be at any given moment. After all, it is hard to feel enthused about going on a date when by the same time the next day it would be entirely possible that you’d actually have never existed.

In which case, one must wonder, who exactly did eat that order of onion rings?

These are not perhaps the most normal thoughts to be having whilst laying in rapidly cooling bathwater, but unfortunately I’d forgotten to buy batteries and so the early morning fishing show that I normally listened to on the bathroom radio was denied me.

Normally I’m in the bathroom every morning for about forty minutes, I find that to be a just about adequate time to bathe, brush my teeth, spray on anti-perspirant, shave with a beard trimmer to keep that five o’clock shadow looking strong, and last and certainly not least, spend at least fifteen minutes reading whilst perched on the toilet.

Some days those fifteen minutes are the most enjoyable part of my day.

After I’d finished my daily battle with hygiene, I headed downstairs and flicked on the lime scale encrusted kettle, and then buttered two slices of toast before heading into the living room. Apparently, most people who work for the government like to start their days by watching the news. I on the other hand normally get my day started with cartoons, I could tell you that it’s because I see enough terrible things during the day anyway, but that would be a lie.

The truth is that I just like cartoons.

Unfortunately the heady days of the 1980’s are long gone, and there’s literally nothing on TV that even comes close to rivalling Danger-Mouse, The Transformers or He-Man. Which is probably for the best now that I think about it, as all that I’d ever do is sit on my couch and watch TV.

I think that’s probably my dream job in fact, someone who just sits around all day and does nothing but watch TV and play video games. The worst part about that whole scenario is that growing up I wasn’t actually like that at all, this yearning to do nothing has only really developed as the novelty of my job has worn off.

Most people it seems go through this stage at university, and then snap out of it when they hit the real world. Perhaps this is where I went wrong, as I never went through that at all during my studies, and am only now experiencing a yearning to do nothing other than eat super-noodles and watch old A-Team episodes.

 The only trouble is that the next big life step for me is retirement rather than that, and thankfully I’m still a number of years away from joining the silvered ranks.

But then again of course, considering that my other life’s ambition has been to be a dirty old man, perhaps that’s not such a good thing after all.

Goddamn early mornings make me morose.

Every working morning starts for me at 4:00AM, and I’m out of the door by 5:25AM, and on the tube fiteen minutes later. A journey that has depressed me more and more woth each passing day. Years ago a friend of mine told me that the best time of the day to travel was early, before the herd was on the streets, and to a dergee I can see his point, but I simply hate looking at the greyness and dirt of the London Underground.

This of course ensures that by the time I get to work I feel like overdosing on prozac, which is a feeling I’m pretty sure that I share with a lot of other people, and I know that there are thougsnads out there who would happily swap places with me.

The thing is that I don’t actually care, these are my problems and by God I’m going to complain about them.

Once upon a time the department I worked in was thriving and busy, and there were almost infinifte new ideas and specualations in the field. It was doubtless exciting work, forging the proverbial frontiersman’s path through the mysteries and wonders of the world.

Unfortunately, that was almost fifty years ago, and since then there has been virtually nothing of note to happen here, and I’ve become more and more sure with each passing week that the only reason that the place is still operational is that everywhere else has simply forgotten that we exist, and the only reason that we get paid is that a hungover payroll clerk somewhere forgot to erase us from the database.

This is because, for 90% of my day to day life, I simply sit at my desk and play spider-solitare and Windows pinball whilst avidly clockwatching. Maybe once a month a new report will come in and I’ll actually have to read it before introducing it to the aged shredder.

Other than that though there’s pretty much nothing to do.

Please don’t think though that I’m unusually apathetic for my workplace. My boss, who by dint of seniority actually has an office rather than a dank corner of an open plan office, seems to spend the entire day reading that day’s Telegraph and taking long and luxuriant trips into the bathroom.

Other than him there’s only one other person in my office, and that’s Richard, who always seems to be frantically busy. All through the day I can hear his keyboard ticking over, and his face is almost always screwed up with concentration, a sheen of sweat over his brow and his hair laying damp on his head.

I once asked the boss as to exactly what Richard did all day, and only received a shrug and a blank look in response. Eventually, by waiting patiently until the one day he forgot to password protect his PC before heading out to lunch I discovered that he spends most of his working day writing lesbian pornography.

I suppose it’s nice that he has a hobby, but I really, really wish it was one that didn’t leave him red faced and sweating for the duration of the day.

Still, at least he’s quiet.

I suppose I should mention the name of the company I work for, after all it will come to play a big part in this I’m sure. Governmental branch Mi-13, the supernatural and psionic wing of the government. We were formed back during WW2, when there was a lot of talk about Hitler getting involved with the Occult, and trying to track down relics like the spear that pierced the side of Christ, or the Holy Grail.

My interview preparation for this role was watching the Indiana Jones movies, and a documentary on ‘Magik’ where Ray from the Ghostbusters did the voice over.

For those of you who don’t know, a lot of other Mi agencies sprung up during the wars, above and beyond Mi5 and Mi6. In fact, there was an Mi1 through Mi19, though they deny the existence of us and Mi18 which, strictly off the record you understand, deals with extraterrestrial activities.

Had I been short-listed for Mi-18 I would probably have watched the Men In Black movies.

The problem is that since the end of the war there really hasn’t been anything going on.

Oh sure, occasionally you hear about some crazy Russian plan to train telepathic kids who can assassinate people at a distance, or people like Yuri Geller turn up and raise a few eyebrows. Even funnier is when someone like Derren Brown pops up on the scene, tells everyone that he ISN’T a psychic, and people don’t actually believe him and accuse him of really having magical powers.

Madness.

If we were a more pro-active organisation then we might be out there looking for things like that, trying to see if there are actually kids being born in the shadows of Chernobyl who are, in the finest conditions of superhero stories everywhere, blessed with nuke-spawned powers that make them into Homo-Superior. Unfortunately that isn’t happening, all we actually get are people born with hideous radiation sickness and terrible, and ultimately entirely unhelpful, mutations.

Then of course there’s ‘magic’, which I’ve always believed was so much bunkum. For the simple reason that if there were actually people out there consorting with Demons and Devils and able to command forces beyond our ken then why isn’t it more well known? And why are the only alleged practitioners of magic stinking hippies or pagans who have nothing better to do than prance around naked and wave blunted swords around?

If I had magic powers then you could be damn sure that I’d use them for a site more than they ever seem to.

Still, in my early months in the job I actually did spend hours and hours chasing leads, talking to people and looking around at the British library and infiltrating a few gatherings to try and actually find something that was unusual. By the end of the year though it had truly dawned on me that there was nothing out there, no people with the ability to move things with their minds, no magic that couldn’t be better explained by the placebo effect.

Nothing.

So I just did what anyone else would do in my position, I settled back at my desk and waited for retirement.

Obviously I could look for another job, but by nature I’m not inclined to do so, acquired laziness being my curse. In addition I’m pretty sure that if I wait out the next ten years I’ve got a shot at my own office, where I’ll actually be able to sleep through the day, and that will solve pretty much all of my problems.

There’s a familiar dry smell that permeates our office, the smell of being pretty much uninhabited for a long time. The cleaning lady comes by once a week, and seems to do a single lap with the Hoover before sitting at a random desk and wiping the dust off it. This is particularly pointless, as the office actually holds fourteen desks, and only two of them actually get used, so Richard and I have a pretty damn slim chance our desks getting cleaned.

On my desk sits a computer that’s only a little older than I am, a telephone that I can’t ever remember being called on, and a desk fan, that is so clogged with dust it would probably explode if I turned it on. When I start up the PC in the morning it sounds like a jet engine going off, and has a one in three chance of crashing before it has finished booting up.

Two weeks after starting here I actually tried to talk to someone at the IT department about getting it fixed. Four weeks after I started I hadn’t even managed to get anyone at the IT to so much as take my name and acknowledge my existence, and so gave up, a thoroughly defeated man, and started to bring in my own personal laptop to work, and leech off the unsecured wi-fi from across the street.

This blatant contravention of protocol was ignored entirely by everyone else, which I felt spoke volumes about the respect that they held for the job.

Other than Richard’s propensity for penning pornography whilst at work, and the fact that my boss is both married and a member at Surrey Cricket Club I know nothing about either of them, and there’s nothing at all at my desk that could possibly tell them anything about me. My understanding is that they both subscribe to the old British maxim of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’.

Though it could easily be that they, like me, simply struggle to actually find any kind of enthusiasm to make conversation.

After my shift is done I normally just get on the tube again, head home and then collapse onto my couch, play video games, watch TV and then get in bed ready to get up again at the same horrifyingly early time the next day.

By now you’re probably wondering exactly why I’m bothering you with the minutiae of my day-to-day life, and the answer is pretty easy. It’s just to show you exactly how unusual the upcoming events are going to be. After all if I tell you that I work for Mi-13, and then give you this story then you’d probably just assume that it was pretty normal for me, and that I was some kind of trained agent like James Bond or something similar, all of which couldn’t really be further from the truth.

First up a big 'Hello' to people on The Word Cloud who can now read this as well as my 2oth Century Cinema blog. You've missed about a year so try to keep up.

As of four o'clock this afternoon The Infernal Comedy is out of my hands and into those of an agent (via the Royal Mail anyway). I spent time choosing the right agent to approach and then more time researching them so I could spend a day writing the best covering letter I could. I spent another two days writing the perfect synopsis.

I hate writing synopses and I've always assumed that it's because of the difficulty of cutting a big story down to a page and half. But I reckon i could do it with ease to someone else's story so that's not it. I now think it's that, however much we want others to read our work, we really write to please ourselves. But the synposis is just a tool, designed to appeal to someone else. To us it is just a watered down version of something that has already achieved perfection.

Anyhoo, It's done, it's gone, I refuse to worry about it.  Yeah, right.

The best way to not worry about soemthing you can't change anyway is to work on something else. I have two other big projects in the pipeline. The first is a sitcom which reached the semi finals of the sitcom trials last year and which was read through at LCW earlier this year. That version was only ten minutes long but it seemed to go down well and I like the charcaters so I'm expanding it and seeing how it goes. It's one which i genuinely enjoyed writing so I'm looking forward to getting back to it.

A more difficult but arguably more interesting prospect is the musical which, as regular readers will know, has been in various degrees of gestation since last November. The story is now locked and the title is Learning to Fly. Everything else is up in the air. It's a while since I worked with a partner and for this it's a necessity because I can't write music. It should be good for me but in some areas we have very different ideas.  I also hadn't really thought about how much I give away; in a musical the major moments, the dramatic beats, are underlined in song, if they weren't it wouldn't be a musical, so i am having to come to terms with the idea of taking the moments over which i would usually expend the most time and sweat and giving them to someone else to write. It's weird. There are going to be problems, there are going to be fights, but it is a great story and one which I really feel will work best as a musical. At this point however I have too much material (the story is historical and largely true), I have to find a spare few hours and pare down the material to a clear and concise story. Which can be agonising but it's also one of my favourite parts of the process, the longer I do this more I prefer storylining and structuring to dialogue.

The name 90 pages for this blog has ceased to be really appropriate, since a sitcom is 25 pages and the musical I have no earthly idea, but I'll keep the title, I like it. And I'll keep you up to date with developments on The Infernal Comedy, don't hold your breath, I sure won't.

Blots on the landscaped canvas
Deserts or fields nobody cares
I picture artists's palettes
Wetted up freshly mixed
Sticky tainted death drawn shades
Painted out wounded faces
Mamed bodies blast blown apart
Sniper's Bullets aimed fired fell
Poppy red spills remembered
Clotted blood smells fill nostrils
Rotting fleesh stomachs churned chucked
Battlezone booms friends departed
Comrades in war fallen heros
Forever forgotten gone
Lest we remember each one
That gave their life in service

Saturday 9:30am it's drizzling
but still I here the charming melodies
of garden birds calling away
From the window where I sit
I can see out onto the street
All is quiet except for the odd fluttering
and the familiar cheery face
of the postman doing his rounds
as a yappy dog sees him on his way

The recognisable clatter of my letterbox
Followed by the flipping, flapping, flop
of letters falling on to my tiled floor
I rise from my chair to retrieve them
White envelopes and a variety of junk mail
No difference there then
Just how  long ago was it
Since I last received a cheery hello,
miss you, thankyou, love you?

I blame it all on modern technology of course
Never did I think I too would be entangled by the web
Too old now for that
my schooling long since passed
But no, slowly I get caught up into emails
Facebook, Twitter and the likes
Being pretty housebound it brought me company
I/we made new friends together
And now look forward to my newer daily mailbox

Even with computer progression the unwanted mail comes
Not the bills, reminders nor bank
They're mainly formalities with direct debits anyway
But scammers and unwanted advertisers
That push their way into your home
no matter how you try to block them
So desperate are they to clench a deal
In this climate of recession
Where so many have no work

                                         / /
                                       / /    /
                                    Your
sophisticated, strong, curvy
stance attracts me - along
 with that subtle perfumey
 scent - Upright you stand
 tall and sleek - Angelic
 creamy white you smile
   to the Heavens above
     Nature's creatures
     adore your gentle
      style - The pride
        of your family
           Head and
           shoulders
              above
               most
               floral
             counter-
              parts -
                You
                are
               proud
                 to
                 be
                 a
                 lily

We all have different reasons for writing blogs. Some of us do it to get a response to their creative writing, some just want to discuss something to do with writing (it is what it’s about here in the clouds after all), some just want to share something they have found out and some just write what’s on their mind because a writer writes and it’s a good practice to do at least one thing every day. I think I usually fall into the latter category and there is something that has certainly been on my mind for a quite a while. The time has come to air it.

My next door neighbour is a retired civil servant. He retired about eight years ago at the age of 56 on a very good, in fact I think unreduced, full pension. He’s a nice bloke and a good neighbour in a cheery good morning washing the car, “everything OK?” kind of way. If you have ever had bad neighbours as we did once, you will know how important that can be.  Neighbours, to my knowledge, haven’t walked in through unlocked back doors unannounced since I was 5 years old and living somewhere else entirely, that’s not what I am saying. Just good, unobtrusive neighbours who's names you actually know. But I digress. I am a child of private enterprise and industry such as we have in our benighted land. No feather bedded taxpayer funded early retirement for me. I know that I will probably have to work until I drop in one sense or another.

I have silently resented this little fact about the bloke next door for the last eight years. Then yesterday I found out that he has quietly become the full time director of a local charity. He devotes nearly all of his time to children from this region with Downs Syndrome. It's virtually a full time job and he does it completely unpaid.

Bugger, now I can’t feel self righteous about that either. Ah well. Tea break over, back on my head!

OK guys. For some time it has been quite clear  that the cloud gods have a separate life. They run a business called the Writer's Workshop, they are writers for a living and they started this site from a combination of altruism, genuine interest and also the hopeful hope that a bit of business may come their way.

A number of us, significant number, enjoy having a go in the monthly comp, me included. But we can't really expect too much. This has been discussed before. They don't actually charge anything to be here. And you know this really is a great site. Really! I want it to stay much as it is.

Wrathnar has decided to have a go himself at a competition and for me that's really great. He has a good and challenging idea and I hope that The Cloud will have a word and adopt his suggestion in a vaguely "official" fashion. But whatever, it is a good comp, so let's treat it respectfully. Wrath has stuck his neck out a bit here. So please. Treat it like a Cloud comp. Entries in the thread. Banter somewhere else. Eh?

The WordCloud is not strictly the place for this sort of blog, but in the Science and Religion thread found here:  http://www.thewordcloud.org/magazine/read/science-and-religion_2058.html#comments
Gerry asked me if I could relate something of my experience of God in my life – which I had said helps to prove to me that He exists. It is obviously partly autobiographical, so I suppose it can qualify on that count. I can’t write a whole book here, as many others more able than me have already done. Their works are readily available and make for fascinating reading.  I’ll just jot down some personal notes.

First, some of the evidence that has caused me and millions like me to take that step of faith and so find proof for ourselves.

(1) The universe: unimaginably immense and marvellous; our own solar system, fairly ordinary as solar systems go and yet absolutely amazing in its complexity; our planet, just the right distance from the sun and made up of just the right elements to sustain life; life itself; the wonder and beauty of nature; the intricacy of sub-atomic physics, the enormity of forces that have formed vast mountain ranges and river systems in all their splendour: all there by pure, unguided chance? My faith is nowhere near strong enough to sustain that belief. To me the belief that all this has been designed, created, and sustained by a ‘Being’ who is greater than all of it, is far more logical. In fact, without such a Being, no one - no theory, no explanation - is able to look back before ‘the beginning’ and say, or even suggest what, or Who, caused it all to begin.

(2) The Bible, a library of 66 books whose 40 or so human writers spanned at least 4000 years, consisting mainly of history, law and poetry, has an absolutely amazing cohesion from start to finish, only satisfactorily explained by its own claim to have been inspired throughout by the same God, the Holy Spirit. The oldest manuscripts of much of the Bible date back as far as 400 AD, approximately and are some of the oldest manuscripts of any sort in existence. And unlike some other ancient writings where only one or maybe just a few copies have been preserved, there are literally hundreds of copies of the scriptures extant.  And the amazing accuracy of the translations we have today, after 1600 years of (mostly, until recent times) hand copying of the writings, is itself a testimony to its supernatural preservation. Over 300 prophecies written by Old Testament writers were fulfilled by the life (and death and resurrection) of Jesus Christ. The most recent of those prophesies were written 400 years before Christ’s birth and the oldest were over 3500 years before that. The teaching of Christ, although now almost 2000 years old, are still the best possible set of guidelines for living and provide the best source of absolute values in a world of continuously changing and shifting standards. I, like countless others, can’t help seeing the guiding hand of God in this most amazing of books.

(3) Humankind: the highest, most advanced form of life that we know is demonstrably much more than just that. People the world over from as far back as we have any knowledge of, have shown a desire – a need – to worship a higher Being. Nothing like this is seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom. We are different, not just more developed. (The Bible explains that, unlike the animals, we are created ‘in God’s image’ with a spirit.) This would certainly explain humankind’s constant searching for something or someone beyond themselves, and the emergence of all sorts of what have come to be known as religions to try to meet that need. (I never think of Christianity as a religion: it is simply the way to God; and Jesus said it is the only way.) To me, it is not logical to think that this character trait in humans to worship, which is prevalent in every generation and in every tribe and nation throughout history, is a chance occurrence: ‘Some people need a prop’ is the common dismissive explanation. The logical explanation is the Biblical one: that we are made to be able to commune with our creator, which explains why down through the ages, and more than ever in this current generation, people are looking to the supernatural for explanations.

Faced with all this evidence, and told about how God does, indeed want to have a loving Father/son relationship with me, I took the decision to accept as true, what He has said about me and everyone else: that the wrong in my life has separated me from God. Never mind anything that I might think of as good in me. They don’t cancel each other out. It’s like links in a chain. No matter how many good links there are, if there are any bad, broken ones – even just one – the chain is no use. The Bible says sin is like that; if it’s there at all, the link with God is broken and there is no way any amount of ‘good’ that we may try to do can alter the fact that the link is gone. That’s why God took the momentous decision to bridge the gap Himself by sending his Son, Jesus, who lived among us without sin – the only perfect individual ever to have lived. In dying in our place the Bible says God laid on him all the sin of everyone who had ever lived or ever would live.

A just God must judge justly. He cannot overlook law-breaking – however much He loves the law-breakers and longs to be reconciled with them. If He did, He would immediately cease to be just, no longer perfect – no longer God. So he arranged for the penalty to be paid for us the only other way possible, by allowing that which was perfect to ‘become sin for us’ and to die and be banished from God’s presence (a fate, literally, worse than death) instead of us. The only trouble was, there was no one other than his only Son who was perfect and could fulfil that role. Yet, the Bible says, ‘God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.’

It was explained to me from other Bible passages that that expression, ‘believed in Him’ meant to trust in Him, put my faith in Him, rely on Him to guide my life. That I needed to:

(A) admit my wrong-doing – that I am a sinner and need forgiveness
(B) believe that Jesus has done on the cross all that is necessary for God to forgive me
(C) commit my life to Him and give Him control so He can start to change me to become more like Jesus

When I did, I received an assurance within me – like a sort of inner peace – that God had, indeed, forgiven my sin. And, rather more significantly, I received God Himself(!) – the Holy Spirit, to live in me, alongside my own spirit. As I started to learn to yield to Him and ask Him to direct my life, so I believe He does guide my thoughts and decisions.  Not that I stopped forever doing anything wrong! Becoming a Christian isn’t becoming ‘perfect’. It depends who’s in control. When I consciously yield to God and seek his guidance, He gives it (maybe through a passage of scripture, the advice of a Christian friend, or by putting a particular thought in my mind). But if I start doing my own thing and stop paying attention to the Spirit’s prompting, thing can easily go wrong. Even then, though, it’s so good to know my loving heavenly Father, ‘if I confess my sin (am genuinely sorry), is faithful and just to forgive my sin and to cleanse me from unrighteousness.’

Being able to talk to God and knowing He’s there right with me in every situation is a real confidence booster, and a comfort, too, when things don’t go too well – proof to me that He is very real indeed. Auto-suggestion, I can hear someone say. Well, maybe – if it weren’t for the Spiritual gifts He lets us have. There is a string of God-given abilities that He distributes amongst his children. Some quite ‘ordinary’ like the gift of helping others, or the gift of administrating; others, more expected perhaps, like the gift of teaching, or evangelism, and yet others of a more obviously supernatural nature like the gift of prophecy (not normally foretelling future events, but more often speaking into a situation some wisdom or insight from God), the gift of knowledge (becoming aware of something about someone else that you would have no way of knowing), or of healings (being used by God to channel his healing to someone who is sick).

We are encouraged to pray for the sick and I have found, particularly with headaches, God has often healed people in answer to my prayers. Not always – and that’s a whole other topic! – but proof to me that God is there and answers prayer.  Regarding ‘knowledge’ I can tell you, for example, of being given a picture in my mind of a friend sitting at a table with her head in her hands, weeping. I had no idea why this should be so, but with my wife, Anita, I asked her if it meant anything to her. It turned out she was having a very bad time at work and had been in just such a state. Being able to talk about it helped her to begin to see her way through it. Proof to her that God was concerned for her well-being and proof to me that He gives gifts to his children as they need them.

Our second daughter was born with a split lip and cleft palate and I can still remember thanking God that this complication had developed in our little girl and not in the other baby who was born within minutes of her to a mother, who as far as I knew, had not opened up her life to receive God’s help through such a trauma. I knew He would be with us through the difficult times ahead, as indeed He was – right up to the time for her third operation (first, to mend the split lip; second, to join the front palate). She was prayed for at our church before she was due for the third op. to join the back palate. When she went into hospital they found there was no need for an op.; the palate was healed.

God has proved himself to me over and over again. Not always in some spectacular way. More often by that calming inner assurance that He is with me in the mundane, day-to-day things of life. I really couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be without him now. But I know I’ll never have to. That’s another thing He’s promised: that He’ll ‘never leave me or forsake me.’ Bren quoted a couple of days ago, ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ Just stop for a moment and consider.  

One of God’s best promises, I think, is this: ‘If you seek me you will find me.’ It’s conditional – but it is a promise – which I have proved conclusively to myself, and – more to the point – which anyone who actually wants to, can prove for themselves, too. 

From the East amber skies streak
Morning’s golden glory rising
becomes a giant yellow-white cheese melt sizzling
Burning down it’s fiery head

In the pond there’s a bubble, ripple, frog
Smiling its ‘I don’t give a damn look’
With sudden movement he’s up tall and stretched
and his froggy tongue darts out to catch insect

At waters edge hundreds of squirmy long tailed tadpoles
growing, wait to join the chorus
A dragonfly hovers a while before swooshing away
While waterboatman rows all way round pads of lily

The shining sun dances light and shadows
through the longer grasses and trees
Dazzling unexpectedly the one who awakens from sun-bathing
pepper red from too long, an agonising site and dangerously sore skin

Through the garden’s archway
a perfumed breeze fills the nostrils
transcends such simple heady delights
jasmine clematis and honeysuckle scented pleasantries

With silky gossamer velvet coated wings
the brightest yet most delicate of these things
Flutters prettyness as it flirticiously plays with companion
Carefully avoiding the intricate weave of woven spiders web

A hum and buzz from the flapping wings of wasps and bees
as they go about collecting their dusty pollen from each flower
A pretty red ladybird four black spots on wing
and a caterpillar crawling munching lettuce leaves for dinner

A rainbow of colourful beauty
garlands swags baskets and beds (le jardin en fleur)
Few daisies dandelions hold their own
until tomorrows mower sees them gone

Nature’s hands unveil baby birds
trialling first flight from nest
and babbling brook as it rushes chance carried stones
washed, tumbled, turned, have no rest

The lush of the land lies as velvet moss green carpet
The river rushing its morning wash
rumbling as it spins twisting and turning its tidal path
over the chance carried stones to the seas
Where the coastal sands of time are met
Meeting waves pulled by undercurrents
Finding rocks, kale, seaweed and moss covered
Just as the hair of cherubs faces foamed
Then gently adorned with shell and mollusk jewels
and salty sea air crusts crystal formations alongside
In come the tides bringing with them oceanic treasures
Driftwoods, wreckage, salvage,
that have crashed and bashed the cliffs along the way
To finally rest ashore and be renewed
To become beach combers delights
Trinkets gifts or items for the home