Authors Electric

November. We’ve just had two weeks in the North Lake District, where the autumn colours were glorious and the weather was sunny apart from a couple of squally days.One morning we woke to see the first snow on the top of Blencathra. I managed to see something I’ve long wanted – the falls at Lodore. Because of all the rain, they were thundering down in grand style, but that meant that the ‘path’ up to them was treacherous, so after a gallant but failed attempt to climb up closer, we saw them from a viewpoint by the hotel, but only the lower stretch was visible.   The falls are the subject of a poem by Southey, not the best poet laureate we’ve ever had, but I like this bit of it:  Dividing and gliding and sliding,  And falling and brawling and sprawling,  And driving and riving and striving,  And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,  And sounding and bounding and rounding,  And bubbling and troubling and doubling,  And grumbling ...

  *When this goes out on 20 th , I should be in the Lake District, the latest covid restrictions permitting. Who knows? Of the group of old friends we meet there every year, two are shielding and two are effectively in lockdown in Northumberland. If we get there at all, we could well be rattling round in the converted barn on our own and eating at home if the pubs and restaurants are shut. Still, we’ll be in a place we love; a place full of memories. The cover of my book Passing Places was developed from a favourite photograph Niall took some years ago – a view across Ullswater at the Glenridding end.   We don’t go in for heroic driving these days; we’ll have an overnight stop in delightful Sandbach on the way, and then grit our teeth for the horrors of the motorway, until we are past Preston and at some point the traffic eases dramatically, the landscape changes, we spot the first drystone walls and then look out for the heart-lifting first sight of the Howgills. I grew...

I’m in a terrible flat spot. I got to poem 38 of the 52 poems challenge and just came to a stop. I made notes for the next two and wrote one verse but just couldn’t go on. For all these past weeks, I’ve just fiddled about with old stuff – poetry and prose – but have not been able to be creative at all. It’s a familiar dilemma, but doesn’t usually last this long. Often in the past, walking somewhere beautiful starts the process going and recently, we’ve been in the Lakes, in glorious sunny weather. Blue skies above just-turning autumn leaves reflected in the water. The roar and magnetic pull of a waterfall in spate. Saddleback blueish in the distance. Evenings around a log fire. A squelchy walk from Pooley Bridge to Barton Church to rescue a wren that might have been trapped in there (it wasn’t). Everything, in fact, to gladden the heart and get the creative juices flowing. Except they didn’t.  This is a lake, not a story    At one point I put it down to...