Sunday Picture Post: From Sunrise to Showers

Posted on November 1, 2020 by crispina kemp

October 22nd: The bus delivered me to the Ravine at Lowestoft just in time for me to hasten down to the prom… for this

Sunrise at Britain’s most eastern point: 22nd Oct 2020

I thought it a clear sky, apart from that cloud on the horizon. Until I turned to walk on. The wind was blowing the clouds from inland

Gunton Cliffs: 22nd Oct 2020

22nd Oct 2020

The sun was painting everything red, and in a clear sky, I couldn’t look her way

Gunton Warren, dunes: 22nd Oct 2020

Red bracken? Red? Hmmm.

Gunton Warren: 22nd Oct 2020

22nd Oct 2020

She added gold to the shining leaves…

22nd Oct 2020

And like Lot’s wife, I dared to look back…

22nd Oct 2020

… before making my way through the holm oaks to the cliff top

22nd Oct 2020

A few of the fungi I met on the way. They didn’t give me their names, and I didn’t ask…

22nd Oct 2020

22nd Oct 2020

22nd Oct 2020

From Gunton Warren, I crossed into Corton Woods…

22nd Oct 2020

For those who inevitably ask, that green on the water is pondweed. And a seat is offered, but I walked on…

22nd Oct 2020

It’s never easy to photograph woodland trees, but here’s one…

22nd Oct 2020

And a few of the woodland fungi…

22nd Oct 2020

Burgundydrop Bonnets: 22nd Oct 2020

22nd Oct 2020

Probably a Black Milking Bonnet: 22nd Oct 2020

This intriguing fungi-sculpture looks like it should be in a Japanese garden

22nd Oct 2020

And just as I was leaving the woodland to return to the cliffs, a stinkhorn

22nd Oct 2020

Corton beach is a casualty of storms this past decade. This particular stretch has no public access. And the weather is changing: rain brought in on those clouds

Corton beach: 22nd Oct 2020

Atop the cliff, the wind is strong (30mph), but I wanted a photo of this foliage…

22nd Oct 2020

Look! The North Sea is blue. But… but… but… yes, it is so. Or it was this day.

Looking northward to Great Yarmouth. I’m almost home. But first I must negotiate Hopton, another beach that’s gone missing except at low tide.

Hopton, Gt Yarmouth lies beyond it: 22nd Oct 2020

I made it to the bus before the clouds emptied upon the land. A good morning’s walk (8-10 miles). Hope you enjoyed the sights

Posted in Photos | Tagged , , , , , | 34 Comments

A Sure Sign

Posted on October 31, 2020 by crispina kemp

28th Oct 2020

This Is It (autumn) another title achieved in Maria’s Antonia’s #2020picoftheweek

No other words needfed

Posted in Photos | Tagged , , | 39 Comments

Pride and Prejudice

Posted on October 30, 2020 by crispina kemp

Sunrise reflected: 29th Oct 2020

Answer me, please
What did I do?
For this isn’t like what I know of you

I admit I texted you to take a hike
In words more abusive than you’d like
But confused, what did this long silence mean?
That you’d changed your mind,
Moved on, left me behind?
Then you ought to have said
Not left me with this ache in my heart, in my head

I heard the news, can’t say that I didn’t
A multi-car motorway accident
I searched but no word of you
And the phone…
No answer, no ring
That was perplexing
And that’s when I texted you
You insult me, you toad, I’ll live without you

For weeks, rather I’d die than to endure the pain
Yet… Oh My God…
The red dawning came
With impatience, I had prematurely judged you
OMG I had maligned you

I pleaded, forgive me
For I’d lost my pride
Washed away in the tears I’d cried
“We’d always be friends.”
I thought you had lied.

And you, as I’d asked, forgave me
I’ll take that as proof
No need to say that you love me most ardently.

My impatience, my prejudice, my pride
Because in that accident your phone had died

 

Posted in Poems (Some Silly) | Tagged , | 37 Comments

CCC103: Annie’s House

Posted on October 29, 2020 by crispina kemp

Crimson’s Creative Challenge #103

Annie’s colleagues didn’t like her. She was stern, they said; she never smiled. Yet with me, she was fine. She invited me to dinner, after work one Friday night.

“What the…!” I said when I saw where she lived.

She nodded, a hint of a smile. “That’s what my family said too. Then painted gloom for the day the cliff crumbles.”

“But it will,” I said. This stretch of coastline was rapidly collapsing.

Again, she nodded. Then she whispered conspiratorially. “Don’t let on, but this isn’t my only home. I have a… chalet… in the Italian lakes. It earns me a tidy income let out for vacations and invested. And in two years I retire… then let the sea take this shabby old shack. I shall be where the sea can’t reach me.”

Based on a true story.

Posted in Crimson's Creative Challenge, Mostly Micro, Photos | Tagged , , , | 22 Comments

Crimson’s Creative Challenge #103

Posted on October 28, 2020 by crispina kemp

CCC103

Welcome to my weekly challenge—open to all—just for FUN, FUN, FUN

Here’s how it works:

Every Wednesday I post a photo (this week it’s that one above.)
You respond with something CREATIVE

Here are some suggestions:

  • An answering photo
  • A cartoon
  • A joke
  • A caption
  • An anecdote
  • A short story (flash fiction)
  • A poem
  • A newly minted proverb, adage or saying
  • An essay
  • A song—the lyrics or the performance

You have plenty of scope and only two criteria:

  • Your creative offering is indeed yours
  • Your writing is kept to 150 words or less

If you post a link in the comments section of this post I’ll be able to find it
If you include Crimson’s Creative Challenge as a heading, WP Search will find it (theory)
by ‘Searching’ in the WP Reader (fingers crossed)

Here’s wishing you inspirational explosions. And FUN

Posted in Crimson's Creative Challenge, Photos | Tagged , , | 46 Comments

Tuesday Treat: A Different World

Posted on October 27, 2020 by crispina kemp

You might have seen the photo I posted for the #2020picoftheweek challenge. But if not… here’s another chance. Fungi and Lichen on a heathland gully

22 Oct 2020

22 Oct 2020

22 Oct 2020

22 Oct 2020

22 Oct 2020

22 Oct 2020

I love this last one (Cladonia). Even the lichen says I love you

Posted in Photos | Tagged , , | 21 Comments

This Slice of Light

Posted on October 26, 2020 by crispina kemp

Image by Gerd Altmann

Dark, my bed beneath the world
Dark
But wait
What glimmering?
What minor lifting of gloom?
It slithers, this slither of light
This slice that intrudes, that doesn’t belong.

But whence it comes, this fabulous crescent?
Has it fallen from above,
From Heaven’s High Arch?
Has it fallen to visit this Low Dark Vault?

Welcome, Light.

56 words written for Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Vault

Posted in Mostly Micro, Poems (Some Silly) | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Sunday Picture Post: Woodland, Heathland, Swamp and Marsh

Posted on October 25, 2020 by crispina kemp

Monday. 19th October. Early bus out of Great Yarmouth and a walk along a Sandy Lane…

Sandy Lane: 19 Oct 2020

… keeping eyes ever keen for fungi…

Shaggy Parasol: 19 Oct 2020

Shaggy Parasol: 19 Oct 2020

… and the occasional flower in bloom…

Gorse: 19 Oct 2020

19 Oct 2020

Hare’s Foot Inkcap: 19 Oct 2020

… and into Fritton Wood, a pine plantation liberally mixed with native trees…

White-barked birch: 19 Oct 2020

… after recent high winds, pine cones were everywhere…

19 Oct 2020

Couldn’t resist this little vignette, so Christmassy

19 Oct 2020

The heath supports a wide range of fungi, not all of them healthy to eat…

The Sickener: 19 Oct 2020

The Deceiver: 19 Oct 2020

From woodland to heath… to swamp…

19 Oct 2020

… to marsh… and a look back to where the waterlogged soil is killing the trees…

Fritton Marsh: 19 Oct 2020

Between woodland and marsh, there grew a rose…

Rosa rugosa: 19 Oct 2020

19 Oct 2020

I’ve become obsessed with finding a purple fungus. This one is close, but it’s more of a Victorian Mourning Mauve

19 Oct 2020

Wide swathes of the plantation have been cleared with plans to quarry aggregates. I think that idea has not been abandoned. Too many rare species have their habitat here.

19 Oct 2020

19 Oct 2020

And the prize, the fungus-hunter’s treasure…

Fly Agaric: 19 Oct 2020

aka Amanita muscaria:19 Oct 2020

This one with its ‘birth’ veil still attached

19 Oct 2020

It was a fantastic day. These are a small selection of the fungi we found. Perhaps I’ll show you some of the other photos another time. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Posted in Photos | Tagged , , , , | 14 Comments

Lilliput

Posted on October 24, 2020 by crispina kemp

Fungi and lichen: 22 Oct 2020

There is a heathland atop the cliffs at Gunton (nr Lowestoft, Suffolk), and the rain has cut a gully. The sides of that gulley are host to heather and lichen… at just the right height to invite my camera…

Miniature another title achieved in Maria’s Antonia’s #2020picoftheweek

Posted in Photos | Tagged , , , , | 18 Comments

CCC102: The Long-Shanks

Posted on October 22, 2020 by crispina kemp

Crimson’s Creative Challenge 102

“Mally!” His cousin, deep-voiced, called him. “Mally, come on, stop hiding. Me and the boys are going out on the lake.”

Malcolm wanted to call in return, not to venture out there. But to alert the others was to give himself away. And he remembered what had happened to his brothers and sisters and cousins, his mother, his father, his grandpa and uncles. Weren’t many of them left now on that lake.

And he’d seen what the others had not. The long-shanks with their loud killing sticks.

BOOM! BOOM!

The long-shanks hunting season again had begun.

Posted in Crimson's Creative Challenge, Mostly Micro, Photos | Tagged , , , | 24 Comments