Zooming around

Today was truly foul as far as the weather was concerned - great waves battering along the front onto the shore road, a grey sea heaving itself into white horses, the wind howling in the gas flue and the rain - oh, the rain. I had thought I might stay in all day ... but I was seduced out into the wildness by my bestie, who, like me, becomes a caged lioness if she doesn't get out. So the afternoon was filled by a walk for two along Loch Eck-side in appalling weather that we were talking too much to notice. We were soaked.

But the day's activities were bookended by Zoom calls. My course of poetry workshops reached the last of this season's with something slightly different. Someone in the group had asked me to do one of my own poems, and when I'd decided which to use I realised I was incapable of teaching it, not out of preciousness but because I was unable to do the usual thing of speculating what was in the poet's mind - or even noticing the techniques used to achieve communication. I'd called on my friend who illustrated my book - and who, in a varied life, had taught English at one time - to lead the discussion, and I was fascinated by what she'd found and what others had to say. 

The rest of the hour was spent looking at two Glasgow poems that were immensely popular when I was a young teacher: Stephen Mulrine's The Coming of the Wee Malkies and Margaret Hamilton's Lament for a Lost Dinner Ticket. I'm not linking to online versions of these, because more than any they have suffered at the hands of careless transcription and predictive spelling, but if you don't know them they are easily found and worth having a look. I've had enormous fun with these workshops; people have been generous to the church on the back of them and I hope to run more later in the year.

And finally - as they used to say - we had a lovely hour zooming with my #2 son, whose birthday it is today. It would have been hugely better actually to be in the room, with the cake and the champagne, but it was lovely to relax with him and the family - and to meet up with his big brother, who dropped by to hand in a card and wish him a happy birthday. From the amazing set-up in the sitting room, which is what my photo montage shows, with us appearing on the television screen while we could see them all sitting round the room, to the rather haphazard arrangement of the back door open to the elements to let one son remain outside while the laptop and the rest of us stayed in the kitchen, with the cat as go-between - that was quite a shift, but just lovely to be a part of.

Proper family meetings still seem a long way off, but this Government pronouncement made me snigger:  Updated guidance on embraces will be published before the start of the third phase of reopening. 


G'night, all!