Last of the Salad Days

It's nearly the end of the summer holidays, the weather is beginning to drift back into autumnal unpredictability, and I'm coming up to my hundredth post ... I can't believe I've been blogging on Raw Light for nearly a year now. Incroyable!

But at least this means I can stop nibbling on rabbit food every other meal and dig out the slow cooker for some nice thick warming stews. What a summer we had though, so blooming hot it was almost impossible to sleep some nights. And I only made it to a beach once, for one delicious hour, on a day trip down to Cornwall - all the way from the Midlands, can you credit it? - but it was worth the long drive just to listen to those waves rolling in and watch the gulls wheeling about overhead, making their mad gull noises. I'm not meant to live this far inland, even though I was born several hours' drive from the coast. It feels so unnatural, especially for a water sign, being constantly surrounded by earth and earth and yet more earth.

This is a photograph I took of my youngest daughter a year ago, on a trip to one of my spiritual homes (I have several) - the Isle of Man. Now this is what I call a beach ... known as the Ayres, a long isolated stretch of shore on the northernmost tip of the island, often deserted, about half a mile shy of the lighthouse.

Boudicca & Co.

Here's the cover of my new collection, BOUDICCA & CO., out in November from Salt Publishing. Hope it hits the bullseye ...

thought for Monday

"The race belongs not to the swift but to those who keep on going ..."

Who said that?

gecko tattoo

Should I get a tattoo? My eldest daughter has come to stay for the summer, as she has nowhere else to go while college is out, and though we have no room for her in the house - my other four children are all in residence, plus a visiting step-daughter - she's camping out in our back garden, pictured above. She's brought with her a small green gecko in the form of a tattoo on her wrist. Rather lovely, I thought.



Should I get one myself? Maybe not a gecko like hers, but perhaps a discreet little Scorpion on my upper arm or shoulder?

I hate pain though, such a coward ...

If you go down to the woods today ...

Just before the weather broke last week in a spectacular lightshow of lightning, thunder, and torrential rain - during which our inflatable paddling pool flew over the roof of our house into the road opposite - we took the kids for a walk in some very ancient woodlands about twenty minutes' drive from where we live in rural Warwickshire.

This particular area of woodland is called Old Nun Wood and is on the edge of a much larger and newer piece of woodland, but is itself extremely ancient and atmospheric, especially in those dark tense moments before a storm.


In we go ...






It seemed such a bright day when we set out, hot and sunny, the perfect day for walking in the shade of ancient woodlands.






Quite suddenly, the woods began to darken; here the gleam of fallen silver birches provides the only glimmer of light at ground level.






The first sinister rumbles of thunder are heard in the distance.





Time for a sharp exit, reaching the car only minutes before a violent downpour engulfed the Warwickshire countryside!