Do you remember that old song? I felt like singing it yesterday when I went for a walk along a route I’ve only just discovered down at my beloved Harbourside. As you’ll see from the pictures, you’ll never guess that you’re by a railwayline and close to the heart of town. The wildflowers are lovely, the birds were singing in between hunting insects, the crickets were chirping in between being hunted by birds and we even saw a little harvest mouse.
And here’s the amazing thing. A couple of years ago it was derelict land where the undesirables hung out and supermarket trolleys and rubbish were dumped. Now it’s well used by cyclists and walkers, with or without dogs. People in powered wheelchairs can enjoy the lovely flat and wide path. Mums with buggys and older kids on bikes and scooters have room to walk. There are blackberries in the hedges so you can stop for a little snack and then you come out onto the harbourside and into a site of special scientific interest.
The wildflower meadows are gorgeous, the air is fresh and clean and you can see people relaxing because they’re in nature. I know that going down to the Harbourside and walking either way along unknots me and puts my mind, body and soul in balance, and I’m currently trying to get some of that feeling into the water meadows in Oldcastle for the first draft I’m doing. They’ve got a sleepy, lazy river and the water meadows are a flood plain that protects the town, but there’s still a sense of peace about the place.
Being a writer, and an increasingly successful one, and thanks everyone for that, I ought to be able to describe how important that sense of peace is a lot better than I can. For me it is stepping out of all the things I’ve got to do and using my camera to capture tiny details that I wouldn’t notice ovtherwise because I’d be thinking about all those other things. Like this black headed gull on the mud flats at low tide, which I can share with you. Like the old boats and the little sailing boats heading out in a flotilla. Like the sound of wind blowing through long grass and all the sounds you don’t hear.
I’m typing this in the garden and I can, sadly, hear road works in the distance and the sound of a drill and some sort of a cutter while people renovate an old house. That’s okay, because it’s got to be done, but it’s not that sense of peace. I know it will stop though, and I’ll be inside soon because it really is hot by Dorset standards today. It’s going to peak at 31c and we softies aren’t used to that so I am being firmly sensible for the next few days and drinking plenty and trying to reach cat levels of energy conservation.
My two black cats are currently stretched on the broadest branches of our cherry tree, with eyes just the tiniest bit open but otherwise doing their best to blend in just in case an unwary bird can be tempted to mistake them for a branch. It won’t happen because the blackbirds who nest in our sycamore tree are wily creatures and have brought their fleglings up the same way. They’ll be high above them, catching insects, which reminds me to mention that we now have visiting dragonflies who have laid their eggs in my wildlife pond.
Ooh, get me! I suppose if I’m being acccurate I’ll have to admit that it is actually a 50cm wide and 30cm deep planter with a solar fountain and some plants in it. Some I bought, but I don’t have a clue where the water lilies came from or the tadpoles either. But come they have so I think of it as an example of ‘if you build it, they will come’ as they said in that film about the baseball pitch.
So maybe, I wonder as I sit here and look at the butterflies (14 different kinds and some fascinating chrysalises on the eucalyptus tree so the promise of more to come) it is a case that if I look for and value peace of mind and a calm temperament then it will come too?
Do you reckon it’ll work? What works for you?
And would you like some light reading? If so, then these are the books that are on special offer at 99p UK and 99c US this week, and for everyone there’s a new book out on Thursday, like there is on the first Thursday of the month. It’s under my Eleanor Neville pen name and it’s a romantic suspense set in the 1960’s when girls were expected to be dolly’s and men were convinced they ruled the working environment. When the threat of war was still very much there and not everywhere was swinging. When girls could still be square pegs in round holes and needed to learn to blend in to survive. When having a career could cost a lot… and when a young girl could find adventure and a friendship that is literally world changing. It’s a book I particularly love and have worked on for a long time so I hope you’ll give it a try.
Or, alternatively, you could look at these special offers from the Oldcastle series, which brings me nicely back round to the book I’m currently doing the first draft of (you’d think I planned it wouldn’t you?) They’re The Christmas Sparrow, A Whole New Life and Having it All and they’re gentle and sweet with no shocking sex scenes. Just women living the best lives they can while they work out who they are and what they’re for in their very different ways.
Good luck if you’re doing that and enjoy the week whatever you do!
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