online: 2 may 2005
modified: 4, 22 may 2005

1 may 2005 at home


16:18 May Day. Air temperature is 24C. Many people here today in summer clothes. But not many on the slope above this wooded valley where i've so often sat. Nearly every tree is now in leaf, the grass has grown and i can see insects flying wherever i look at the sky, even a small dragonfly... the sky is grey and white with small patches of blue and the air carries sounds of voices from various distances and directions - words, laughs, yells, and occasional dog barks - and faint sounds of aeroplanes and traffic.

To the north of me are about two dozen people sitting or lying together on the ground, young men and women in their 20s or 30s, and dressed in bright colours, red, yellow, green, white, magenta - and nearly all in blue jeans. The only one who stands is in a pale fawn t-shirt. None have brought children. I suppose they are together just for pleasure, not any sort of duty, but in a few years most of them will be devoted to child care and they may never meet again so freely in such a large number and just for enjoyment.



17:44 on a seat by a pond at the northwest edge of the heath and walking distance from the flat where i expect to be living in a few month's time. In my usual way i'd been doubting or regretting this decision but now, alive to new walks and new people, i'm content, even excited by the prospect... the seat is in memory of someone's grandmother Galia Morris, born in Moscow in 1915, who died in London in 1997. 82 years. A reminder of earlier generations of immigrants who enriched this city by their presence. One of my grandmothers was a Morris whose father emigrated to the USA without her after her mother died. Her Uncle Evan Jacob would not let her go to America with her father's second wife - so she was brought up in Wales by the Jacobs.

Link to Uncle Evan Jacob's posthumous précis of 'the internet and everyone'. I had to ask a person passing how to spell 'posthumous'. He said yes, it ends in 'ous', 'that looks right... I could see he was imagining the look of the word in the air before him.

Then a man came by with two noisy sheepdogs for which he apologised but did not curtail their noisiness. He told me the dogs are Welsh and he has lived near Lampeter and in other parts of Wales. My mother worked in a bank in Lampeter in The Great War, as they used to call it. It was a new thing for women to work in banks while the men were in the army.

Yes, my doubts are receding and i am feeling at home here already!




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