Fresh perspectives

Time on the narrowboat always helps me see things differently.
Instead of hurtling from pillar to post, constantly diverted, filling my days with a host of different people, with widely differing needs, I'm constrained (happily) to travel at 6 mph down a narrow stretch of water, in the company of a very small group of people.
I read alot (of course) but I spend alot of time doing almost nothing - watching for herons on the bank, looking at patterns of ripples in the water (these are more exciting in our new world of river cruising - though there's lots I miss about canal life), smoothing the velvet softness of Libby's ears.

This summer, the usual feeling of being in a different world was compounded by the fact that we were actually very close to home.
From our home mooring at Tewkesbury we cruised down the Severn to Gloucester, the little city that I know best, in whose Cathedral I was ordained, whose geography is mapped out, for me, in terms of the parish boundaries of my friends.
Quite extraordinary to view it as a visitor...to look up at the Cathedral from the basin of the docks; to spend a while focussed not on the ecclesiastical present but on the maritime past as we wandered between the warehouses and noticed how the tiny Mariners' Church echoed the shape of the mercantile temples that surrounded it; to wander past the embryonic Gloucester Quays shopping mall, on which so much of the city's future may depend. To be a tourist at home!

All in all, a summer of interesting perspectives...but I suspect that it will at Greenbelt that I really find my eyes are opened and all sorts of things appear in a new light.

This week

We have been working on our slightly battered narrowboatPolyphony ...Removing and replacing windows, applying more mastick (sp?) than I knew existed to every conceivable joint, and beginning (in between showers) to cover her weary red paint with a rather pleasing blue.
On Friday, we are downing tools and taking her off for a cruise somewhere down the Severn or thereabouts (she is currently moored at Tewkesbury, so we're having to learn the unfamiliar ways of rivers, after the relative simplicity of canals).
Whatever else happens, I don't plan to spend much time online for the next few days. It's extraordinarily good to have all my children in one place, - so forgive me if I just concentrate on enjoying them.
See you on the other side!

Rivers and re-creation

In obedience to lots of good advice (and even a sermon preached to myself) I've just spent a very restorative couple of days...

On Thursday I had a yummy pub supper with a friend, whose parishes run down the eastern bank of the Severn - and she took me to see my first Severn Bore.
It was a lovely calm evening, with the river flowing gently towards the sea (as rivers are, after all, wont to do) when the flow was broken by the wave of the bore coming upstream...Even from some distance we could hear it (though it was more a loud purr than the sort of roaring that Thomas Hardy described) and to watch it was quite extraordinary. Something in the contrast between the calm of the evening and the inexorable progress of the wave up the river was irresistable. Some surfers caught the wave and rode upstream for a while, and though I was assured that this was just a two-star bore, so not that remarkable, I was really delighted by it. No drama, no hype - it just was!



The following day the holiday continued, as I caught a train to London to catch up with friends. The very act of getting on a train takes me back to childhood expeditions, so the whole thing felt like an adventure from the start. Add to that the joy of being in a special place with lovely people, absolutely no responsibility for anything beyond being there and open to happy things and the result was just blissful.

A long long time ago, when I was busy working my way round the Greater London Choral Circuit I would take Sunday afternoons off to sit in the congregation at St Paul's. I wasn't quite sure what I was doing there, but knew I felt more human afterwards. Even on the busiest summer afternoons, there seemed to be a quality of space and stillness from which I derived strength without really knowing why.
Later I attended ordinations there, struggling (this was the late 1980s, and I was a long way away from those who were praying and working, campaigning and praying some more so that doors might be opened to enable women to respond as God called them to priesthood) with a sense that somehow this connected to me. This morning I attended a beautiful early Mass and all was very good.

Best of all, the sense of calm and deep happiness has accompanied me all the way home. Typically after a retreat, it runs out by the time I've unloaded the first lot of laundry and realised that nobody has got round to doing the dishes from yesterday breakfast. This evening, I'm still purring gently.

Thank you, God.

So very tired

One of the things I was totally unpreapred for as I made the transition from curate to priest-at-least-notionally-in-charge was the high level exhaustion that has been my constant companion since 6th April.
This has nothing to do with not loving the job - I have rarely been happier, and am very sure that I have come home and am exactly where I should be. (thankfully, members of my congregations are kind enough to confirm this independently, which is always reassuring)
Nor is it a reflection on the demands that are being made of me - both my congregations are entirely supportive and caring, and very anxious that I should take the proper time off, rest when I need to,and generally not work myself into the ground.
It may just be a reaction to the quantum leap between even the most focussed and devoted of curacies and the reality of being the place where the buck stops...the popular comparison of leaving school on a Friday afternoon as a 6th former and returning on the Monday morning as the Head Teacher is truly a pretty accurate comparison in my profoundly limited experience...Where is Wonderful Vicar when I need him?!
Be that as it may, I'm pretty wiped out most of the time right now.
Not when I'm with people - then I am fired up, energised and energetic, remembering and radiating exactly what I am for...
No, it's when I get home that the slump happens...so that simple and silly household tasks sit neglected for days, and even after 3 days at 4 mph on the much loved narrowboat Polyphony, I'm still inclined to sleep and sleep and sleep some more.
Not to worry!
My family are pretty tolerant really, and if you are going to need to adopt Inertia as a middle name, I can think of few better places to do so than England's inland waterways.
We all had a lovely time - busy doing nothing!

The Big Event part 2 - sail away

Over that evening and the next morning friends arrived thick and fast...a happy morning eating baignets, buying wool (yarn across the Pond) and enjoying being together, then a less happy time being herded through the process of embarkation, surrounded by over-excited and fractious humanity. With each stage in the queuing process the noise level mounts, but is nothing compared to that which greets us when we finally make it aboard. This is Disneyland crossed with the Christmas rush in Oxford Street - with a dash of the last days of Pompeii thrown in.Everyone is intent on serious self-indulgence...a festival of aspirational over-consumption which is unlike anything I have ever experienced. I was perpetually conscious of the horrific waste - meals discarded after only a mouthful...stunning arrangements of food at the Midnight Buffet that would never even be tasted...oh, and the horrid indignity of waiting staff compelled to sing, dance and twirl napkins to amuse the guests at dinner, which sat ill with the gracious living ethos of our evening meals....Not comfortable (though the ice sculptures at the Midnight Buffet will linger in my memory as the melting reality could never do).

Thankfully our retreat leader Mary Marcotte exudes gracious calm and our first session effectively puts the lid on a mounting panic that being here on this ship at this time might after all be a colossal mistake. Not with these women it won't be...
One thing that startled me was, to state the obvious, how American you/they all are!
When you spend time reading someone over a period of months or years, yu can come to feel that you really know them very well - and in many ways, you do. But of course the slice of life that any of us presents on our blog is at best a very small window onto a much larger world. I had forgotten, I guess, that the world these RevGals share is shaped by a cultural context and a body of shared experience quite different from my own. It's not just a question of accents, idioms and turns of phrase...We are different, in ways it is hard to pinpoint.I am just about the least reserved person I know, very quick to bounce up to people with my labrador tail wagging - but I am truly astounded at the degree of openness and self-disclosure, the deep sharing of hurts and anxieties that my friends offer without hesitation almost from the word "Go". It was a privilege to listen, even when it didn't feel like the right time for me to talk (a novelty in itself - it's always the right time for me!)

I never did get to like the brash consumerism of the "Fun Ship" experience but I think I would have enjoyed a week on the tube in rush hour with this group, especially after we found our own safe space on the starboard aft deck. I can't think of a better place to spend the transition season, while I shed one identity and prepared to take on another, nor better company for this part of the journey.

The Big Event part 1 - an English Girl abroad

Yes...I know I have been home from the USA for a whole week now, and I'm deeply ashamed of my blogging inadequacy - but I've been living life at such a pace that finding time to blog it has been way beyond me.
Now, though, I'm beginning to feel that things are in the right places in the vicarage, even if I'm only beginning to learn what it might mean to be priest in charge of these parishes, so I'm snatching a few minutes to begin to blog some of "what happened next" after I ceased to be the Curate (and thus presumably forfeited the right to blog as "good in parts" for ever more)

The first thing to say about the RevGals Big Event is that it was wonderful. Completely and totally.
It was also the perfect liminal space for me to spend the days of my transition.
I was protected from the finality of moving from Privet Drive and from the endless grumpiness that is a by product of relocating.
I also got to spend time with some of my favourite people on the planet, and it was just lovely.

From the moment that a kind blogger collected me from Louis Armstrong airport, I knew myself to be welcome and among friends. NOLA is the most amazing city, somewhere I could wander happily for days. There seems to be none of that desperate "drive" I associate with 21st century America.
Instead, people saunter rather than dash....jazz, live and canned, fills the air...and the sun shines.
Goodness, yes. The sun does shine.
I had made the decision before leaving home that, as my family were being so amazingly generous in encouraging me to take the trip despite the pressures of packing and moving house, I would savour every moment. So, instead of panicking at the obvious luxury of my hotel, and its implications for my credit card, I sank gratefully into a bath before heading downstairs to eat oysters...Oysters, if you please! Just as well that I'd given myself that talking to (though in fairness I must say that they were among the least expensive items on the menu, and a perfect "light bite" after a day of endless travelling).
An excited phonecall from Revd Dr Kate, and then it was bed and sleep. Serious sleep.
My poor addled body-clock roused me early - but hey, there was a whole new city to explore...So I sat on a terrace overlooking the Mississippi where the paddle steamer Nanchez plied her trade, before hitting the shops in the Riverfront Mall.
I lunched on shrimp po'boy and gumbo and listened to fabulous jazz CDs, before choosing one to take home for LCM..
I wandered, strolled, anything but hurried up town to St Charles Avenue, where mardi gras beads still hung glinting in the trees beside the road.
Progress was slow, as I had to stop repeatedly to admire and photograph the timebered houses, with their wide verandahs and ornate wrought iron balustrades.
I just couldn't stop smiling. I was on my own in this friendliest of cities, accountable to nobody, free just to be...to relax, to go wherever the mood took me, or simply to stay still and enjoy everything.
Of course I took the street car back down to the French Quarter...Of course, I was enchanted by the quarter itself, with its air of past romance bubbling just below the surface, its hints of the faintly macabre in cemetery art and voodoo shops...Of course I sat in the sun and listened to live jazz, while a skilled puppeteer made his creatures pick up their instruments and embark on the theme from the Pink Panther.
A pair of benevolent drunks befriended me outside the Cathedral and shared their Katrina stories and their pleasure in their city. For a moment there was a glimpse of something darker as they told me
"Of course you'll be safe down Bourbon Street at night as long as you stay away from...."(a nudge and a nod towards an African American who was sweeping the pavements) "people like him"...
I was sad.
Already more than half in love with the city, I wanted it to be flawless - but of course, nothing ever is. This is still the deep south, and not all the heritage that lingers is sweetly romantic.
As afternoon drifted towards evening I made my way back to the hotel, where my first RevGal had arrived and offered company for a further exploration. From then on the tenor and tempo of life changed, - but I'll always feel vaguely proprietorial about New Orleans. After all, we had spent a whole day alone together.

Catching up

Here we are on Saturday afternoon...the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I've spent a day learning about ways that spiritual directors might support those with huge and difficult baggage in specific areas. Ummm.

Before that I spent 3 days learning about Messy Church - excellent stuff, though largely of the type I've been involved in almost instinctively pretty much for ever. It's frustrating to be between jobs - I came home wanting to try some of the ideas, but knowing it's too late for me to introduce anything else at St M's, and too early to know whether this might be the way forward for Cainscross (though I would love it if it were). In any case, it was good to be somewhere with time to pause and reflect on the underlying issues which make families struggle with church (and, indeed, those which make some churches struggle with the changes needful to make families welcome) - and in such a very beautiful place too. All these pictures were taken from our bedroom window. It's a wonder I managed to leave the room at all, really.

Lee Abbey is, of course, a community - and my extrovert self was stunned by just how hard I found it to spend time with several dozen others who've all come from places quite different to my own. Meal times were really testing...even with the knowledge that I'd be going home on Friday, and would probably never see anyone again. Interesting! My admiration for those who spend 18 months or more working there, serving others and learning to be community is unbounded. Perhaps I'm not as "E" as I thought...

But it was lovely to spend time with N - special friend from vicar school - and I accomplished two hitherto undreamed of miracles in that I returned home without buying so much as a Grove booklet, despite assorted well-stocked bookstalls and I also (whisper it not in Gath!) finished my sermon for Sunday evening on Thursday afternoon.

So that's it. Sermon crises sorted for ever more.
Just go away from the parish for 4 days....
Easy.
I can really see that catching on!

A snowy day! Iceland part 2

(The picture shows the gap between the American and European tectonic plates...and the blizzard at full tilt too)

In the face of the weather, Hugger Steward is prepared to reconsider his plan of complete independence and serious cross-country trekking – so on Tuesday we opt for a guided expedition and join a small handful of hardy tourists to see the nearer wonders of this amazing island.
As we board our bus the dance of the snowflakes becomes more urgent and the world shrinks to just a few yards ahead. We’re on the one main road around the country (rather smaller than the road that I take from Cheltenham to Gloucester) where traffic is light, though nobody shows any signs of being deterred by the blizzard. Only when we turn off the ring road onto a narrow road to the world heritage site of Pingvellir does our amiable guide abandon conversation to allow him to concentrate on keeping track of just where the road has gone!
Pingvellir is the site of the world’s oldest parliament, but it’s hard to imagine any parleying going on here as we get off the bus into an almost total white-out….something completely new for HS and me. A few steps and I find myself literally up to my waist in snow, giggling hysterically.

I’m hauled out, still helpless with laughter, and follow the others a few yards to the spot where the rift between the tectonic plates of the American and European land masses are pulling slowly apart – at the same rate of growth, we are told, as human fingernails. The bowl where the parliament met has dropped 4 metres in the past century – hard to grasp for someone living where the land feels very fixed and stable.
The sky clears as we drive through the rift valley, bumping our way across the gap between the continents as I think about the time before those plates moved apart, before the Ice Ages changed the world. In Iceland, despite the huge sense of history, of ancient rocks from before time was, things feel somehow provisional – I’m aware of the earth’s fragility, of the restlessness of daily earthquakes, of hot springs that provide domestic hot water for the whole city of Reykjavik and beyond but whose spouting upwards can stop or start in obedience to the shifting of the earth. The giant sleeps but lightly here, and what would be solid foundations in England seem precarious, still evolving, mutable as the landscapes of home are not.
We move on to Gulfoss, with its incredible waterfall, flowing straight from the glacier. This is the arctic of my imagination (yes – technically we’re well outside the arctic circle, but with a landscape like this, I’m not bothered) and I’m stunned that anywhere can be quite so much like itself.
HS heads off across the snow field to investigate the lower banks…In seconds, it seems, he is just a small black dot against the overwhelming whiteness…He’s utterly content in this deserted landscape, which seems both untamed and untameable, a place where people are just an incidental accident in this land where ice and volcanoes hold sway.
On to Geysir with its steaming pools and sulphorous air. We stand and watch as waters roil and bubble, before bursting upwards in a stunning jet..Again, it is the volatility that impresses most. We listen to the gentle bubbling sound, our voices quiet as if we’re spying on some wild animal whom we could scare with a sudden movement. Perhaps the geysir is teasing us…it appears to gather momentum and then the bubbling dies away again, but if we turn our heads, surely that very instant the sleeping dragon will spring up.
Nothing is quite as it seems, after all.

At last - Iceland report part 1

Arriving at Keflavik last week could not have presented a greater contrast to my last international arrival - in Bangalore.
There, noisy crowds had milled everywhere, so that the airport seemed to be struggling to contain the throng...and the traffic when we emerged was the most alarming I'd met anywhere.Here, the terminal was almost empty, and we walked through clean, quiet corridors, everything cool and understated,to reclaim our luggage without fuss or drama.
Outside, of course, was the snow. That's why we'd come to Iceland, after all.
(We heard later that this was the first "proper" winter for 30 years- as we arrived, we assumed that this overwhelming whiteness everywhere was the norm:it was, after all, exactly as we'd expected).

As the bus took us into Reykjavik, I reflected how hugely discouraging the landscape must have seemed to the first settlers. It would be reasonable if Icelandics were set-faced survivors, grimly determined - but in fact they were relaxe and charming, as if determined to undermine the inhospitable geography of their island.
We arrived in the tiny city, and walked the short distance from the bus terminal through streets largely empty of cars and people - much like the long Sunday afternoons of childhood.
Traces lingered of Christmas past. Evergreen wreaths on the doors, candles in many windows - as if the greater ferocity of winter here demands a sustained response.
The city is a delight...Just walking through the snow transformed us both into small children, excited by everything...by the houses painted in primary colours, and clad in corrugated iron against the chill...by the flocks of water fowl that congregate in frozen cacophany by the frozen lake...by the lake itself. I've never walked to an island before - nor stood in an impossibly rural landscape which is, incredibly, a capital city...I loved it.

Delight or warning?

Now that we are definitely into autumn around here, and have moved into daylight-saving mode, I find that many of my journeys seem to involve heading east at sunrise and, conversely (if unsurprisingly) west at sunset...and the skies have been completely and mind-blowingly fantastic.
The trouble is that while once I would simply have rejoiced at their beauty and wondered what any shepherds about the place could expect by way of weather, I'm now rather concerned that quite so many clear skies and stunning light shows may be a further sign of the damage we're doing to our environment. After the floods of June and July and an October that closely resembled the Junes of my childhood, even the most sceptical in these parts are beginning to suspect that there may be something amiss. Are these fairytale skies also signs of the times? I've no idea of the science, but I have to say that as they appear day after day I'm becoming distinctly nervous.

Nonetheless, the drive back from Hereford
this evening featured such beauty
in my wing-mirror that I just had to stop
and wonder.


In case it's not familiar, the "shepherd" reference is to a piece of Old Wives' lore that proclaims
"Red sky at night, shepherd's delight.
Red sky at morning, shepherd's warning"

So now you know!

Cornwall was wonderful

thank you for asking.

Hattie Gandhi remains the perfect person with whom to travel and our hosts at Tregithy were their usual hospitable selves. Even the weather took a turn for the better, so that we could (and did) sit beside sparkling waves, watching the dogs swim for sticks and listening to the cry of the sea-birds.
We walked a fraction of the coastal path and talked about dreams and plans, about life and relationships and about God. And it was very good.

One thing, though. I think I'd question the wisdom of taking 3 days of leave and then returning for the inside of a week before a further break - rejoining is proving harder than usual and I'm sure that's because it is overlapping with the eve-of-holiday wind-down feeling... Trying to plan tomorrow's OpenHouse and some creative Evening Worship - both tasks I really enjoy as a rule but closely akin to pulling teeth today.
Still, at least thinking about Transfiguration should allow me to recapture some of the holiday mood...Time apart to recognise God sounds rather a good idea to me.

Running away

in search of a Lizard, a bath and a flushing loo...
Dogs, daughter and curate are Not At Home to callers (or anyone else for that matter) until bedtime on Thursday. I think it's time that the Dillon the Evil Jack Russell was taken to the seaside.
Cornwall, here we come!

Also in London

• Time drinking wine with friends

• Time to limp along the Thames path (note to self...it's worth taking the extra time to change out of holey tights - nylon burns create truly wonderful blisters). Another time take a bike.

• Time to enjoy Antony Gormley's Blind Light exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. Highly recommended, if you're anywhere near.

Both Hugger Steward and I were enthralled, and have come home fired with ideas for filling a room sized perspex cube with dry ice as an alt worship installation. Being inside this (the eponymous Blind Light) was a most extraordinary experience. No landmarks. Nothing to orientate around. Even your hands look unfamiliar as they stretch out in search of a wall, that turns out to be only inches away. Strangers brush up against you, then vanish again.
Damp underfoot, or it really would be the perfect "no distractions" prayer space that we ENFPs have been looking for all our lives.

Gormley's work is all about space - as defined in terms of the human body
"Within the exhibition, space is defined and articulated by crowds and solitary figures, concrete, steel, cast iron or lead; representational or abstract; real or imagined; and voides where bodies could be. In encoutering these presences and absences, we are asked not to be passive onlookers, but to become part of the work as we walk through or round it...."
Encountering presence or absence. Hmnn. Told you it felt like prayer.


I loved Hatch - a maze like installation featuring metal rods, protruding from walls and floor...Again, being inside was strangely disorientating while to look in from the outside was to experiment with a series of kaleidoscopes.
"Installations provide a resonating chamber in which the life of the viewer can in some way reflect upon itself. And so for me the viewer is absolutely essential, the third element. You have the work, the space and the viewer"


Outside on the roof tops for a mile around, familiar Gormley figures stood sentinel...Event Horizon. Sinister, or benevolent? I'm not sure - but definitely memorable, specially if you've been watching Dr Who.



I love the way that Gormley's work so often has this extra public dimension.
He invites those who'd not naturally think of visiting a gallery to enter a relationship with his figures...You never just look at his work. It involves you, whatever your expectations. It even follows you home!

I’m getting slightly confused here. This is England in summer, right?
And surely that means endless rain and probably the need for a good thick jumper, specially if you’re engaged in any sort of even semi-outdoor pursuit?

But once again, we’ve had 2 days of perfect weather as we cruised the Grand Union Canal on the boat that is now nearly 50% ours. Since her exams are almost over HG came home and it was lovely to have all 3 children together for my birthday. In her usual creative way, HG has also managed to come up with a name that actually pleases all 5 Flemings – almost impossible!
So, from her registration in our name next spring, our boat will be called
POLYPHONY
We rather like the idea of independent and various tunes coming together as a metaphor for family life on a good day, and hope that the boat herself will be pleased to continue a semi musical theme (her previous owners will, one day, have another Fabian Stedman, so in the event the decision to rename was made for us). In the short term the he/she Fabian/Polyphony confusion remains, but honestly she's a joy even when she's just "the boat". And Biggles the wonderful camera and I have alot of fun en route too...at 4 mph, there is generally time even for me to point and shoot before it's too late. This is just above the top lock at Stoke Bruerne, early this afternoon.



Tomorrow is my youngest god-daughter's baptism, which I'll hope to blog before heading off to Cornwall for a rather special retreat/holiday led by superstar DH.

Life at 4 mph

This is clearly not the post of a reflective blogger, - but I'm a woman of my word and so here, as threatened, is evidence of our recent trip (more on flickr for those with more manners than sense!).

We were incredibly blessed with the weather, which was warmer than many summer cruises we've taken, and there seems to be a benevolent something about the boat which more than counters the possible tensions created by lots of Flemings in one small space. We knew this often worked (it is, after all, one reason why we are buying a narrowboat at all) but given the exhaustion levels of several of the party on day one, and some fairly huge things going on in all directions in recent weeks, it felt rather miraculous that even when the engine failed on Wednesday morning (going through a tunnel, of course) we all sat quite happily in the sun till a marvellous mechanic arrived to set all to rights. Not a word of grouch and grumble, even from those who normally like to get on with getting wherever we are going. The fact that we were stuck here might have had something to do with it, of course...the air laden with bird song, the trees that were so green that they looked as if the colour had been invented for them only seconds before, spring at its most perfect, and we were forced to sit and enjoy it.
Our relentlessly barking dogs were preternaturally peaceful too, overjoyed with knowing exactly where their family was at all times, and enjoying some long walks along the tow path and the feeling of wind in the whiskers!

Incidentally, the friends from whom we're buying the boat are keen ringers, so the boat is currently "Fabian Stedman" - but though the male Flemings ring, we need a new name to mark the adoption process (not least because I find it very hard to square the circle of a boat, which is definitively female, having a guy's name). We've had some thoughts, but a few suggestions would always be welcome...She's not a young boat, but she's sound and friendly..and she's going to be ours!

A bit of a blow

I've blogged in the past about my very favourite retreat house in the entire world, The Llan in Shropshire. I've been getting excited over the past few days, because I'm heading there for 3 nights next week with special friend from vicar-school, - and, what's more, I'd managed to book in for a slot all to myself in May so I was feeling truly smug.

Until, that is, a friend emailed me this link yesterday.
The Llan, in all its hospitable beauty, is on the market.
There's even an ad in the Church Times.
I have a horrible feeling that this may be my last visit, and I hate that.
What's more, I suddenly understand the sentiments of those who see changes looming in their beloved church and want to run away and cry. Those pews may be ugly, but if it was while sitting in one of them that you had a special hug from God, then yes, you are entitled to get rather upset if they are under threat. It doesn't mean the changes might not lead to a greater good in the end, - but grief along the way is perfectly reasonable. Trust me, I'm a curate and I know.

That's rather where I am tonight.

Oh, and I urgently need recommendations for retreat houses that give you enough space and spoiling without any sense of people breathing down your neck...Llan has been so special for me, -it' going to be a very hard act to follow.

Sorry guys

You should have gone before we left home!

Glimpse of the blindingly obvious?

(Click on the image to enlarge)

The sign reads "Keep Clear". Hadn't planned on doing much else, if I'm honest.

After a shaky start

the day was rescued in style by young Dufflepud (on his half-term break), with whom the dogs and I enjoyed a splendid expedition to discover the Severn flood-plane in and around Deerhurst.
It was a beautiful spring-like day which made it very hard to believe that the last walk we'd taken together had been through a blizzard, though the flooded meadows told another story, and we frequently found the road ahead under water.
I'd actually forgotten how beautiful this part of the world can be,- we had a wonderful time, but only travelled 50 miles round trip from home, (just a few miles more than the normal school run) . Really good to relax together.Somehow, that just doesn't happen enough.

A dufflepud is born!

Youngest son has long had an ambition to try his hand at coracling,- inspired in part by early identification with Reepicheep the mouse. and by a happy chance one of my very favourite people on the planet has in her possession a coracle. Add to this mixture two clergy without sermons to preach tomorrow, a dry Saturday and a duck-weed covered stretch of canal and a very happy morning is the result. Amazingly, the change of clothes we'd brought with us went home untouched...This child is far more balanced in every respect than his mother!

As a means of travel, coracling makes even narrow-boating seem speedy,- so we marched up and down the towpath a bit in an effort to keep warm,while he paddled along. Lots to see ...I'm almost regretting not joining in the Project 365 as I find outings with Biggles the camera oddly addictive. I've never been a visual person, but knowing that mistakes cost nothing, I'm getting bolder by the minute.
Mind you, as J and the coracle drifted away from the shore, he looked not so much like Reepicheep as some other characters from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader...the newly visible monopod dwarves, the Dufflepuds. In fact, from henceforth I propose to give no 2 son a new nom- de-blog...the Dufflepud.