Poetry

Sometimes someone else's words say what's in our mind. This is from Mary Oliver's 'Dogfish.'

'I wanted the past to go away,
I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like
the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion,
a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life;
I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.'

Wild Sunday

Woke at half past six. It's wild and windy and dark outside. I'm up at this hour on a Sunday morning as the slot given for delivery of a bed is between seven and half past ten. I'll get a text warning beforehand.
The road is quiet. Lights are on in two upstairs rooms at the house diagonally opposite. The rest of the houses sleep. It's a strangely satisfying feeling being awake when no-one else is. I've already started putting files back on shelves and lamps are on, tea is made. The house is in chaos for this bed, but it's a new year and it's good to sort through, discard, re-find, keep, store, reject.
I hope they don't arrive until nearly half ten. It's wonderful being in this cocoon. Only Sushi, the little white cat is leaping about.

After the Flood

I only caught this programme on Radio 4 near the end but you could listen again. It sounded very interesting. Radio 4, Thursday 13th October 11.30 am.
After the Flood
Norfolk-based writer Kevin Crossley-Holland meets East Anglians directly affected by coastal erosion, including storyteller Hugh Lupton, the Bishop of Dunwich and the bellringers and residents of the Norfolk village of Happisburgh. They bring alive Kevin's short story Sea Tongue, about het myth of the drowned bells of Dunwich.
Producer Mark Smalley

Bigger write up:

After the Flood
It's hard to imagine that the tiny Suffolk village of Dunwich was once a thriving medieval port. Much of it was engulfed by a great storm in 1286 but legend has it that the church bells still ring out underwater at certain tides, a legend that inspired Kevin Corssley-Holland's short story Sea Tongue. Here, extracts from his work, read by the people he meets, help to illustrate his elegiac thought-provoking quest to observe the effects of coastal erosion in East Anglia, beginning in Norfolk at Happisburgh's 15th -century church. In 50 years' time it may well have fallen prey to the implacable, gnawing power of the North Sea. Crossley-Holland also meets a self-styled King Canute striving to save the crumbling cliffs at Hunstanton and hears memories of the devastating 1953 floods in which 30 people perished in eastern England alone.

Can you see a film coming on with The Fog-like bells ringing out? Words like explosion and express train were used to describe the house cracking and cliff collapsing. That rings bells.

EROSION IS ON THE AGENDA.