The farmers kids flying their kites on the village green. What more innocent start to a New Year could there be ?
Down on the beach the New Year ' Dook '. We can hear the laughter from the path up the hill by the cathedral. Possibly four hundred folks running across the sand and into the sea. The sort of collective madness you don't expect from the Scots. Many folk are of an age where you'd think they'd avoid the North Sea like the plague. I could swear some of the pale Scottish bodies have turned blue.
Having been in the sea the challenge of getting out of wet swimwear and into dry clothes is cheerfully addressed. The cafes in town have opened early and are donating their morning proceeds to a local charity. People say there's no such thing as 'community' but that's not true.
The ducks are enjoying the low tide in the inner harbour.
In town a special bin for pizza boxes has been installed. It's opposite Dominos. Don't think I've ever seen a pizza specific bin before.On the boat slip that leads onto the beach a man is reciting a poem * about the New Year. Back at home I Google what I can remember and find this :
"It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet, when larks rose on long thin strings of singing and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels. Greenness entered the body. The grasses shivered with presences, and sunlight stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills ".
* Scotland by Alastair Reid :https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/scotland-1/
10 comments:
I don't think it's a New Year-specific poem, rather one about the Scots' general propensity to turn even a peerless, shimmering day into a harbinger of doom. As a Scot I can say this freely! We're certainly paying for yesterday's glorious New Year's Day with today's rain.
Hari Om
Pizza boxes aren't supposed to be in recycling bins because of the grease...but often the lid part can be salvaged for reuse...so perhaps someone has the dedicated task... YAM xx
I read the rest of the poem - I loved 'radiant raincoat' and smiled at the dour, 'We'll pay for it!' Not peculiarly Scottish, I think, but very British.
Love the poem and shall save it in a folder with this http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/obrienj/poetry/hanrahan.html
All my Celtic forebears came south to the Antipodes imbued with so much joy .....
Just thinking of taking a dip in the North Sea gives me the shivers!
I absolutely love the poem, which I'd never come across before. Thanks!
Yesterday I introduced my friends in the Puget Sound area to the word 'dreich'. A term possibly even more applicable to the climate here than it is back home in Scotland..
Grand poetry and glorious skies.
Enjoyed the poem too. Having had Scots in-laws and inheriting, by marriage, a whole extended family from north of the borders, the last line summed up their view of life.
YAM, I think that somewhere there is a vast warehouse full of state of the art machinery, and not a human in sight, dedicated to taking the lids off used pizza boxes!
Here in South Florida, our Broward County residents were chastised by the waste management company contracted to pick up recyclables as well as all other trash/garbage because some shameless folk insisted on including greasy pizza boxes among their other recyclables. Special NO PIZZA BOXES notes have now been included on trash removal instructions.
The poem reminds me of some of ANGUS'S better writing! Very beautiful.
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