Author Archives: lleweton

The May blossom is fading: another year. There are many years to recall by now. Mrs Llew and I have been reading her diaries. She has kept diaries all her life. As we read, I remember other May times: other … Continue reading →

Another Maytime and the hawthorn blossom covers the wild ground, said to conceal a World War Two bunker at the end of my road. Crush a few feathery blooms of cow parsley and the herb scent lingers on my palms. The … Continue reading →

If this were a portrait only a fifth of it would show the land and the hills beyond. The rest would be sky: shades of pale blue, and white clouds tinted with blue. There is a raised thicket by the … Continue reading →

I’ve an icon on the wall of my study. Perhaps it contains a blessing. I bought it 45 years ago, when Mrs Llew and I moved, full of hope and maybe a sense of achievement, into a rambling, Edwardian house … Continue reading →

It’s not summer yet but we’ve had summer rain today: warm, drenching but not violent. All the plants and the earth respond with a scent of freshness, fragrant, bringing with it distant fields; and memories, and the longings which those … Continue reading →

Overhead, quite low, an aircraft flew. I did not see it (I was driving) but in that moment I was back in the 1940s. ‘It’s one of ours, my grandma said.’ She would have been right had she really been … Continue reading →

Silence. Sun. A huge bumble bee gorges on the dandelions. There is traffic going by, beyond a few garden fences. It does not disturb my peace. I’m recovering from a heavy cold but I pick up the scents in the … Continue reading →

May time again and again I’m thankful to live in it. There are about fifty acres of bright yellow oilseed flowers at the end of my road. I’ve watched the plants grow through the winter. Next year these fields will … Continue reading →

There’s a church in a village long swallowed up by Greater London. It came powerfully to mind tonight as I looked out across fields of oilseed flowers to a lovely range of hills which now separate me from that place … Continue reading →

Declining powers, one must live with them. But is there a concentration of meaning in experience which is ever-more restricted? I remember once glimpsing the distant sea through the gap in a high hedge in a Devon lane: a lovely … Continue reading →