The afternoon was cold without the strong winds we’ve been becoming accustomed to lately. Margaret and I decided to take a good long walk through Sheringham Park. This is a National Trust (NT), property, comprising a large wooded area surrounding Sheringham Hall. The woodland walks are carefully maintained by NT employees and are extremely pleasant to visit. There are many mature trees with Rhododendrons, Azaleas with several species of Magnolia.
A striking young tree, resplendent in its Autumnal golden yellow foliage is the first colourful image that strikes the eye, giving a flavour of the season. Many crunchy, brown Oak and Beech leaves were covering the ground along the way. I couldn’t help imagining a fine tilth of leaf mould all over our allotment if only I could solve the logistical problem of transportation.
We continued to wander along the woodland trail and next encountered this wonderful pink Azalea tree at the edge of the pathway. This was the only shrub in bloom at this time of the year, although many shrubs were covered in plump strong buds which promises well for a gorgeous display of blooms in the Spring.
Margaret came prepared with a walking cane to aid her balance on the uneven terrain. We passed a few people also enjoying the solitude of a woodland afternoon stroll, mainly couples walking the family pooch. Everyone we encountered strictly observed the social distance recommendations and cheerfully said Good Afternoon to us as we passed.
I was examining some rich green ferns, almost ankle-deep in Oak tree leaves here. The tangled branches in the background sadly feature a good number of branches that had been torn off the trees in a recent terrific storm.
We were just in time to see a Squirrel dashing up the trunk of a large Beech tree and I noticed the ground was covered with the empty husks of Beechnuts. Obviously there is a secreted hibernation larder nearby.
The normally prolific birdlife was either roosting or away on migration. However we did notice a Magpie, a Crow and a few smaller birds darting around. At the end of the afternoon we had walked two miles in about 50 minutes. A good healthy lockdown exercise experience for both of us.
This is a poem I wrote several years ago based on a real life Prime Minister of the UK from 1964 to 1970. 1974 and 1976
He sensationally resigned shortly after his 60th birthday. It has been suggested he was in the early stages of Altzheimers disease when he resigned and some recent tests seem to bear this out.
He died in 1995 aged 79 of colon cancer and Altzheimers disease.
He was buried in St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly.
His wife Mary Wilson was an accomplished published poet.
Mary Wilson’s poem on Harold’s death….
My love you have stumbled slowly
On the quiet way to death
And you lie where the wind blows strongly
With a salty spray on its breath.
For this men of the island bore you
Down paths where the branches meet
And the only sounds were the crunching grind
Of the gravel beneath their feet
And the sighing slide of the ebbing tide
On the beach where the breakers meet
Lady Mary Wilson lived to be 102 passing away on 7th June 2018 in London and her ashes are buried in St Mary’s in the Isle of Scilly.
PROMPT~ What do you like the least about your father?
MEMORIES
by John Yeo
This is a very tricky question for me as I don’t remember anything much about my father at all. This account will have to be made up of dribs and drabs of second hand information. I was born towards the end of the second world war when things were absolutely hair-raising. Enemy aircraft were in the throes of non-stop bombing raids on England. I was born in spite of this and I was living with my parents on a Canadian air force base in the depths of rural Surrey. From second hand accounts, I learned later I was wrapped in a shawl or blankets and deposited in a cupboard under the stairs during the aforementioned bombing raids. I can’t begin to imagine the effects of the continuous crash, bang, wallop, on the senses of a tiny baby lying in a cot in darkness under the stairs.
My younger brother arrived and the family were obviously surviving in spite of the rigours of living with the continuous uncertainty of war.
It will be obvious to anyone who has read this far that my Father doesn’t feature in this account at all. He was obviously a Canadian service-man based in the United Kingdom.
From all other vague inferences and information that have reached me over the years I’ve discovered my Father returned to Canada at the end of the war leaving my Mother with two children and possibly another child on the way. The family were obviously no longer entitled to stay in military accommodation and in the upheaval following the war, accommodation was scarce. Rooms were finally obtained with a widow with three daughters, and things were overcrowded, with two women and five children in a three bedroom house. Adding to the problems of this overcrowding, was the fact that my Mother was pregnant and would be adding another baby to the household shortly.
A solution to the overcrowding was arrived at through the intervention of the social services and it was arranged that my brother and I would be sent away to a residential home for children. I have always referred to this as a boarding school, as we were fed, educated and taken care of under the auspices of the charitable organization who ran the establishment.
. This was the beginning where the seeds of dislike for my Father were planted and this feeling simply grew from a vague feeling in later years.
What I dislike immensely about my Father is his total disregard of the children he abandoned and his complete inability to find the time or the inclination to trace them, I have since discovered he married again and had at least one more child from this union. I can understand his needing to start a new chapter in his life on his return to Canada, but this will never justify his closing down all previous chapters and shutting the book.
When I first saw this prompt l began thinking about the consequences of global warming on the whole of the avian family.
The heating of the atmosphere is such a slow insidious process that the consequences to birds wouldn’t be an instant event.
Obviously this would not be a simple matter for birds as migration is linked to food supply and food supply would have to increase to cater for the birds. If there could ever be a continuous food supply in one area for the birds that didn’t fly South and were able to survive, surely breeding patterns would change and there would certainly be an over-abundance of birds, thus putting more pressure on the food supply. A good subject for a poetic flight of fancy.
RANDOM WRITING PROMPT TUESDAY 27th OCTOBER 2020 ~ FLASH FICTION
You bought a memory foam pillow at a garage sale. Little did you know that it wasn’t an ordinary pillow. The pillow gave whoever was lying on it the memory of its previous users.
~~~~~~
THE MUDDLED MEMORY
by John Yeo
I’m a single man, living in a sparsely-furnished bedsit in a densely populated area of the city. It was pushing the bounds of reason to describe this place as furnished when I first rented it and I had bought many items to make things a little more comfortable from local charity shops and garage sales.
It was Sunday night when I started to feel odd. I remember suddenly waking with an urgent desire to visit the bathroom. I was feeling quite muddle-headed and I had to blindly force myself to remember where the bathroom actually was. I simply put this down to the result of a heavy-headed sleep and I got back into bed and tried to sleep.
I lay awake for a while and my mind began to drift over some odd subjects. I began to worry about getting caught and arrested by the police for my crimes. The criminal offences I was ruminating over were connected with money-laundering and extortion. I remember thinking they were just a series of ultra-realistic dreams. I brought to the surface of my mind a whole sequence of events and places where I apparently had lived and images of the people who were also involved in these criminal activities. Eventually I drifted off into a deep sleep until the alarm clock shrilled out and it was time to get up.
I dressed for work and stopped in a small local cafe for breakfast. The weird dreamlike experiences from the night suddenly came to mind as I sat and ate and I thought I recognised the area where I was supposed to have lived and committed my crimes. The house was much like a large detached place where I had stopped to buy some items for my flat from a nice lady who was having a garage sale to clear some unwanted effects.
I didn’t think anything else about the dream when I got to work as I was far too busy working on some intricate accounts.
I was shattered at the end of the day as I hadn’t slept too well the night before and I went to bed early, where I immediately fell into a deep sleep. I woke a couple of hours later and visited the bathroom, again I was unsure where the bathroom actually was and I seemed to be unfamiliar with the way things were situated. I returned to the bed and tried to sleep again, without much success.
My pillow was uncomfortable and I turned it over and over trying to get the memory foam to fit my posture. Then I remembered I was married to a lady named Jean and we had been wed for three years. My brother and sister were also living in our house temporarily but they had both recently left the house. Jean had cleared everything out from their rooms, dumped some junk and had a garage sale with some other items, in aid of a local charity.
I was heavily involved in a betting business where I made high profits from money-laundering and much besides.
The next day everything faded into the background when I woke and I dragged myself to work and over my lunch break I confided in my friend Shirley.
We decided to visit the house I remembered from my dream, on some pretext and check out the lie of the land. When we got there we found the house empty and shuttered up, the neighbour next door informed us they had moved overnight.
When we arrived at the office there was a message for me from my neighbour at home to let me know there had been a fire in my house and the whole two flats, including mine, had been destroyed.
Shirley and her husband immediately offered me the benefit of their spare room for a while until I was able to find somewhere to live.
Strangely, I never, ever, experienced those strange dream-like feelings again.
This is a response to a Flash Fiction prompt from ‘Putting My Feet In the Dirt’, Writing Prompts hosted by ‘M’. Which can be found by following the link below..
The sky briefly turned pink after we’d experienced a short heavy shower of rain with high winds this afternoon. We had some storm damage last week and I lost a smallish tree from one of the borders.
I was busily staking up and giving some support to a couple of our shrubs today when I got caught in the rain. More high winds and heavy rain is forecast in the next couple of days. The problem is, this excessive rain, coupled with the high winds, weakens the root systems and there’s a danger of trees and shrubs getting blown over and uprooted. I have enjoyed taking care of our Camellia shrub which gets bigger and better every year. The winds have forced this 16 years old shrub to bend precariously and I’ve staked it with a double stake support. I also have a Forsythia that needed a supportive stake. This Forsythia shrub brings back some good memories to Margaret and I, as it was nurtured from a cutting we obtained from the garden of a very special lady who once lived in Bishops Stortford. I think as these plants and trees reward us every year it’s worth spending time taking care of them.
I also snapped a quick shot of a large pot of pink Nerines that are in full flower at the moment.
This collage shows our beautiful Camellia and Forsythia shrubs in flower in early Spring.
PROMPT ~ Write about a time you were uncomfortable
UNCOMFORTABLE CORONAVIRUS VIBES
by John Yeo
The huge publicity campaign highlighting the dangers of interaction with other people during the current Coronavirus pandemic makes one feel extremely uncomfortable all the time.
Whenever one ventures out of the house the dangers, whether real or imagined are all around. Most people we come into contact with, take the necessary precautions by keeping to the metre distancing recommendations and a high proportion wear a face covering when entering the local shops.
However there are still the virtually unconcerned minority, who take enormous risks with their own health and everyone else they come into contact with.
The daily statistics, sadly give a clear picture of the latest figures of people who have become infected with the virus and sadder still, the number of people who’ve been hospitalised. Then the most uncomfortable statistic of all, the daily death toll from this unremittingly vicious virus.
We live in a small town of narrow streets around the main shopping area that has been turned into a one way pedestrian area. One side of the main road has been designated by clear arrow signs pointing in one direction. The opposite side of the road has a series of arrows clearly pointing in the opposite direction. The shops and the shopping area are built close to the main road, with narrow pavements, leaving little room for people to pass one another and still comply with the social distancing recommendations.
The main shopping road is a one way road for traffic and the town gets exceedingly busy at times. Some incredibly ignorant, unenlightened people, will insist on walking along the pavements in the wrong direction causing other pedestrians to walk in the road to maintain the social distancing regulations. Very few people wear a face covering except for when they enter the shops, where it is a legal requirement.
We tend to avoid shopping in town unless it’s absolutely essential, but of course there are times when a visit to the Pharmacy or the Optician or the Hairdressers makes it unavoidable.
At this particularly unusual time during this obnoxious Coronavirus pandemic going into town will always be accompanied by an unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling.
As an independent healthy young man I developed into an equally independent healthy middle aged adult. I have been fortunate enough to share my life with strong minded independent women and my attitude to life has always been secure and ongoing. Like many others of my age group, I have always felt thoroughly competent and many years younger in my outlook than my years would outwardly suggest. I’m sure most people feel so much younger and stronger than their years and perhaps this is a natural reaction to the aging process.
As I grow older in years I feel I have always known my biggest fear and I take steps to avoid succumbing to the sad mental decline that is dementia. I dislike and I will eternally dread the thought of becoming totally dependent on others for many of my needs. I try hard to use my brain in as many ways as possible to attempt to delay the certain loss of mental acuity that invariably comes to us all, with the slow passing of the years. I keep fit and healthy and enjoy a balanced diet.
I use my brain in as many ways as possible and hope this is helping to slow and perhaps stem the tide of the insidious onset of any form of dementia.
I check my memory processes continually and carry out personal exercises in generating visual and verbal memory constructions.
I’m aware of the early symptoms of Mild Cognitive Impairment and I continually check myself for any of these telltale signs of cell degeneration.
I read up on anything and everything I can find to become fully aware of the signs of dementia and I research for encouraging changes in diet or lifestyle to combat this mental insubordination.
Perhaps I should say my absolute biggest fear and dread is succumbing to dementia and slowly becoming an insidious burden on my dear wife Margaret.
THE MUDDLED MEMORY 
UNCOMFORTABLE CORONAVIRUS VIBES
johnandmargaret1607 