Weariness

Wake up to the soar of the traffic. Wood pigeon. Breeze. The view from the window is the same. Wizard of Oz tin pot hat of the grain storage. Overgrown leaves and bubbly bushes and white petalled lollipops that look like orange firecrackers and an old wooden telegraph pole with a single wire.

But the reality is very different. The first route of tarmac has been laid. Alison of Stop Sizewell C tells me Pretty Road will be shut from October. How do we get information from Sizewell? Who runs the whole shebang? Four visits to the Information Office in Leiston and never an e-mail reply. I rang the help line on Thursday to ask and they didn’t know the answer but said they would ring back within five working days!

Bike ride from Aldeburgh to Leiston along the glorious Thorpeness Road. Bike ride from Leiston to Theberton down Valley Road. The field on the right is sand. Leiston Abbey is plonked in the middle of a building site. Ancient flint against glorious earth dug into pyramids. I hold my own in front of big lorries and no-one wears a face mask in spite of the diesel fumes. My yoga-loving cousin’s husband observes the constant noise of the traffic from the garden.

A sparrow hawk sat in my garden at Teal yesterday on the back of a chair. We stared at each other. A tiny wren flew round the greenhouse at Theberton. Squished squirrel in the road. A truck with two flashing beeping lights over the hedgerow like a beetle just passed.

IN poetry I have been asked to teach the construction of poetry. I begin anew with PRETTY ROAD: THE CONSTRUCTION.