The last of the Christmas cards

Being struck down by Covid over Christmas and New Year has been an unwelcome development. I felt really rough for a few days but once the symptoms started to subside, I've been feeling pretty bored. Covid brain-fog is apparently a real thing and I've had little concentration. I've quite a few new books in my pile but it has been hard to focus on reading. A friend lent me some jigsaws, which proved to be a good idea as you can apply short bursts of energy to those. 

Once I started to feel better, I cleared away the few Christmas decorations I'd put up. It always seems a shame to discard the Christmas cards, so I got out my phone on a slow shutter app, took a few ICM photos and then played around with saturation and layering. It's always fun, though hard to know when to stop.

I'm now waiting until I have a negative Lateral Flow Test and then I'll gradually be able to resume normal life, though clearly it will take a while to regain my usual levels of energy. I think I only had a mild dose but even so I felt wrecked. I can only sympathise with those who have had it worse. Thank God for the protective effect of the vaccines. 

 

Sunday meditation: Smudge

What do you do when it rains day after day? Well... play, of course. So here is a phone shot of my car in the rain, taken through the window using a slow shutter app and then played with in the Snapseed editing app. It turned out quite funky and certainly colourful. If you look closely you can see the car wheels of another car in the street! 

'It is a happy talent to know how to play.'    Ralph Waldo Emerson

'The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.'  Carl Jung

Gold leaves

An impressionistic view of golden leaves, hanging on above the rushing waters of the river in spate. 

(This was taken a couple of weeks ago; most of the leaves have fallen now.) 

Impressionism

That familiar scene beside the rowing club, on the River Aire just above Hirst Weir, provided the basis for this impressionistic interpretation. I was prompted both by my theme for my online photo group for August, which was to produce a multiple exposure image, and by a recent Zoom presentation to my camera club, by the wonderfully creative Glenys Garnett. If you don't know her work, take a look at her website HERE. My own offering isn't in her league or even in her style but I was moderately pleased with this. I haven't done much of this kind of creative work and I'm resolved to do more.

The Glad Game

'There is something about everything that you can be glad about, 

if you keep hunting long enough to find it.' 

                                                                                 Eleanor H Porter, 'Pollyanna'

When I was young, the film 'Pollyanna' with Hayley Mills in the title role was one of my favourites. Featured regularly on TV, I must have watched it five or six times and it made a big impression on me. I guess it was that film that first alerted me to the practice of gratitude: the Glad Game, as Pollyanna called it. Of course, you can have too much of it but generally speaking it is a principle that I've found helpful, particularly in seeing me through some of the tougher times in my life. 

Many times during this pandemic I've made myself deliberately focus on the good to lift my spirits and keep from getting too down. Being able to get out for exercise, consciously enjoying the beauty in the natural world and noticing afresh the local delights of the World Heritage Site I'm fortunate to call 'home' have been useful strategies to keep me rooted in the present. They stop me catastrophizing and excessively worrying about the uncertain future.  

I regularly walk past the allotments beside Salts Mill and watching the unfolding of colour there through the seasons is always a source of joy. Now the gladioli are in full bloom, tall and stately spikes of colour. Somewhat old-fashioned flowers nowadays, they remind me of my grandmother, who used to grow them. She called them 'gladdies' - so I guess that was what reminded me of the Glad Game. They must surely bring joy to most people? 

I'm lucky that I can bring them home in a photograph and play with them, attempting some creative double exposures. I have not yet perfected the technique but for me it's a good way of 'being in the present', an antidote to the gloom and anxiety in the big wide world. We all need that.