Bold Street Writers 14th November...Prompt "Paths of Desire" (Geraldine Snape)

 The term.."Paths of Desire"... was apparently first used in New York because people were not following the designated paths designed by the urban architects for Central Park. You know those short cuts we take in life when getting to our bus requires a diversion from the proper way!

"Keep off the grass", the sign said

a good sign as signs go

well painted interesting font oh

I do love an unusual font

 oxford or japanese, art deco or noveau

I'll stop and take some pics

at a notice board for the font

and the colours if dramatic too

purple on yellow, french navy on white

red lettering on a black backround

fanciful

*

The morning was warm enough for

September though the calender informed

November was already halfway through

and autumn leaves were thick 

on the ground around each tree

tarmac paths leaf-slimed were

making the way treacherous

careful there I told myself no

slipping, broken bones or trauma 

"sufficient unto the day"..

and all that.

*

I slowed my pace and placed

my booted feet as carefully as

any tangoed dancer but

time was short and bus drivers

wait for no woman or man

some further action necessary

if desk and typewriter waiting

in a warm office were to find

a place for my frozen knees

bliss

*

Ever the obedient daughter  

timid friend invisible worker I

stepped out of my role as 

law abiding citizen and 

good girl  

left the slimey black of tarmac

 technically designed in the 

glossy tenth floor office of an 

architects room for minions to follow

abandoned path and stepped on

to the frosty grass 

and oh! what  delight as

my booted prints pressed their shape

on to the way to the bus stop,

 forever.

*

I hear that rather than being designed in New York...Central Park was a copy of the beautiful park in Birkenhead opened long before any New Yorkers trod the tacmac paths of Central Park.

There's a great fact.

Spent Firework...Bold Street Writers

 Thursday morning and we're back upstairs in the Gateway building on Sankey Street Warrington for 

The Bold Street Writers and the prompt from Margaret Hargreaves is...." Spent Firework".

It's the morning after the American Elections..and results...

*

Next morning oh yes the air full

of the smell of burnt gun powder

the garden full of wooden rocket sticks

the early November mist spread across the grass

and after all the excitement

and the frantic preparation

a quiet still emptiness falls on the house

the cats retrieve their normal position

on favourite cushions as they crawl 

out from under a sofa

from under a feather duvet

in the unused darkened bedroom

and curl up knowing

that the time has come again

to do some gentle hibernating

and wait for the blessed spring.

*

And the earth spins as ever

and the morning becomes afternoon

and afternoon becomes evening

and night falls earlier everyday

until soon the world becomes dark.

*

How the seasons turn there is no stopping them

blink and you may miss the moment

when autumn becomes winter then

all the world declares they didn't see it coming

as if it never changed before as if

when taken unawares we feel the panic rise

to fill the mouth with dread though

it's been that way forever and

will be through it all again and

spent fireworks are collected and thrown

on the final bonfire.

*

And sometimes there might be a last trace

of the sparkle that promised so much 

last night that firework of promise that fizzled out

and then was no more.

Spent..Empty..No promise..

Forgotten.

forottern.

Ulster 

On eastern reeds and western boglands

as opposite as a colour wheel from Klimt

a navy blue horizon line meets with

the grind and ground of edge and land.

.

Hard topped eastern tarmacadam roads

are pulled away by rhodadendroned hills

cladding the countries heart and soul

in a purple foreign mass.

Autumn ..Oct 24

 

 

After such a wet summer... now ... a glorious autumn full of colour and sweet spicey aromas,

 and I walk through the hidden garden here at The Potters House Penketh.

There is a change in the light and the shadows have lengthened as the sun dips ever lower in the sky....

Garden furniture is abandoned to squirrels and prowling cats...

...the summer chimenea cools and leaves from the vitis coigntiae their red leaves as big as dinner plates...fall from the height of a single birch tree nearby...

..the last of the roses still bloom in the herb garden...

..greenhouses are emptied of tomatoes and cucumbers and now squat silently in the fogged up windows for winter...

...evening primrose lives on ....

..and teasels tease the gardener...clinging to woollen scarves and bobble hats...to live another day... 

...tucked away in a coerner of the herb garden is the last of the fruit...a medlar tree..it's odd bobbley shape beloved by jokers!!

..saved to be bletted in a window inside until soft enough to make some medlar jelly...

...if the cook remembers!

 

Bold Street Writers Oct. 17th

Bold Street Writers..a group still meeting at The Gateway on Sankey Street each Thursday morning as it has done in various places for 30 years.

 A prompt from Pat Lightfoot for the day one word ..."Travelling" and we wrote for an hour before reading aloud our literary attempts.

I thought of those who take pilgrimages whether sacred or secular. There is a route for walkers and pilgrims taken from Land's End to John o Groats.  And knowing of one who has done this recently...set me off on these words....  

That they could remember a day with rain falling in diamond sheets

And sun breaking through grey skies painting lime green on autumn fields.

Rivers swollen racing over black rocks and tumbling waters over old clay.

Their's alone the joy of alder and reeds as they journeyed as travellers.

They were like foot soldiers marching through unknown lands

Toward
they knew not what  yet they made no questioning.

Only the travelling became the important aspect in their lives.

Sunrise to sunset each step on yet another path covering the miles

Facing north and wondering at a land of rock and fields of moss.

Ducking heads at low branches in dark forests where each tree

Was a guardian of unknown shadows. Travellers they were not

At the start, but travellers they became with each mile that passed.

If a final place was to be sought as they envisaged at the start of  all

That became less and less important, than the travelling itself.

Their travelling became a place out of time, out of season, out of history.

Like another land, it would be hard to point to a time when it changed.

But change it did...............and that changed everything.

Bold Street Writers...Prompt..." If you were in the government for one day what rule would you change?"

 Alice sat on the speaker's chair...and glared at the assembled members of parliament. On the wing of the chair beside her perched the Cheshire cat who grinned as he faded and grinned again as he returned. Alice glared as only Alice could glare, and twiddled noisily with a little glass bottle on the stand in front of her. "Poison"..it said... no!..... it said "Drink me". The faces of the assembled on the ruling side of the room were white with worry. What were her thoughts? How could they avoid her sharp tongue? They whispered to one another behind shaking hands. We should never have given the red queen permission to raise an army. Maybe we should have insisted that tea parties were held at least once a year in every town, village and street. A law could have been passed banning cruelty to dormice. The Cheshire cat heard the whisper and his smile widened even as he disappeared once again, leaving a grin.

"Silence", thundered Alice, and she thumped her fist on the table. The ruling party quaked and sealed their lips. Even the opposition sat demurely quiet on the benches. Noone dared to give an "ear! ear!" while Alice occupied the speaker's chair, nor did anyone even feel brave enough to shout "Madame Speaker",  or stand to gain attention.

A white rabbit hopped about around the feet of the parliamentarians looking for carrots and a top hat was thrown high in the air for a moment by a hare who had taken a seat at the back of the opposition benches disagreeing with everyone and everything said. Alice looked at him kindly and pointing in his direction requested that he sit down. Which a hatter who is mad always finds very difficult.

This eased some of the tension in the room and many of the members sank back into the benches with a deep sigh of relief that drifted up into the painted ceiling. 

And there the Cheshire cat's smile reigned supreme... albeit without his furry body.

Alice took another glance around the gathered assembly noting everything and everyone and remembering their speeches given over the previous ten years. Mulling over the promises made and  promises broken, and thinking of all the media reportage watched, she thought of the factories abandoned, the businesses folded, the schools closed and the railways discontinued...and oh, oh so much, much more. 

So when Alice slapped her hand once again on the table and raised her voice to reach the very back of the room, and when all the people were looking to her... waiting for her wisdom....

She said with all the ferocity she could muster....fiercely, "I BAN all silly smiles from politicians making their ludicrous pompous statements of lies and more lies, cloaking them all the time with their shining toothsome wet mouths!"

The assembled parties gasped with unbelief..and the noise reached into every corner of the land. 

While the Cheshire cat wrapped itself around her on the speaker's chair...and grinned.

*

We live in the town where Lewis Carroll was born...well Daresbury which is a parish thereof.

The potter once worked for a company making the ceramic Alice in the pic above...but more than that I love surrealism..and nothing apart from Gulliver maybe....gets any closer to the surreal than Alice and her escapades.

We once held a Wonderland Tea Party here in the hidden garden at The Potters House Penketh.

Yes...even The Mad Hatter! And dormouse in the teapot.

...... grandgirls all grown up now.

*

Early Days...The Potters House Penketh

 Sometimes I start looking through my photo files for something ...

..and then have to stop at an image I'd completely forgotten about...

...such are these early pics from the beginnings of the business we now call 

The Potters House Penketh.

This is a pic of the very first sales day at St Joseph's Summer Fair on Meeting Lane in Penketh...late 70s.

Well the clothes say it all......!

..and hiding behind me advising on prices and top saleswoman...is my lovely late mum over from the troubles in Belfast for a week of peace.

You can see that it wasn't all Alan's ceramics then he was still teaching... 

...as head of art at Penketh High School.

We backed quite a few of the Traidcraft organisations.

And I also did a bit of dealing in vintage and collectables..anything to get the business going.

Every Tuesday I hired "The Institute" on the main Warrington Road.

This is a pic of sisters who came with their mum and shared the building..it was a place of fun and friendship.

Later it became a coffee house for the local church..St. Paul's Penketh and was renamed "The Manna House" ..and when sold on to a young local entrepreneur...Andrew Mulholland...it kept it's name and is used for grand parties and celebrations.

It meant a lot of packing and unpacking and lugging heavy boxes of ceramics and craft goods.

...and our old car at that time often needed a push to get the engine going!

There were many lovely people who became involved by baking and making for stalls.

So much laughter and naughty innocence...it was great to remember it all as I looked through the file of pics.