Goldfinches

The birds I saw were goldfinches - just been sent pictures. If I figure a way I might put them up. Very cute.

Off to a painting class...yet again in rain.

Antidote to grey

Bleak, grey, drizzly skies again today. Everything, even the grass and, in the mist that hung over everything, the trees, looked grey today. I stood at the kitchen window, in the new, pink bathrobe I got for Christmas, eating cereal, staring out at what could have been a scene straight from an old grainy, Sunday-afternoon black-and-white. Definitely tempting to go back to bed... But for a while I stood there, chewing mindlessly, watching a pair of magpies hopping about next-door's lawn. Then just as my eyes finally adjusted to all the grey, two tiny, colourful little birds flew through the drizzle onto a birdtable in the garden at the other side. I don't know what they were, but seeing them there among all that grey made me smile. They were soft, minky-brown little things, with flashes of yellow on their breasts and bright red faces. Tiny like tits, but not tits...Beautiful splashes of colour brightening up the monochrome. There was something quite clownish about them. Their faces looking like they had just been dipped in bright red paint...And, on a morning like this morning, just before they flew off again skimming the hedges, it was easy to think they might have been designed just to bring a smile to my face.
It worked for me this morning...don't know what birds they were, but must look out for them more often.

...I really think so...

It always seems to be raining when I write a blog.

In the post today I got the application form I'd requested months ago for a stay at a writers' retreat. I'd almost forgotten I'd sent off for it...While I was writing the book it was on my list of things I really wanted to do — hiding myself away in a retreat somewhere. I went down to Fowey in Cornwall to write big chunks of 'Abandoned', locking myself away in a tall house overlooking the harbour so it was a kind of retreat then. But I crave the company of like-minded people too. But now that I have the application form for a 'real' writers' retreat, it seems a bit self indulgent to want to go off somewhere just to write. I might feel differently if it ever did happen — because you have to apply quite far in advance, a year or more ahead sometimes - and, by then, who knows what I'll be thinking...maybe I'd be all fired up for it again by then. But I'm also beginning to wonder whether I was motivated by the right thing — maybe 'real' work should continue to take priority over everything for now. Maybe life from now on should be about plans rather than dreams — at least for me, to make sure I never end up in any place like the laneway ever again. Maybe writing books is something for other more priviledge people...or at least for another time. Pipe dreams...

Rain has stopped, so I'm off on my bike to clear my head and get some air into my lungs. Hope it's stopped where you are....