Authors Electric

January, named for Janus the two-faced god: the traditional time to look back and look forward. For me, he can close his eyes on 2023, which wasn’t the best year by a long chalk. We had bereavements of a particularly painful kind – the sudden and unexpected deaths of very dear friends we had shared most of our lives with, who died within days of each other. Then there were various ‘bits dropping off’ – old age galloping on apace!  Sonnet: Old Age I saw you from a distance in those days The days of carefree, self-regarding youth The days when ‘how I want it’ stood for truth Your world unfocussed in my shortened gaze   What were false teeth, what walking sticks, grey hair? What was a ‘span’ of three-score years and ten? Beyond a fleeting frisson now and then Your presence was ignored: not my affair.   But since I have long passed the given span My vision is corrected, no short sight Can help me to avoid your company You’re here now. First you crawl...

I’m not a fan of spring. I find the light too clear and too cold. It picks up all the smears and smudges that should be best kept hidden and pricks the conscience into spending time with mops and dusters instead of in my office writing.  The one thing that redeems the season is, to quote Wordsworth, “ A host, of golden daffodils…Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” In the part of the country where I live, you get swathes of golden blossom planted along roadsides, or on roundabouts, which never fail to lift the spirit on a grey blustery March morning. This is the effect I wanted to reproduce in my own front garden, when I planted clusters of mini daffodil around the acer. Last autumn I snuggled the blubs around the tree secure in the knowledge that come spring I would have my own sweep of yellow to cheer me up. But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Admittedly the bed in which I planted them sloped towards the drive, but I certainly didn’t expect my...

Splashes of vivid yellow against a dull fence. Clumps and lines of bright trumpets assertive in an empty garden. Whether or not daffodils have been invited or encouraged, for the last two months they have been all around us. By road sides, pushing their way up through dead leaves and scattered twigs, disregarding litter or neglect, gathered in handfuls for jam jars on window sills. Daffodils are such generous flowers. Even when they’re sold in mean little bundles, elastic-banded together, their flowers tight-shut as if traumatised bring them home, give them just the minimum of light and warmth and water and within hours they will be opening out, sharing their glorious, life-affirming colour. For I, the lent lily, the Daffadowndilly, Have heard through the country the call to arouse. The orchards are ringing with voices a-singing The praise of my petticoat, praise of my gown. The children are playing and hark! they are saying That Daffy-down-dilly is come up to town!...