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The Fringe

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  ‘The train now standing…’ except that the train was not standing. It was late. Delayed behind other delayed trains. We were going to the Edinburgh Fringe. I have always wanted to go to The Fringe and I thought that I had better hurry up and go as time is getting on. The train appeared eventually but then as we were hurrying along it came to a full stop. A train ahead had broken down and had to be pulled way. There was a little family opposite me. A new mother, a first-time grand mother and baby Lucas. The staff were attentive and the food was good. We settled down to wait. Lucas’s family men had gone up to Scotland in the car to take all the baby gear. They had begun by having bets as to who would arrive first. Car or train? We waited and the news came by text that the car was already at the accommodation, the car had won. Baby Lucas began to cry but soon we were on our way too, snaking through the lush green fields and rushing rivers. We hardly dare think of the dry desert...
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Does anything change?

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    ‘I go to market and I ask about the fish: they say it’s expensive. The lamb, the beef and the pork are all expensive…’. I would never have guessed how old this quote was, it seems to be so modern. It could be me talking about the fish stall or the butchers. The difference is that the quote goes on to say that the buyer has no money at all, he was probably a slave. Another difference is that it was written around 200 BC. I was at the Roman ruined city of Uriconium in Shropshire. I was learning once more about how different their lives were but also how similar they were to ours. I wonder if they had scams like us? Certainly not mobile phone scams. I was just setting off for a meeting with my fellow writers last week when my phone pinged. It was supposedly from a delivery firm. I was still in our drive, so I opened the message. There was a delivery due they said (that was not true I had not ordered anything) but just so the driver had got my details correct, could I fi...
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Fire, fire

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  ‘BUZZ, BUZZZ, BUZZZZ…’ What on earth was that? We were settling down for a cup of tea after dinner when we heard it. Then there it was again, and again the whole of our garden room was alive. I searched the house and the noise stopped. Of course it was the Government Emergency Alert. ‘There is a very high risk of wildfires…’. We had it twice from each phone once in English and once in Welsh. I thought at first it was a bit late telling us that when the heatwave seems to be over, but of course the land is still very dry. At home on the farm, I remember we used to regularly burn the stubble and one day it got out of hand, suddenly, the line of orange flames took another direction and was leaping into the next field. I was there with my uncle and he told me to run and tell Mam. We did not have mobile phones in those days, but we had a big heavy black telephone. I was only little and could not race as fast as the flames. I travelled up our cobbled lane and turned the corner and...
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Desperate times

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  It is still here, even though I keep thinking that it has gone. When will we return to normal? Flashing blue blaring lights are becoming a usual sight on our road. The heat waves keep on coming and although sometimes I think it must rain, it never does. The grass is so dry now that it easily catches light and that is why we are seeing so many red fire engines streaking by. The gardens and fields look dead, but they are not. Somehow our new trees are surviving. The ones we planted as soon as we came have got their roots down and are quite strong, the more recent ones have lost some leaves but are still holding on. I remember in 1976 looking up at the never-ending blue sky and wondering if it would end. It did and we had rain in September. Some plants seem to think that it is September already. We went on a country walk yesterday and the hedges were full of berries. There were red hawthorn, wild rose and guelder rose berries weighing down the shrubs so much that they were almos...
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The accidental traveller

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  “Stop!”   Mr T pointed towards the window. I stopped talking almost at once which was very difficult for me because I am sure that I was saying something very important. But he was insistent. “Look.” I looked and sure enough this was more important than what I was saying because there was a raindrop on the window. We have not seen a raindrop for many weeks and more important neither has our garden. It is so rare in fact that people on social media report “It’s raining here!” And my first instinct is to ask them where they are so I can go and share this phenomenon. Now here we were with our own rain. Our excitement soon faded, however, because although there were one or two more drops, they soon stopped and the sun came out again. Our garden like so many others is decidedly pale, wilting and dead but I went to see a friend the other day and his small front garden was full of colourful flowers. Admittedly it was edged by walls giving deep shade and it was mostly pots...
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Pot luck

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  I stood next to her in the supermarket as she was tapping away on her mobile. Nothing unusual about that, but she kept going to the plant stall nearby, checking the labels and then returning. “I am reading up about these plants,” she said, “I want to know all about them before I buy”. We are looking on our house plants differently these days. We are treating them almost like pets. I am certainly very fond of ours. You see, they were my companions in lockdown and they are still with me today. They kept me company through those long days. I noticed every leaf and every blemish. They were treated like royalty. We liked them so much that we took cuttings of them and now all these years later I feel so attached to them that our garden-room is in danger of being overrun by a jungle of leaves. Another strange thing happened to me in a different supermarket this week. We went up north to a Yorkshire family gathering. The extreme heatwave does not seem to have reached that far and t...
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Freedom

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  I am free. Now I can go where I want, when I want. They have finished and there is not a pothole in sight. All last month our roads have been closed on weekdays until the evenings. It has made for some very interesting driving. I followed the big yellow diversion signs until they seemed to peter out or got mixed up with some other road works. But it is not all bad I discovered some little Welsh villages that I had not seen before they seemed a long way out but at least the road was not closed. I got used to driving at 20mph going safely past houses and schools with beautiful countryside. I got used to exploring our county’s countryside too, far away from the roadworks. On a hot sunny day, we set off to see the blue butterfly fields in north Shropshire’s special heath land. It is the only place you can find the silver studied blue butterfly in the Midlands. I hoped that we would be lucky. We met a serious looking man with a huge camera lens. “Go over to the right where the hea...
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