Sunshine in the cracks

On spring bursting out everywhere

Hello friends, welcome to A Calm Place newsletter.

I am so sorry for the radio silence the last few weeks – there has been no reason, other than general busy-ness, and not yet getting into as regular a newsletter-writing routine as I’d like. But I’m determined to do better!

The last few weeks has seen spring bursting out here in Stirling, with leaves appearing in their lovely ‘newborn’ lime-green before settling down to a slightly more sedate colour as they mature. Dandelions are appearing all over the place – only one in our lawn, but loads in the cracks in the tarmac in our back court! (there’s a beautiful life metaphor for you!) Years of thinking of dandelions as an unwanted weed don’t just disappear overnight, and part of me is tempted to pull them up and have a less scruffy outdoors, but I am deliberately stopping myself from doing that. I’m learning to love those beautiful sunny yellow faces, which give such a fabulous burst of colour and life, plus of course they are great early food sources for our early-emerging pollinators, as well as being great for breaking up otherwise unworkable soil. I must admit I probably will deadhead them when they start to go to seed, because as much as I am trying to encourage the wild, I don’t think our tarmac needs any more help with its cracking!

(stock photo from Depositphotos.com)

Dandelions have a really interesting cultural history, it turns out. There’s the aforementioned benefit to early pollinators, of course, but dandelions are also used in folk medicine as a diuretic (hence their wonderful Scottish nickname of “Pee the beds”). The leaves can apparently help digestion, and the flowers have antioxidant properties. So if I’m ever tempted to declare war on them, I remind myself of how amazing they are, and try to leave them alone as much as I can.

I’m also delighted that this year’s swallows have returned from their sojourn in Africa. They hang around the stables where my daughter has riding lessons, and will be bombing about the place for several months, nesting and swooping in and out of the stables and indoor riding arena, chattering away and cheering me up every single time with their zoomies and amazing aerial acrobatics. From the first day they were back they were charging about and giving absolutely no hint of their epic energy-sapping journey across Africa and Europe to get here. Bird migration will never not blow my mind; how these tiny creatures can travel so far when I can barely run the length of myself!

(stock photo from Depositphotos.com)

In writing news, I spent some of the school holidays being mum’s taxi, taking my daughter to a sports club in Edinburgh. As I had each day free once I’d dropped her off, I spent a lot of the time in Leith library (a beautiful building) and worked on a few new pieces of work – a non-fiction essay and a few short poems, as well as updating an academic literature review I had written a few years ago. When the weather wasn’t horrific I also spent a bit of time wandering along the Water of Leith walkway, and enjoyed seeing the ducks, moorhens, pigeons and seagulls that hang around there. Now that the holidays are over it’s more of a challenge to carve out much writing time – I never usually write as much as that in such a short period of time. That’s fine by me, I would rather write little but be happy with what I have written, than try to churn out words every day when it feels more stressful and less of a joy. I’m definitely a slow, quality-not-quantity type of writerly personality.

(Tom Cox keeping unusual company)

While I was in the library in Leith, I situated myself at a desk by the non-fiction section, hoping to gain some sort of inspiration by osmosis. I was amused to see one of my favourite authors Tom Cox (and my favourite book of his, Ring the Hill), in the slightly unexpected company of Reese Witherspoon on one side and 8 books about Donald Trump on the other. Library shelving is something I might have to explore more, as, at least for non-fiction, some of the choices about who is on which shelf can be pretty baffling!

Since the holidays have ended and I’m back in my more usual not-routine, what writing time I’ve had has been spent editing the writing I did in Leith, and submitting the finished essay to both an essay competition (fingers crossed!) and a literary magazine (ditto!). I’m enjoying the shorter form of writing a lot, so I really hope that I can see some pieces published before too long. Eventually I’ll gather my essays into a collection and publish them myself, but I’d love to see them have a life out in the literary wilds before that point. My plan with the poems is that when I have enough I will produce a little chapbook as an extra to offer at any face to face fairs or markets I do in the future. I am still very much feeling my way with poetry, but I do love trying to distil my words down to their essence, without all the flannel that prose can sometimes prompt.

Speaking of fairs and markets, I had stalls at a couple of markets before Easter, including one at the wonderful New Lanark UNESCO World Heritage site. They went OK, although footfall was a little disappointing, but it’s always nice to meet new readers and chat about writing and reading and books. For the future I’ve decided that I’m going to only focus on Christmas markets (who doesn’t love a book as a gift?!) and any nature-specific ones that may pop up, as I think my book will do better there than at the more generic makers’ markets. This business of marketing and selling my book (and by extension myself) still feels very weird, as getting ‘out there’ and blowing my own trumpet is quite difficult for introverted, British me! Luckily though most people are lovely, so I do enjoy it despite needing plenty of alone time once it’s over to decompress!

(Me at New Lanark Easter market, trying not to look introverted)

This newsletter is starting to get a bit long, so I’ll finish here, and share some excellent recent nature reads another time. In the meantime though – what have you been enjoying reading recently? And what nature have you been noticing where you are?

Till next time, have a wonderful few weeks.