Ullswater

My friend and her husband picked me up for an early swim and marmalade sandwiches (Paddington sat this one out) before it got too busy. It’s still feeling pretty chilly.
I then spent the rest of the day completely exhausting myself in the garden (extra).

Postscript - I was too tired to post this poem (what a wonderful poem) last night but it is very befitting of those pieces of slate that are bedded into my history as I am to theirs as they have come on the journey with me from Grasmere to Sockbridge and now to our new home here. They have been lugged through the upheavals of geological and human history from Borrowdale volcanics to limestone and now resting as erratics amongst the local bedrock of sandstone.

Slate - Edwin Morgan

There is no beginning. We saw Lewis
laid down, when there was not much but thunder
and volcanic fires; watched long seas plunder
faults; laughed as Staffa cooled. Drumlins blue as
bruises were grated off like nutmegs; bens,
and a great glen, gave a rough back we like
to think the ages must streak, surely strike,
seldom stroke, but raised and shaken, with tens
of thousands of rains, blizzards, sea-poundings
shouldered off into night and memory.
Memory of men! That was to come. Great
in their empty hunger these surroundings
threw walls to the sky, the sorry glory
of a rainbow. Their heels kicked flint, chalk, slate.