Writing Views

Sometimes there are mornings when it is hard to write. The mind wanders. The fingers are slow and unsure on the keyboard. The Muse slopes off and has coffee or slugs back the ambrosia with her friends, with no regard to scheduled word count or looming deadlines. It is at these times when I look for inspiration out of the window. Yes, I am lucky enough to have a view whilst I write. It wasn't always so. For years I had a peeling yellow wall with inspiring posters on it. Not quite the same, but I managed. Now, at this season, I gaze out over wintergreen fields, starkly bare trees, a full brown stream winding its way over to a hidden distant river. Sometimes there is movement in the landscape. No sign of the rabid rabbits assaulting the vegetable garden so far today, but Sir Prancelot the vicious cock pheasant is once again engaged in chasing some surprised-looking ewes off his territory. He ought to know better, because they are heavily in lamb, and the shock of a small but belligerent bird-with-ears telling them what to do is not at all what they are used to. They are milling about, baaing clouds of panicked breath over the dead clumps of nettle by which they huddle, hoping for rescue from their farmer-in-armour. In early morning, the colours were all muted shades of greyish green, dusted with the crunching whiteness of frost, but now the sun is out, and the ice has melted to round rainbow drops on the weeping twigs of the silver birch. The grass in the field has turned that parched but sodden yellowy green which goes with too little daylight, and there are rusty brown patches where the floodwaters have overflowed and receded, making walking the wimpy weasel and the dastardly dinmont a squelchy business in the afternoons. You see how it goes? The fingers are flying now, and the words are coming again. The Muse has returned from her ambrosia break, and is raring to start firing ideas into my brain. All it takes for me is a little gazing out at the English landscape.