I’ve just got back from an afternoon walk over Kisdon Hill, with the Swaledale valley spread below in early evening shade. Care was needed to step carefully between tongues of ice that had frozen in place after yesterday’s storm water flowed along the track down towards the welcoming village lights. A thin crescent new moon rose above the dark horizon of Muker Side and I could see the lights of occasional cars driving gingerly through Buttertubs Pass. The road must be slippery, even the gritting lorries were having trouble early this morning.

I was going to write something different for today’s blog. I was going to write about the lovely Christmas I had with my friend and their family in London; and the few little niggles we had such as me doing things like ‘pointing out’ when they’d left their indicators on when turning at a junction, or when the traffic light had turned green. And them saying ‘I’m surprised you didn’t know that’ when we were having a conversation about the January dates of Old Christmas and how it was celebrated in Upper Swaledale well into the 19th century. It took a while for the modernity of the Gregorian calendar to exert its influence into these wild final frontiers. I expect there were a few niggly discussions amongst the locals at the time about switching dates to fall in line with the rest of the country.

But then I was back in the depth of the Dale and London seemed a long way away. A storm blew for three days, the road to Hawes was flooded again as the Ure overflowed, and I was getting apprehensive about the ash tree with dieback near my house, wondering whether or not it was going to do something spectacular and novelistic with its dead branches and my windows. Fortunately, it didn’t and I braved the rain for the shelter of convivial company in the community pub on New Year’s Eve.

Last night the storm abated, the sky was full of stars and something older than the oldest Old Christmas happened. Curtains of red and green light shimmered across the darkness. It’s still a new moon so the aurora had the sky to itself. The temperature dropped to below freezing, and it was cold standing in the garden, but well worth it.

Then today I had the most wonderful surprise. I haven’t written or submitted a poem for months and months, but in the autumn I saw the submission window for an online magazine called ‘Wishbone Words’ was open. So I dusted off three of my old MH poems and sent them off. This morning the editor sent me an email to say all three were accepted! Goodness! Knock me down with a feather! Just the perfect way to give me a bit of writing inspiration oomph.

It's a lift I needed as there is still a lot of sorting out to do. There are gremlins and poltergeists in the heating system, but I’m gradually chasing them out with the aid of YouTube instructional videos. There are work-things that need doing, and the builder is coming in to renovate my old cottage so that I can get it on the market and balance my accounts. I’ve got a big moany retrospective trauma blog cooking, and it will need to get dug up, written up and exposed in the near future, but right now: an aurora and three poems accepted – perfect. I’ll take that.

I hope you’ve had some good things happen recently, but getting a moan out there is great therapy too! In case you are interested in the Wishbone Words poetry magazine, the link is below.

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

“Wishbone Words is a place for disabled, chronically ill, and/or neurodiverse creatives to submit work for our magazine.”

https://wishbonewords.com