Looking back at the photos taken for the merry month of May, you would not believe that we were a country in Lockdown. The sun shone, the hawthorn, lilac, cherry and laburnum enjoyed a season of profusion and the sky was blue. I have pictures of walks and distant meetings on beaches with Gerry and the children, and we all clapped on Thursday nights along with our neighbours for those workers that were looking after us all from afar.

We have been lucky. Our little village has been lucky, and although we have all walked safely and queued safely, the dreadful statistics of the pandemic have not touched any of us personally. It was enough watching Clive Myrie on the television reporting from the London hospital to bring the reality of what was going on in other parts of the country to make us count our blessings.

Instead, as the sun shone and the boot leather wore out whilst tramping the many  paths around North Queensferry, so many of us used the time to get creative.

Our neighbour went on a mission to produce a bench for his father-in-law’s 80^th birthday. We watched the process from beginning to end. He had acquired huge bracelets of chain which he welded into strange serpent-like structures. Then a huge piece of oak appeared, and much work was done on that before it was all put together.

John found a trove of treasure on Torryburn beach, near Culross. Loads and loads of different bricks from different brickworks around the area. He is now busy making steps over the sea wall, with the different names on view. Quite hard work, and of course B&Q are out of sand for the cement… so frustrating. All he needs is a bucketful, maybe he should go a-begging.

My friend from long ago has turned to his easel and paints to produce the most beautiful studies of the great outdoors. Soothing, yet dramatic and inspirational. He writes that he, like me, is missing the shears of the hairdresser, and has attacked his hair with his beard trimmer. The front is OK, but the back is questionable, but only the people behind him in the endless queues need worry about it!

Irene, like me, has been converted to needle felting. She urged me to buy a bottle of hydrogen peroxide for the inevitable stabbings. Very appreciated.

She is turning out delicate ballerinas and fairies and her friend in Dorset has gone for the life size apparition in the garden.

For me it is birds. I can’t stop, there always seems to be another one worthy of creating. At present I am doing the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker after doing the Greater Spotted Woodpecker!

I arranged them in little colourful groups and they are quite cute. I have also finally finished the William Morris quilt, and I am quite pleased with it.

Natasha has been making bread and buns and sourdough, and rambling the hills and dales of Wales, as far as they are allowed. They made hair clips and even Hazel had a go with a dainty pair of scissors to create something amazing!

Bonnie has been doing a little self-portrait making, and has lost her first tooth! I felt quite emotional about that.

And so the days pass, and the sun has shone and slowly life may be returning to normal.

I should have been studying ‘the big bad book’ i.e. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey but of course that is not happening. Instead I have immersed myself in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and instead of the mythical adventures of the Greek hero I am following a day in the life of Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged Irish Jew, his wife Molly and a friend Steven Dedalus in Dublin on 16 June 1904.

It reads mostly as a stream of consciousness. There is no plot, no story, it just follows the psychology and perceptions of Mr Bloom, who is Joyce’s modern day Ulysses. Like Ulysses returning home after the Trojan War, Bloom wanders from adventure to adventure before returning home to his wife. He travels the wasteland streets and pubs of lower-middle class Dublin looking for life’s meaning.

Anyway, I am about a third of the way through, and already I am looking up snippets that catch my imagination.

Mr Bloom was in a restaurant and you follow his thoughts:

“A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: no teeth to chewchew-chew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting it over. Sad booser’s eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that?”…..’A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the school poem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating.  Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however.”

And I had to stop, as I had to look up this poor king who choked to death. According to Wikipedia he was Ireland’s greatest king, and ruled for 40 years from Tara in the second century and was absolutely wonderful. He choked to death on a salmon bone.

Some believed it was because he had converted to Christianity and he was cursed by a Druid!

And now we are approaching the summer solstice, the time for the Druids to don their white robes and march around ancient stones and sit along ley lines or give homage to the trees. They still have spells and rituals and believe they have an affinity to oak trees, for wisdom, and over the years they have been highly regarded as mediators between humans and the gods.

Fascinating stuff, but I shall miss Midsummer’s Night, as I fall asleep every night at eleven, worn out from making and doing and walking and just living.

We have become part of the Jigsaw mafia, swopping puzzles with others in the village and the dining room table has been constantly strewn with a kaleidoscope of tiny pieces of colour these last few weeks. Fatal, as it is very difficult to pass without just a quick ‘look’! At the moment it is the Rainforest big cats…all green and spotty! I did love the rainforest with the animals.

Outside it is wild and windy, and I just want to go and hurl my body in front of my precious poppies. I have about a million ready to burst forth, all varieties, but especially nurtured are the double bloom peony poppies that I so revere.

Hopefully, next time I will have pictures of them all. Here are the first poppies on a perfect day.

I had to smile at a snippet on the television recently about the Cloud Appreciation Society. It seems we all have time now to raise our eyes upwards and enjoy the ‘elephants’ or ‘camels’ or strange conglomerations that appear. I l loved this wonderful sight that I beheld one morning, as I got up early to make some tea.

And a small mention of the Highland Rocks. I recently re-read it, and Irene and Gerry have picked it up again. It is fun, and I am inspired and have written more of The Highland Curses. Watch this space!

Adieu.