It rained again but I was more prepared. (My shoes are sodden from yesterday’s downpour so I had to walk in my heavy boots.) And my umbrella held. I walked up through the castle park just in time to see two seagulls made luminous in the sky by the lamplight beneath. The dog roses have taken a battering, the petals lie in pieces on the ground. The scent, like the perfume I used to make as a child (all brown in used jam jars), was still heady in the morning-coming-dark.
I slowed my step to admire the scabiouses in ER’s front garden on Llanbadarn Road when I was momentarily alarmed by a squawk from a frightened baby seagull scurrying out and flapping from behind a wheelie bin.
We sat out yesterday afternoon, though the sun didn’t come. He called out crossword clues while I watched an approaching kite, majestic in its glide and hover. And they used to be so rare.
I read about pockets when he went in. What a glorious book. I was hungry for all it gave me. And I thought as I read and poured over the images, that I almost always have to make facsimiles of things that please or excite me (often out of contrary materials). And that by that process I come to understand and know them. It is hard to rationalise such a procedure. It doesn’t matter why, he says. If it gives you pleasure just do it.
