Chair

So no flooding this time, blessed be. I am heading south on the big train today to visit my mother again. I shall learn to push her in her new wheelchair. She can still walk around the flat with her pusher, but it is hard work for her over any distance - this way we can get out for a stroll together and I can take her to the restaurant and bar in the retirement village - all of which she misses. It feels to me like a moment to notice, and which I expect to feel odd or sad. But I'll let you know. And tomorrow morning I shall take a stroll in the town of my childhood, and get some shopping in.

What If

Lilies

Wind and fire and sadness.
The shed roof nailed down
by me. Hammer in hand today
surprising myself in competence.
More rain and the spectre of the floods
goes with us into a new season.
A pot of white lilies scents the room.

Equinox

And we tip into autumn. A golden day and we have drunk tea in the garden. Tomorrow we are building a shed!

Patti pics have been delayed indefinitely as K doesn't know how to download them from her new phone and is busy busy busy. Before any more time elapses, I'll leave you with this review which I couldn't better. The evening still glows in my memory. Singing along at the top of my voice, along with the other 189 happy people in the crowd to Because the Night, she holding out the mike to us and smiling like a loving big sister, is something I won't forget. We have been incredibly blessed that Patti came and sang and talked and read to so few of us. She was clearly smitten with our town and the Bronte and Plath connections, and promised to return next spring. Late to catch on to her awesomeness, I am now a full and evangelical convert.

Patti Pending

I am waiting for K to email me photographs of Patti Smith at the Trades Club on Saturday night so I can post about it. Until then I can only say I was about 15 feet away from her, and she was and is beautiful, brilliant, warm and witty.

Hepworth

We went to visit the the Hepworth Museum in Wakefield on Wednesday. I loved the building, the way it seems to emerge out of the River Calder, feels surrounded by moving water, a massive weir just nearby, warehouse buildings and boats its near neighbours. And the gallery spaces are filled with natural light from wonderful tall windows, each of which is set slightly out from the wall, so that you can step half a step further into the view, almost feel that you are going to walk out onto the water. A wonderful collection of Barbara Hepworth sculptures, as well as her tools, letters, photographs and other artefacts. Fascinating, but in the end her work did not move us in the way that Henry Moore, her contemporary sculptor does. There is also an exciting collection of modern painting and sculpture, with many works by artists who lived and worked in St Ives as Hepworth did. The Hepworth also has a good cafe, which we visited twice...

Grow

And there will be other things. The map wearing out at the creases. The summer dying a quiet death, having had a quiet wet life. We are here. Still here, listening to Patti Smith who entirely miraculously comes to grace our tiny gig venue in our diminutive town next Saturday. And yes, we have tickets. We feel autumn's chill and complain, but autumn is my soul's home and my 50th year on this planet is approaching its end and all I can be is grateful grateful very grateful for 50. I am helped in so many ways by my fellow travellers, and lurch back and forth in my growing, but grow I do.