Canal Walk

"Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it."
Rumi

A morning walk with J along the towpath of the Mon/Brec from Two Locks towards Malpas.  A grey, misty morning, with occasional hints of something blue above that never quite made it into a sky. 

The restoration work on the canals continues, they're working on the outskirts of Cwmbran now.  A walker asks if we've seen the Kingfisher nearby?  No, but a Buzzard cruised across the adjacent field and sits in a tree, watching patiently. 

After our walk I call in on JS, now retired after a life spent as an engineer,, then later an artist and cartoonist.  Spend some time talking about how he'd made the change of career.  He said that without Art life is nothing, it was Art that gave him life.  "I'm living history" he said, "I'll have to write it all down one day..."  We compared notes about the Winter of '62/'63, of building igloos and playing football on the canal, frozen solid with great slabs of thick ice - and the snowball fights of course.  Different perspectives on the same event.