WORDS once SPOKEN now CAPTURED
July 4, 2021
Twilight Blue
Did you know that each evening we experience THREE twilights? Each one with distinctive features and that during this period we respond in physiological ways. Similarly, our ancestors appeared to have taken advantage of these...
June 13, 2021
Fractured Beauties of the Night
The hold of early summer along the canal-side grows firmer each day. However, sometimes the changes and shifts in the season can affect us in surprising and sometimes disconcerting ways. This episode reflects on the birth of ...
June 6, 2021
Fledglings
The world is filled with new life, fledglings of all kinds. It is noisy, messing, sometimes cruel, and so full of vitality and life. It’s an boisterous energy that cannot be contained or ignored. From vetch, to rabbits and bi...
May 30, 2021
Rhyme & (sometimes) Reason
What was the first poem that you ever learnt? This week marks the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death and, for some reason, it has brought to mind poems that she loved and that I shared with her as a child. There is somet...
May 23, 2021
Into the Night
What is ‘dead sleep’ and ‘morning sleep’? Why are 'duck hatches' invaluable? What should we do with the feral ducks? In this far ranging episode. we explore the night-time of history and discover that, perhaps, the importance...
May 16, 2021
The Clerical Heron
What is it about the heron that makes it such a frequent subject for social media posts featuring canal and riverside birds? There is something about it that is strange, singular almost. Spotting one is often felt to be a sig...
May 9, 2021
May Rains
This week the rains swept in pushed by great fronts of ocean air – moisture from places with magical names that I hear on the shipping forecast and can only imagine. Life around progressed without a murmur and the ground dran...
May 2, 2021
A Lifetime Ago
A lifetime ago, almost to the day, it turned cooler after an uncustomary warm and dry couple of weeks. Synoptic charts show high pressure moving up the country dragging with it frontal systems. No doubt, on that day, some loo...
March 21, 2021
Man on the Bicycle
The journey from winter into spring is often messy and ill-defined. Sometimes it feels as if we are making progress and at others the cold and damp of winter days returns. As we are also contemplating moving from lockdown it ...
Feb. 7, 2021
Canal Time
One of the first things you will experience when you cast off onto the waterways is, what is sometimes referred to as, ‘canal time.’ What is canal time and how is it different to land time? Canal time functions not so much as...
Jan. 17, 2021
Morning Sun: Living the dark days of January
January 18th (2021) is 'Blue Monday'. The third Monday in January is considered by many to be the most depressing day in the calendar. As we enter the dark days of January, this episode considers the importance of the hope of...