Shine on ....

Survivors of the Shipwrecked Forfarshire with Grace Darling and her Father rowing out to them. Longstone Lighthouse visible in the distance.


This weeks' theme is "Shine", and as my brain seems to be a little peculiar sometimes, it made me think of a Lighthouse ..... as you do.

Perhaps, it may be because there is a family link to a Lighthouse. Not just any old Lighthouse though you understand, but Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands.  That may not mean very much to most of you, but it was home at one time to an ancestor of mine.  Grace Darling.  If you don't know who she is, look her up online.

1. Grace Darling was an English lighthouse keeper's daughter, famed for participating in the rescue of survivors from the shipwrecked Forfarshire in 1838. Wikipedia
3. Born: November 24, 1815, Bamburgh
4. Died: October 20, 1842

I won't waffle on about her heroics, you can see that for yourselves when you do a little research, I only ask that (1) You do actually look her up and have a little read about her and (2)You bear in mind that back in those days, women didn't do that sort of thing!  I am proud to be a descendant of this lady.

Grace Darling



Shine On ....

A towering, guiding, 
sweeping, searching 
Light above the brine.

Come thickest fog 
or powerful storm 
It stand the test of time.

A proud, strong, 
vigilant family 
Standing by whatever the cost.

Worthy, serious, 
responsible, wise 
In their blood, saving the lost.

Longstone Light
Long may you shine
a beacon of hope for all.

Grace Darling,
brave and dutiful
answering the desperate call.



Thanks for reading my randomness. ;-) x

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Come Rain or Shine

Choose one of the options below:

a) If you are reading this post at 7am - Shaun and I are probably three hours into a six hour drive to Latitude Festival.

b) If you are reading this post at 11am - Shaun and I are probably queuing excitedly on a Southwold country road waiting to park our car in a field.

c) If you are reading this post at 2pm - Shaun  and I are probably getting bands of fabric clamped to our wrists (which will come to signify such a happy time that we'll refuse to cut them off).

d) If you are reading this post at 3pm - Shaun and I have probably put up the tent (hopefully without incident or argument)and are now milling around the campsite village and buying ridiculous hats from the Oxfam Tent.

e) If you are reading this after 5pm - Shaun and I will probably be exploring the arena, scouting out vegan food and filling our evening with inspiring, random and wonderful acts.

Hopefully the weather will be nice, but regardless of whether we are met by rain or shine, I'll be wearing my wellies (any excuse will suffice).

At Latitude 2012, our arrival coincided with a day of torrential rain, and by the time we awoke on Friday morning - our feet sitting in a puddle of rainwater - the decision to bring a smaller tent seemed less ingenious and more stupid. There was another 'wet foot' crisis in 2011, when I stepped into a puddle only to discover my wellies had a hole. With cold and wet feet, and Jo Shapcott due to start in under thirty minutes, Shaun left me in the Poetry Tent and went off in search of new socks. He returned twenty minutes later - finding non-wool socks had been more difficult than he had anticipated - and presented me with a pair of £7 yellow and black striped socks. We look back on these moments now, where things didn't go quite as planned, and we laugh...

There is always the hope that things will go perfectly - but when they don't, and you look back, it is usually the less than perfect memories that you remember and which make you smile. So, here is to a Latitude that doesn't go quite as perfectly as my mind has imagined.

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(bow)

It's been a while since I came up with a list but this week I have been going about crafting a poem in a very methodical fashion.  It's a new approach for me but having slowed down lately and as part of my gradual shift towards a more ordered life I have decided to apply my new found skills to poetry.  So I have a poem on the way but at the moment it is nothing more than a couple of pages of words and associations, imagery and rhymes.  I've thrown in a couple of lofty ideas but will try to ignore those, focusing instead on the details to see what shines amongst the ink.

Since I have this opportunity, I thought I'd use the blog post as part of the creative process.  I hope you don't mind.  It will only hurt a bit.

The poem I have in mind has, at its heart, a web.  It's a web that catches the light to appear then is blown by the wind and disappears.  So I need a list of words which might loosely relate to the wind, the web, or the garden.  I want those words to have a lightness about them too, to reflect the nature of the web and the wind.  Easy peasy.  I'm off to scan my dictionaries and thesauruseseses....please enjoy this music while I'm gone.

OK, miss me?  Here are some words:

whiff - sift - fragrant - hymn
silk - lavender - smoke - sash
weft - warp - wasp
lint - bits - string - fluff - twist
itch - tits - which -
twinkle - sprinkle - spray - rain(bow)
pin - tip - nib - dip
lofty - shaft - heat - channel

shred - tatter - fray - fingers and toes
filament - coil - glass - twist - wire - thin

veil - sail - arc - bark

trickle - slips - creep - snail - silver
seed - pin - fluff - tip - basket - pod - pip


OK, that'll do me for now.  Please feel free to pass on any words or observations that jump out at you.  I need all the help I can get!  Thank you :)

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