Thursday a hot morning and I settle on the holiday cottage courtyard to take my meds and to read Jim Harrison poetry. It is beautiful stuff and spans a life time. I notice amongst my meds today is my twice weekly vitamin D pill. It amuses me that in this heat wave I am taking Vitamin D, it prompts a short poem.

456
Sitting in the sunshine 
taking vitamin D pills
I wonder if I am being spooked.
Is this the wrong end
of a medical algorithm,
that has prescribed me 
a vision of health
outside my shorts 
and T shirt heatwave
summer.
These days I never know
if it’s man or machine 
that is my shaman,
feed me in,
out comes a prescription:
if I change my viewing habits
will I soon be
handling snakes, pointing bones
or divining from the guts 
of a slaughtered goat? 
After all medicine is
an act of faith. 
                                           456  14-08-2025

I am joined by my partner for warm drinks and we sit and chat for a while before getting ready to go for breakfast at Watsons café down the road. The place has a few people in but by no means full so we pick a window seat and wait for the waitress to take our order. Neither of us can face anything bigger than the small breakfast and orange juice. We chat and watch the other diners, quite a few have dogs and we inevitably have our dog ownership conversation, “nice idea but a big commitment”, we always end up on the “no dog” side.

With breakfast over we walk back to our cottage via the village shop for some essentials. Its hot now and I strip down to bare essentials and read Jim Harrison in the shade. What I read sparks another short poem.

457
Jim Harrison has me in one:
“an average poem destined
to disappear among the millions
of poems written now by 
mortally average poets”
as he weaves spellbinding
accounts of nature 
and its profusion in 
a way far beyond me.
Some have the gift, 
some read and wonder
and some blunder about
unseeing.
The one eyed man 
sees so much more
than I.
                                 457 14-08-2025 
                                  	Tim Harrison lost an eye aged 7 when a girl hit him with a                                            				                      broken bottle during an argument. 

I type the poems up and begin to draft the blog as I nibble the jammy fruit scone that was brought back from the café. So I spend my afternoon lazing and reading Tim Harrison’s poetry until its time to take a walk along the beach. My partner and I are almost on our own on the beach, we sit on the stumps of an old groyne and chat before making our way back to the cottage, the breeze from the sea has chilled us. I read some more until its time to walk to the village chippy. There appears to be a short queue but are instantly dismayed to find that someone has order 18 portions of fish and chips and the serving woman is not willing to serve anyone else anything till the 18 are done, its painful to watch and even more painful to wait. Eventually we get served and my partner and I leg it back to the cottage with our appetites enlarged by the wait and the walk.

After tea there is a Swedish thriller to watch and a travel show before I clear the kitchen and finish off the blog having taken my night meds. Tomorrow is our last full day in the cottage so hopefully the sun will shine and I might find more words to flow. Still I hear the sound of the sea as I settle down and I can see a bright moon.