Week 30
Darth Vader, Anne Boleyn, Pirates
Hello! How has this week been? I have seen bleached grasslands, rowan berries on the turn, blackberries really hitting their stride. Every scrap of washing in the house has been washed and dried to a crisp - nothing stands a chance of languishing in the bottom of the washing basket in these unprecedented drying days. I have also seen dragonflies clinging to stems as they emerge from ponds - surely extremely ‘this week of the year’.
This is our community post in which we are seeking exactly that: what has been particular or ‘this week’ about this week. In this way we track the changes of the year week by week, and then month by month in our big poetic monthly round up, and eventually in December we sit back and look at the year through the lens of all of this minutiae. I tell you mine and then you tell me yours. Here’s mine:
Darth Vader, Anne Boleyn, and pirates
In terms of seasonality this entry really comes under ‘summer busyness’. For whole months of the year I can have no major events to attend, and then last weekend I had three. This is the time of year when we gather out of doors, usually in the slightly vain hope that the weather will be good. Well look at us now! Endless good weather, those events are coming into their own.
I took my daughter and her friends to Fantasy Forest at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, an incredible outpouring of human creativity. Think of any costume from any book or film or well anything and it was represented, orcs and stormtroopers and wizards and pirates. I passed Anne Boleyn and - separately - Henry the Eighth. I saw a hundred fairies and as many elves, Totoro and Pokemon, mushroom people, wenches and buccaneers. I felt very lame indeed for not dressing up.
It did feel quite like winter’s creativity and crafting being brought out into the lovely summer light. Aren’t humans wonderful sometimes?
Gladiators, training
REAL parrots, orcs to the left
A storyteller under a tree…with stormtroopers
My daughter and friends
That’s it from me, now over to you. What have you seen/done/spotted/eaten this week that felt particularly ‘this week of the year’?
Blackberry snacking, river paddling among tiny silver fish. Boating excursion under the eye of a watchful heron, inspected by curious, electric blue damsel flies and hopeful Canada geese. Picnicking under a splendid canopy of willow. Stone skimming. Playing cricket on a soft lawn, barefooted. Majestic ash and birch; golden stubble and compact rectangular bales of straw. Unplanned star gazing under dark skies: pink moon following an excessively fiery sunset. Visiting ancient monuments and historic fortresses: soaking up the heat of rock and stone. Woken by Linnets; shared our evenings with pale moths of all sizes.
Two Kingfishers flying along the river. The early morning light catching the electric blue.