June and early July have been very busy for me, and a lot of the events have been centred around my home town of Dunbar.
I got together with a group of friends at Baldred’s Cradle, near Ravensheugh beach, on a wonderful sunny day, to write a renga led by my friend Anna Dickie. The completed renga is posted on The Open Mouse, a spin-off from the Poetry Scotland website.
Jane and I managed a week in Dorset in early June. We had previously visited the area 30-odd years ago when our children were young. This year we took our time, revisited favourite places and found new ones. Here’s a photo of Stair Hole.
To an ex-geologist it was a stunning trip.
At the end of June I visited Linlithgow, and in St Michael’s churchyard we found human remains excavated by rabbits, so of course that led to a poem which I’m quite pleased with.
I took part in several North Light Arts events during the period, including taking a group of artists to Siccar Point, to show them Hutton’s Unconformity, where the awesome scale of geological time was first realised through observation of the contact between rocks of vastly different ages. (We now know the gap between the vertical and horizontal rocks was around 50 million years).
On 6th July I took part in another North Light Arts event, as part of Karen Gabbitas’ Sensory Slow Walk through Lochend Woods, Dunbar. It was a wonderfully calming mindful experience.
