Coming around the corner of the sloping hill I could see how far the path went. I was hoping to get to the end; however, I wasn’t sure how I would get back to where I started. This was the easier way to go, starting at the top vista of the mountain, and heading down. I didn’t have the physical stamina to start at the bottom and walk up the path. Being here by myself, although peaceful, was worrisome. What if I didn’t make it down to the bottom?
Continue reading at Stine Writing
I was born in… well, we can gloss over that. Let’s just say that my childhood was spent in an era of extremes. War and calls for peace dominated the headlines, crooners shared the charts with pop groups, hemlines varied between revelation and medieval and most married women… and God help you if you weren’t… still stayed at home to raise their children.
My mother had already broken that mould by working full-time when I was small. She had grown from a pretty young woman to look like Susan Hayward and dressed like Marilyn Monroe. She had fixed ideas on fashion and it was into this environment that my first stirrings of femininity would flutter.
I was blonde when I was very young, with pale wild waves that were rigorously moulded into an acceptable shape with rollers, curling irons and a back-comb, then glued into submission with lacquer. When I was about seven, the pale golden glory began to darken to a nondescript mousey brown. My mother, whose own enhanced hair colour cycled through several shades of auburn, objected to this and began the application of a vile peroxide product known as ‘Light and Bright’. Not, she would assure me, a hair dye. More of a colour corrector.
Although it was certainly unintentional and even though I was not conscious of it at the time, it was one of those ‘not good enough’ moments that undermine a child’s self-confidence. You begin to believe that who you are must be changed to conform to the ideas of others. All children spend at least part of their childhood wearing clothes others deem appropriate and it is one of the first areas touched by rebellion.
At eleven, all pretensions to sartorial freedom ended with the imposition of the cherry red uniform of the grammar school. The obligation to conform for nine hours a day (including travelling time) was mitigated only by the extremes of the decade that allowed you to wear pretty much anything the rest of the time. There just wasn’t much time left after school and homework.
Continue reading at The Silent Eye
A wide Summer landscape
That stretches before,
A vista from hillsides
That promise still more.
You can’t see the promise
Through hovering haze,
But only your vision
Has narrowed the way.
Continue reading and listen to the music at Mystical Strings
Fragile shadow cast
Ephemeral as beauty
Summer’s sunlit ghosts
Once, my forever friend and I
stumbled on a blood orange place,
an eerie field from outer space
where meteors showered the blue sky
a vista we couldn’t deny
nor reject as dreamed up or true
Continue reading at Mindfills
They were literally walking on the bones of ancient past.
The bones of actual ancients, too, if you want to be exact about it.
He contemplated telling Liz then decided she was more likely to be spooked than awed by the notion. So he let the soles of his trekking boots crunch wordless greetings with each step, and he set his mind to wonder, radar-style, about the centuries he could not see and so few even knew about, yet lay here for every person to experience. Literally. Through the mounds. These monuments to earlier.
It was an odd thing. History.
Will others one day tread upon the remnants of his, and will any ever stop to wonder about the life he’d lived, the vistas his eyes had feasted on, the memories he’d placed into the air with every exhalation?
Continue reading at Na’ama Yehuda
A desolate path. A path that glowed with hopes. A path that you chose and we looked at you with pride. A path that is waiting.
A vista that made our summers blissful but you found wider ones, away from us, from the hills that raised you. How easily do we forget the fun of growing up!
You said you would come back. I know you never lie. Each day we sit here and rush back to our cottage to hear some news about you but the only connection we have with you sits mute.
Continue reading at Emotional Shadows
It was a misty morning when she woke me. She was up and about earlier than usual… I wasn’t even awake when she started bustling about… and yet, when I’d had my breakfast and went for the leash, all I got was “Not now, girlie.” I ask you… what kind of a start is that to the day? “Don’t worry,” she says, “you’re going on an adventure.” Then she put some water and my bowl in her bag, dug out my seat belt and stuffed me in the car!
Well, she promised me an adventure, and I certainly got one! I thought I was going to see my canine mates, Gooch and Hardy, ‘cause we started off going that way. But no… we ended up in a car park with a big, long metal worm thing that was eating people. “It’s a train, you daft dog,” she says. Not reassuring, I can tell you. So instead of parking there, she put the car near a field and we had a run for a while. Different, yes, but not exactly an adventure… and then she stuffed me back in the car before I’d chased so much as a duck!
Then she took us right up close to the train thing, and two two-legses came up to the car…waving and smiling. Mine jumps out and they start hugging her! Well, I don’t normally allow hugs… not even from two-legses that she wants to hug (apart from little ones…that’s different.) So I barked a bit, just to make the point….and the new two-legses ignored me and got in my car regardless! One of them climbed in right beside me too! Her name was Alethea and I’ve heard a lot about her. “I’ve heard a lot about you over the years,” she says. Well, that shut me up, ‘cause you never know what she might have heard… but it can’t have been too bad, ‘cause she stroked me and seemed happy enough to be with me. Now I knew why I’d had to have a bath the day before… reinforcements had been called in and they stuffed me in the tub without so much as a by your leave…
Continue reading at The Small Dog’s Blog
View from the top of this very big hill
is breathtaking (literally)
some say its a bit barmy climbing up all that way
Continue reading at The Inkwell
All nature’s children
Fragile and in need of care
Co-dependency
The little bee seemed only half awake. Dazed and uncertain, it fell from the sky and landed on my son, sipping his morning coffee on the patio. We watched for a moment as it struggled to find its feet.
I picked it up, placing it beside a tiny pool of honey and water I had drizzled on the fence. Within minutes, the tiny creature was back at work, foraging in the purple loosestrife, collecting the makings of honey.
Sharing nature’s dance
Both duty and privilege
Kinship recognised
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 