Tebay Services

Hooray, hooray, hip hip hooray, hipity hopity hip hip hooray...
Not that I’m glad of a break or anything.

A first telephone supervision with my course supervisor (from the course I did in Leeds at the start of this month). Ironically he’s based in Norfolk. We’ll be together for a year and I was a bit nervous about getting the first contact done, so am pleased to have it under my belt before the hols. Apart from the lingering feeling of there must be something I haven’t done that I should have, I skipped up a sodden M6 homeward bound and enjoyed listening to this poem by Norman MacCaig....

February - Not Everywhere

Such days, when trees run downwind,
their arms stretched before them.

Such days, when the sun's in a drawer
and the drawer is locked.

When the meadow is dead, is a carpet
thin and shabby, with no pattern

and at bus stops people retract into collars
their faces like fists.

- And when, in a firelit room, a mother looks
at her four seasons, her little boy,

in the centre of everything, with still pools
of shadows and a fire throwing flowers.

Norman MacCaig