Sommeren

 

Summer is when I write the least. It’s the most distracting season and possibly the busiest (aside perhaps from Yule). The weather is often good and there is more opportunity to enjoy the garden or the park. There is gardening to attend to, plants and vegetables to tend and fruit that requires preserving, all of which I love and throw myself into (sometimes to the detriment of previously unused muscles) but it’s all part of the Summer fun!

Summer is the reserve of allowing the mind to rest as the body toils. The “little grey cells” of Hercule Poirot renown can rebuild and regenerate, in advance of my main writing seasons of Autumn and Winter. The dark half of the year is excellent for introspection, hibernation and writing. Meanwhile, the light half of the year is the time to be among others, leaping with the hares (if that takes your fancy) and filling your heart with joy.

Summer is sustenance in all things. Reap the benefits!

 

What is your preferred writing season?

 Do you love or loathe Summer?

Hibernation Inspiration!

May Day Frolicks!

It's May - here are some fun festivities to try and a song to get you in the mood.

'Around the maypole, gather we,

Dancing and prancing merrily.

To the Lord and Lady in the Green,

In our best frocks and mayflowers must we be seen.

Join in the dance, to bring in May,

With its fertile soil and flowers so gay.

Rise and fall, dip and swirl,

All may dance, come boy, come girl.'

• Take a stick/wooden spoon/branch on a tree and decorate with strips of bright fabric, wool or ribbons, criss-crossing and overlapping colours. Leave some dangling long.
• Dance with long scarves in circles, clockwise then anti-clockwise. Make up patterns and dance moves so the scarves 'dance' with you.
• Decorate your favourite trees and shrubs with coloured threads or ribbons, to say 'thank you' for their beauty and bless their fertility.
• Make some floral head-dresses*, or use face paints/make-up to decorate your face/body with floral patterns [*use strips of card and attach cut-out flowers and leaves that you have painted, or use stickers/foam shapes to decorate your head-dress].

Hibernation Inspiration #5

I've been listening to my favourite composer, Chopin. The variety of pieces have inspired various scenes in my mind. There are some that evoke the incidental music played over silent films of the Twenties: the heroine dashing around in blond curls and a scarf, fleeing a moustached foe in an overly-large tuxedo.

Then there are pieces that suggest a peaceful walk along the Seine on a balmy, Paris summer's evening. Bateaux mooches pass by; lovers embrace on the steps; the happy chatter of people at bistros lining the street rise into the warm night air.

And some compositions have you reminiscing of unforgettable English summers, with long pink and golden sunsets, swallows or bats chasing insects in the fading light. A warm ale, sipped outside a familiar country pub and faithful dogs lingering at their owners' feet, waiting for a hot, vinegar-soaked chip to fall within their reach on the cool grass.

What music whisks you away to pleasant memories?

Write about a happy memory; a place; a person.