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17th March: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – In my personal Springwatch – the bulbs in the garden continue to flourish – the Daffodils are out, including some Soleil D’Ors and somewhere in the middle of this picture, a shy, Snakeshead Fritillary is about to open…

2 – on the subject of flowers, the local florist has a nice sign and a well-dressed shop..

3 – but not a patch on the wedding dress shop whose windows are framed by a mass of flowers on the outside and a cornucopia of ornamentation inside, between the wedding dresses…

4 – I have completed 10 out of 26 A to Z entries but I shall have some time this week to get seriously stuck in – I want to be free on holiday to read other peoples posts and not be writing mine lol!

5 – Barbara was finally persuaded that we should buy her a mobility scooter – as she said to her daughter, half the problem was not being able to accept that she was actually 79 years old, and such a device is entirely appropriate! I shall be picking it up tomorrow…

6 – Only 3 full working days before the holiday!

7 – It is my local town ‘s- Keighley Library live poetry group meeting tonight…

8 – I will make homemade Corned -Beef Hash when I get home – a new favourite of both of us…

9 – Planning to do some painting in the Netherlands…

10 – the weather today is very warm!

Wishing you all a great week

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8th February: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – Although I never know in advance, what I am going to mention here, I am grateful to be of sound, and creative mind and faced with a blank page (screen) I trust that things will come to me.

2 – I was grateful to receive an email from Afshan, an Indian woman who I “met” during the A to Z Challenge 2022 – you can read about her here and I hope she may decide to participate here. Afshan is just one of many lovely people I have met through this blog and keep in touch with…

3 – My Critique Partner Nik shared his 12 in 12 month short story and I have nearly finished my second month’s story to the prompt of “Shuttered” – I will be chatting with Nik later this afternoon (for me) morning in Minneapolis… You cannot read the stories unless you are participating but I can share mine with by posting it here (next post)…

4 – I received a late “Bonus” postcard from lkast July-August Poetry Postcard Festival. Most of the participants are American but they publish a list of all the non-American participants so Americans can send a bonus card to them. So this is my second card from Grant Swados of New York – once on the regular list I was on and again on the bonus list. He has framed the original (postcard-sized) painting I sent him and sent me a reproduction of one of his paintings entitled “The Llama Lisa) a pastiche of the Mona Lisa featuring a llama. Also, he sent a poem about playing darts – a game that makes me think of English pubs, but since he sent the card, rather like when you have bought a new car, I keep seeing dartboards in American TV dramas all the time. Two countries united by a love of tiny missiles…

The postcard I originally sent to Grant…

5 – My Continuous Blood Monitoring experiment is bearing fruit, I am losing weight slowly by keeping my carb count down to an average of 159 grams per day. The drug trial I am participating in, a lower dose of the “weight-loss” drug Semaglutide, might also be helping – I do feel less inclined to snack, am content with smaller meals – but that is not the main point of the study – it is to test whether, at this lower dose, semaglutide helps prevent cardiac events and I have to say that the feeling of queasiness and wind makes me question whether it is worth the price (if it works). I am pretty sure that after the “Randomisation” interview, I am on the real and not the placebo pills – only 4 1/2 years of the study to go – burp!

6 – I have finished “C” in the A to Z and will have time tomorrow to work on “D” which is for Decoration of Fabrics as well as a list of seven fabrics beginning with D

Damask

Dimity

Dobby (see also Piqué)

Double cloth

Double Crepe

Double Georgette

Drill

Duchesse

Dupioni

It is proving to be the most work of any of my A to Z’s so far…

7 – I am a creature of habit and so my washing is in – half already in the dryer and half about to be hung up – Sundays routine is Sunday routine…

8 – Glad to be participating here at TTOT – we had 12 posts last week and as Afshan grat#2 said it inspired her with positivity, I guess its working right!

9 – reminded I have 3 TTOT to visit…

10 – Speaking to my sister in Nova Scotia in an hour…

Have your best possible week y’all…

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Depression

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The granites and schists of my dark and stubborn country form the bedrock of woe that has lasted a lifetime, just waiting to poke through the drift that was built up in more active days. The strata built of depositing a family, laying down a career, the metamorphosis from one relationship to another and the occasional intrusion or outflow of molten anger or passion, built a land that seemed impregnable. But tears are relentless and oceans rise and fall, cutting into the margins and then came the ice age of retirement, the weight of ice depressing the whole and stripping all away except that bedrock and leaving even that, scarred and scratched, rounded into the low hills of the bed where I lay and even the black dog has no energy to venture out on the soggy moors that cover the degraded granite hills.

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

“The granites and schists
Of my dark and stubborn country.”

–Nan Shepherd, “The Hill Burns”
from In the Cairngorms (Edinburgh: The Moray Press, 1934)

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, merrildsmith in Prosery, invites us to write a piece of prose poetry in no more than 144 words and using the given quote above. I should say that the subject of this piece is not my experience but that of someone close to me. As a student of Geology (and Geography) I am aware that Scotland, which is where you find the Cairngorms, has had a remarkable persistence through many geological ages and each age has added layers which may subsequently been removed in another geological age – I am not sure whether this does not give an ultimately optimistic view of things even if it requires a timescale in which we humans may turn out to be but a flash in the pan. Anyway, a metaphor suggested itself with this prompt… I hope it does not bring anyone down…

07 December: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – There is a cake shop in Keighley, my local town, whose window always displays the most amazingly decorated cakes and this is their Christmas window display. I always stop to admire their work but this time I went in for a couple of homemade Mincepies and a chat with the utterly delightful owner…

2 – I completed the last demonstration piece of weaving on my loom – Satin Stitch. Now it may be hard to imagine that this is the stitch that produces all those shiny Satin finishes, but that’s because I was using very thick cotton yarn. So perhaps this example might be better called Weft-faced Weave. Then below, is the reverse Warp-faced Weave which is exactly what you see on the reverse of Weft-faced Weave… It is a form of exaggerated twill where the Warp skips over 5 warps before being tied in by a single stitch. If this was done with tiny, shiny silk threads, it would indeed have a shiny, satin finish.

3 – I made a Persimmon Cake yesterday and I have another in the oven as I type. Barbara’s brother went on a cruise many years ago an took up with an American lady, Cindy, and had a long-distance relationship for a couple of years. If she came over at this time of year, she would bring Persimmon Cake made to a secret family recipe which she would not reveal and which I have been trying to emulate ever since – there being plent of recipes on the internet to choose from. Als I can never achieve the moist, rich fruit cake style of Cindy’s family recipe – but the results of my experiments go down well each year nevertheless…

The Persimmon cake wrapped and drizzled with rum, ready for the family on Boxing Day…

4 – Barbara managed to make her coffee date with her best friend Jan on Friday!

5 – Jan uses the tote bag I helped Barbara make for her, every day! She says it goes with everything! FYI – furnishing fabric…

6 – A nice repeat shot of our Kunafa Cheese Bomb at the factory – don’t worry, the only thing this bomb can damage is your waistline! For those who don’t know, kunafa is having a moment – it started with Dubai Chocolate which a chocolate bar filled with Kunafa (like a very fine shredded wheat) toasted and mixed with Pistachio Sauce. Our Kunafa bomb is a pot lined with Kunafa, filled with sweetened cream cheese and sealed on top with more Kunafa – in the words of Weigh-watchers and the Pet Shop Boys – “It’s a Sin!”

7 – Found a Christmas present fo Barbara which I know she will like – I always want to choose something for her to wear but she never likes the things I choose so I am playing safe with this one 0 remind me to tell you what it was, after Christmas…

8 – Just checked the cake and lowered the temperature and put it back in for another 15 minutes – smells good! (You will note I am reprting gratitudes in real time here)…

9 – Barbara’s daughter is sending a stream of lovely videos of her trip to Bali which it seems is centred on a yoga retreat – so a happy bunny…

10 – Managed to think of 10 gratitudes for this week…

Have a lovely coming week everyone!

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My 2025 Poetry Postcard Festival Exhibition…

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There are two major blogging challenges that occupy my year, Te A to Z Challenge and PoPoFest and each year of each Challenge/Festival, I seem to heap ever higher expectations on my particpation, and this year has been no exception! For the postcards, I like to make my own and so in 2023, I used favourite photographs I had taken, in 2024, AI generated images that hadn’t made the final selection for particular projects but which were good in their own right, and for 2025, I decided to revive my very intermittent painting skills.

I have painted since my teenage years, which you can read about in this year’s A to Z here. However, whi;st I spent much of my life in applied arts, signwriting, graphic design and the like, pure painting languished – how many times did I take my paints on holiday only to bring them home unused – so making at least 31 postcard-sized paintings (in the end I did more for bonus cards sent to me on the International List) was a challenge. I produced about 4 on most weekends through July and August, sometimes working on 2 at a time as each dried. Many were watercolour, many acrylics, some mixed, and one pencil drawing.

I’ve decided to post them in a single Exhibition post (Exhibit if you’re American) together with their handwritten (excuse the writing, please) poems, which according to the aims of PoPoFest, are to spontaneously write an epistolary poem to a stranger, preferably one which references the image on the postcard. I blew up photographs from years past, which I had hoped would make paintings and in particular, pictures from Crete where we spent 6 months during lockdown in 2020 – enjoy…

The sky here is watercolour, the rest acrylic, but even in this scan, it’s possible to see the greater luminosity of watercolour…
Watercolour, which enables the “tunnel” to glow with reflected light
Watercolour
Watercolour – the subtelties of the sky didn’t scan well…
Watercolour
Watercolour
Watercolour. The link is https://www.rte.ie/archives/2016/0729/805794-yeats-summer-school/ where you can see me painting a mural of WB Yeats
Watercolour and gouache on yellow, Elephant dung paper (I like its absorbency)…
Watercolour on buff, Elephant dung paper (this colour paper was a little too absorbent – too grabby)…
Watercolour with masking fluid. There should only have been 3 rails but I painted along the horizon line by mistake!
Watercolour
Pencil
Acrylic and watercolour on yellow, Elephant dung paper.
Acrylic and watercolour on yellow, Elephant dung paper.
Watercolour. The challenge here was to give the headland 3 3-dimensional form and not just make a flat cliff…
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Pencil, Watercolour, Acrylic.
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic. This allowed the nearly dry brush technique to create the reflections on the water.
Watercolour
Watercolour
Acrylic
Watercolour
This is the same subject as the previous painting but done in acrylic.
Top left is the photograph from which I made 3 different paintings…

08 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – After a pretty rainy week, Saturday morning dawned sunny…

2 – The reservoir above the village is now brim full, although the Yorkshire hosepipe ban is not yet lifted, it shouldn’t be long 9not that we need to water now lol)…

3 – I am always grateful to live in such a beautiful place and so, the sun out, I went up to “The Nab” to take a photo of Silsden village for you…

This is the reverse of the view from our house – The Nab is at top left…

And turning the camera round, here is the outcrop of Millstone Grit that forms The Nab. And yes, there is a quarry up there where agricultural workers with little to do in Winter, would carve millstones, water troughs and the like, out of the rock.

Whilst I was up there, a fog bank rolled in below me to the right…

And one more shot…

4 – Gratitude my daughter’s quite young Border Collie, Winnie, is sweet-tempered and settles down after initial excitement at greeting a visitor, quickly enough fo next weekend we shall be baby-sitting her at our house…

Winnie

5 – By dint of Harrisa pepper, Dragons teeth deployment of sticks and thorny rose clippings, I seem finally, to have deterred the nameless cat who has been scratching in my bulb containers…

6 – I finished the very last task of my Poetry Postcard Festival participation for this year – a Cento poem using lines from each of the 43 poems on a postcard I received during July and August this year – it’s the post before this one, here on the blog…

7 – My friend who runs Collaborature – an online journal for collaborative poems, and I, have now topped 1,000 lines of what is turning into a novella written in Pushkin or “Onegin” sonnets after his book Eugene Onegin. You can read our epic “Shipmates” here.

8 – I shall have a busy but different week at work since my bosses are opening a self-storage warehouse in an old office building and they want me to be there for the first week to help get it running.

9. My grandson Dillon and his girlfriend Izzy, will be living at home with their parents Bev and Don in the next village, Addingham for the next year, having spent the Summer touring in their small camper van. They have asked me to teach them how to paint which will be fun…

10. Grateful to have been inducted into The Hall of Hostinae of Ten Things Thankful and for all the lovely messages of welcome from you all…

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01 November: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

1 – I am grateful to my daughter for coming round and doing some housework for Barbara and I, which, as she said, is also a chance to spend some time together…

2 – I am glad that once a month I have to take samples to a microbiology lab for testing and the drive back takes me “over the tops” and include this beautiful view…

3 – I am grateful that my work gives me a subscription to Adobe Suite, including PhotoShop, which, amongst other things, I use for resizing the pictures for this website; however, I promised t0 show you what I use the various textures I have shown each week and I thought to use the initials of Ten Things of Thankful…

The top version has had the inner area of the letters coloured in with an orange gradient.
The second version has four different textures, all of which you have seen – faded blue paint on wood, fallen Autumn leaves, a microfibre cloth and tree bark.
In numbers three and four, the orange layer has been placed over the textrures and different ways of blending the two layers have been applied.

That’s the magic of PhotoShop…

4 – I bought this bunch of flowers to cheer up my patrner and they have lasted really well…

5 – Following the disruption of moving the garden round to accomodate the roofers, I got everything back where it needs to be – all the bulb containers are to the fore, ready for Spring and indeed some of them are jumping the gun… The strange patches of colour are chilli powder to educate a cat that these pots are not it’s toilet…

6 – I have agreed to start a new collaborative poem with a friend to be published in another friend’s online journal – Collaborature…

7 – I finished inputting all the fabrics in my spreadsheet in preparation for the A to Z Challenge (blogging) 2026 – I found 139 different fabrics and if you include fibres and processes 254 items which need to be sorted and grouped into just 26 alphabetical items – hence the spreadsheet – I love a good spreadsheet!

8 – My salary (1/2 time as I am) and my pension will both come into my account on the same day – tomorrow – Yayyy! (Pension precesses as it is every 28 days exactly)

9. I spoke to my Sister in Nova Scotia and to my Critique Partner in Minneapolis which two meetings take place every other Sunday, and both of which I enjoy immensely…

10 – I got through my TToT…

Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…

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05 October: Ten things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

This week has flown by – back to work after the holiday and this weekend, a visit from some grown-up grandchildren…

1 – The olive buds seem to have set and are beginning to change colour from bright yellow to purple and will hopefully become Black Olives – there were a few last year but not enough to do anything with…

2 – Still grateful for work which took me out of the office briefly – doing a Fire Risk Assessment for my bosses’ property portfolio which they converted an old office block into accommodation and the local council will take over tenancy tomorrow to accommodate their tenants who find themselves temporarily out of home due to fire, flood etc.

3 – Also changing colour as Autumn arrives, the tree which I often park under at work, only to receive gifts from the birds feeding on the berries…

4 – Always on the lookout for photo opportunities – this nice shadowplay on the building opposite our kitchen window…

5 – I posted the last of my group list poetry postcards on the PoPoFest Facebook page – just a few responses to the International list to go. This one was to a poet in Dublin and like me on both the group and International list…

The link is to a news item from 2006 0r 7 of me painting the mural…

6 – I got over the cold I had in just 7 days…

7 – One of my grandsons, an up-and-coming rapper (he had a very small stage slot at Glastonbury) has been staying for a long weekend and his brother, a policeman in nearby Bradford came for the day too so lots of catching up with their careers…

8 – Had a Zoom meeting with my writing Critique buddy after a two month gap over the summer – despite 20 years difference in age, we enjoy our double zoom slot immensely, talking about our writing but also wider issues like politics, AI (he is a programmer) and whales…

9 – I am going to be on a drug trial for an oral version of a weight loss drug used to assist in type 2 diabetes ao that might be helpful…

10 – no, I haven’t hit a brick wall for Ten Things but this is another in my collection of useful textures…

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Ten Things of Thankful draws people from all over the world to share the best of their week – why don’t you join us…

30 Aug: Ten Things of Thankful

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Ten things for which I give thanks this week…

PYO Wildflower Meadow near Helmsley

1 – Glad that my partner and I made another trip and managed to reach Whitby, or rather the adjacent beach at Sandsend. On the way, instead of stopping for coffee at Helmsley, we found this Pick Your Own Wildflower meadow where you can also get coffee and cake…

2 – This week’s texture for graphic work – woodchip path at the PYO – one day I will show you how these textures come in useful…

3 – Grateful for the sea whose presence and waves are varied but always there to provide a sort of meditation break from the affairs of men…

Sandsend is a popular surfing spot in the new world of cold-water surfing (who wants to hang out in Hawaii anyway – grab your wetsuit boys and girls…)

4 – Grateful that the Spider Orchid Lily bulbs I added to the garden this year have finally flowered – nothing to do with spiders and not orchids either…

5 – I collect odd bits of detritus to use in collages – this one (probably a piece of gearing from a Bradford Mill or more prosaically a piece of a car engine) is a bit chunky but it reminds me of the 30’s Sunrise motif…

Somewhere in Wiltshire from a sketch I did at 17…
Yorkshire moors between Oxenhope and Hebden Bridge

6 – There is but one Painting/Poetry Postcard to go after this – I am replying to the “bonus” cards sent by participants to the International list (as opposed to the majority US lists) of which five included their names and addresses and so though, under the terms of the PoPoFest, one is not obliged to reply – these guys were obviously hoping for one – in fact one was on my list in 2023 – so I decided to press on with the paintings. I was particularly pleased with these two which are acrylic on paper, because I achieved the sort of looseness of touch that I seek but don’t always find – this may be a result of doing 35 paintings in about 5 weeks…

7 – Glad that a friend of mine who has been struggling with having terminated an unsuitable relationship is getting back to herself…

8 – Grateful that our holiday in Cornwall is only 5 days away and I hope the change of scene will do us both good…

9 – Glad that the apples I scrumped are ripening nicely without loss and that Discovery apples – my favourites – are coming into their all too brief season – it will be Egremont Russets’ turn next…

10 – Glad that dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night gave me the chance to post an unprompted poem of a tender disposition which made a change from the angry poems I find I have to write in these difficult times – you can read it here.

Have your best weeks ever – be your best selves…

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Kiss Points

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Buy a proper bread roll
and it will have flat, crustless sides
where it swelled during baking
touched and melded with its neighbour
though not so hard that it
could not be separated
– bakers call this the “Kiss Point”

Do partners’ bums whose owners
both turned their backs to sleep
from argument or mild estrangement
– softly reach out to gently flatten
and warmly kiss their loves behind
baking a fresh start into
each beautiful new morning…

© Andrew Wilson, 2025

Kiss points in bread rolls courtesy of Christie the Baker

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetics invites us to post a poem of our choice. As a salve to all the bad news and hatred in the world at present, which even we poets must do our bit to suppress, I offer you this gentle poem of coming togetherness…