Sushi, Poetry and the Laing Gallery

On Thursday I did some research for my novel about Private Investigator Danny Beck. This involved trying sushi for the first time at the Yosushi bar in Fenwick’s Food Hall. As a consequence I  have decided that Beck definitely eats sushi with plenty of wasabi when he has a hangover! 

It also involved a visit to the Laing Gallery cafe to look at the wonderful Burne Jones stained glass windows which dominate the space.  Beck sometimes meets Sarah here – she is a landscape artist and the love of his life but she is married to his best friend. 

Yesterday I spent the day reading poetry and working on my poems from the Languedoc. I also ordered some poetry from Amazon – How the Bicycle Shone by Gillian Allnutt, who lives and works here in County Durham. I would really like to learn so much more about writing poetry and I am very conscious that the first thing to do is READ as much as I can.

Some of my poems seem hard come by others arrive easily – here is one that arrived yesterday, its about leaving France

Leaving

 Now the trees in the Jeu de Ballon are flowering

in feathers and the oleander’s brilliance is gone

today the heat seems more welcome than before

beneath the red canopy of the Café Plaza –

the faces more familiar and the sun on my feet

softer falling in pools on the dusty bedroom floor –

the wind off the Herault cooler as it runs

upstream to pebbled seas and diving bridge gorge  –

the bark of the plain tree more dappled in the square

where the empty stage has yet to be deconstructed –

the building’s skin greyer, muted blue and flat

shuttered as the afternoon heat peels paint from wood

while at the open window above me a purple

curtain shifts, catches in the white cat’s paw

and snags the thread of leaving from this place of now

how quickly it runs away, and the days empty.

My three good things for today –  reading my poems from yesterday, working at the table alongside my son David, a cup of tea and a Tunnocks tea cake (the way they melt in your mouth -ummm!)