The dappled river
Babbles the sound of sunshine
To its pebbled bed
Haiku and Tanka
40 deviations
In the Orkney Island Bookshop
The Girl in the Orkney Island Gift Shop.
Thick plaited pigtails,
Blonde.
Mid-calf boots,
Elk-skin.
Looking soft to touch,
Yet strong.
Wearing a woollen skirt,
Flouncy,
Fair Isle jumper,
Woven tights,
Saucy smile.
The blue sea, stolen from the fjord,
Lived within her eyes
And the mountain snows
Were her complexion.
She might have leaped
From a Viking longboat
Into the gift shop
On Orkney Island
Poetry
35 deviations
Ginny Tickler revised
Ginny Tickler - England 1943
She had a wheelbarrow
A plain square box
With long wooden handles
And bicycle wheels.
She had a beautiful face and a woolly hat.
Fourteen, sweet, innocent and mute.
In the words of the era,
She was not all there.
She collected vegetable parings
A war-time measure to feed pigs.
When she saw children playing
She would stop and wait and smile.
Always on the edge, looking through
An invisible curtain at a fairy story.
Boys would tease though not hurtfully.
The girls would say, ‘No! Leave her alone’.
They understood more.
Once only, I touched her finger tip
Through a sheet of glass.
Short Stories
18 deviations
Down Water
All the Times and Moods of One Good Place
A walk down Low Burgage at Winteringham can gain access to thebanks of the upper reaches of the Humber Estuary. In spring, as you leave the houses behind to go ‘down water’, you find yourself in an arch of blackthorn blossom on either side of the lane. A few weeks later you can become almost drunk with the smell from the elder blossom bushes that grow intermittently by the wayside.
Mounting the raised path by way of a kissing gate (the village is heir to legacy of footpaths), you see a score and a half of small boats stranded on the muddy banks of Winteringham Haven and, on a windy d
Essays
5 deviations
Domestic Animals
9 deviations
Przewalski's Horse
A Palaeolithic Survivor
Mankind is the only animal I can think of who has the effrontery to imagine that it has a divine right (I use the word 'divine' advisedly - look up Genesis 1.28 if you don't believe me) to ride on another creature's back. I'm thinking particularly of the horse, the chief target of this delusion, though there other species similarly afflicted by it.
The horse is too reasonable an animal, too obliging. Good qualities, you may think, but nevertheless the cause of its enslavement. When I mention this to people there is always one who will tell me that but for man's interest the animal would have become extinct. Tell that
Wild Animals
1 deviation
Craftwork
51 deviations
Home
2 deviations
Ginny Tickler
Ginny Tickler - England 1943
She had a wheelbarrow
A plain square box
With long wooden handles
And bicycle wheels.
She had a beautiful face and a woolly hat.
Fourteen, sweet, innocent and mute.
In the words of the era,
She was not all there.
She collected vegetable parings
A war-time measure to feed pigs.
When she saw children playing
She would stop and wait and smile.
Always on the edge, looking through
An invisible curtain at a fairy story.
Boys would tease though not hurtfully.
The girls would say, No! Leave her alone.
They understood more.
Once only, I touched her finger tip
Through a sheet of glass.
And loved her acro