This morning, during a telephone conversation with her youngest son Ian, my mum felt moved to advise him her capability of coping under this dark COVID-19 landscape was enhanced by the fact she was a wartime baby. Her birthdate, one year into WWII, apparently providing her with a resilience and stoicism of which we 1960’s baby boomers (my brother and I) were largely bereft. Bizarrely delivered with receiver held to her […]
Scene – March 1993 – The clear spring sky grants unhindered visual access to the Piscean constellation lording it above a Bedfordshire hospital. This majestic celestial display overhead, with the new day only minutes old, witnessing a girl child’s arrival. The babe’s advent seven days previous to the anticipated birth date; an event catching her twenty-something parents on the hop. The root cause of the babe’s early arrival will remain […]
Commencing this second narrative of the day, its 6.30pm and GJ Strachan currently perches on a dining room chair ensconced within my West Yorkshire abode. Interspersed with jotting down notions, I gaze out into the darkness of the back garden with a rear door wide to the wall. An action taken to allow a cooling breeze to circulate the noshing chamber. This requirement for introduction of a chill wind resultant […]
I’ve just undertaken my inaugural piece of gardening for 2020, with a couple hours cutting back shrubs, hoeing and cutting the front lawn. In all honesty, the borders and grass were too damp to undertake the task. However, the daily witnessing of the aesthetically unsightly border by the bay window, along with a lawn of erratic blade length, moved me into a spot of premature horticultural maintenance. Footnote – When […]
Cafe in situ, after a few days penning in a Haworth cottage, the muffled background noises of south Leeds shoppers once again provide the aural escort to my habitual musings. A phalanx of consumers mumbling as they go in search of retail bounty. This low volume chuntering a surprisingly comforting soundtrack to my metaphorical application of quill ink on parchment. I’m unsure why as I’m a fellow ordinarily easy to […]
My daughter Rachel, who relocated to the south east England county of Kent a few month’s ago, has been back home in West Yorkshire for a few days. My youngest offspring taking advantage of her partner’s weekend in the Lake District; he dropping her at her childhood home on his way to Cumbria. This morning I took Rach for a Costa coffee, where we caught up on each others life […]
Earlier, I’d a unimportant riddle to resolve surrounding delivery of the latest book I’ve self-published. This hardback containing literary excerpts first penned as content for my website writesaidfred.org. This a 38th tome I’ve had printed into book format since autumn 2016. My minuscule enigma being whether to abandon venturing out to my usual cafe domaine d’ecriture to wait for my art’s courier delivery; instead penning Friday’s narrative at chez Strachan. […]
