Missed the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival this year, but wrote a poem over the weekend:

EXIT GRANDCHILDREN, STAGE LEFT

Empty dens in the garden,
bear on the stairs

 The speed of darkness has been exceeded
and candles lie where they have fallen
under the newly cut hedge

The cars and bricks have been returned
to the garage, and the beds
remade, redirected, resolved

The prince and princess have gone,
heading for hallowe’en
and we are in winter already

But we all remember
that trick of the city night:
lights like puppets dancing
strange circles across the sky

magic, like a roundabout,
reflecting, returning

Caught glimpses of fireworks as I drove to North Walsham on Saturday to pick up some copies of Another Country, the Paston poetry book that contains five of my poems and was designed by David. In a totally unbiased sort of way I can say that it looks very good. It will be launched next Monday at the Dragon Hall private view.

North Walsham again on Sunday to see Jessie for tea and mince pies after a quickish visit to a packed Sainsburys to buy flowers for the cemetery. Not very nice weather: intermittent drizzle. Earlier I had preached at St Augustine’s and we had a bring-and-share lunch which turned out to be better than I had anticipated at the point when I realised that about 50 per cent of it was couscous. Actually the version of couscous that included meat was quite pleasant, and there were rolls and cheese, which can never be a bad thing.

On Saturday morning I paid a brief visit to the church hall for the reinstatement of the window and discovered the Rainbows in situ, which of course meant I had tracked down Cheryl, our elusive cleaner. She has promised to send me a list of people hiring the all, but I’m not holding my breath. I also noticed that our new sign contains a mis-spelling of the word “spiritual” (sprirtual, no less), which is pretty annoying, especially considering that the person who provided the PDF for the sign people is perfectly capable of spelling “spiritual”. As he is now in Palestine, I can’t hit him. Just as well, probably.